Even before Joe Biden’s shaky survival of his NATO press conference Thursday night, which encouraged his core supporters, Eric Schmitt was fairly certain the president would remain the Democrat nominee.

“I think he will be,” the Missouri senator told The Heartlander in an exclusive interview before the president’s press conference. “I don’t think they’re going to dislodge him. I think there’s too many people who are benefiting from this shadow government [for] Joe Biden to go away.”

Democrats have “a real problem on their hands though,” he added, “because the American people saw how out of it he is and how incapable he is and how incompetent he is for 90 minutes on that debate stage. 

“So, the level of spin that the media did for him for a very long time, they can’t pull it off anymore. It was just a few weeks ago you had commentators talking about how this is the most alert and competent president in our lifetime. I mean, I think [MSNBC host] Joe Scarborough has been permanently embarrassed now for some of the things he said. 

“But it wasn’t just them. It was White House officials – and the media covered this up for a very long time. Remember, they were talking about ‘cheap fakes’ like a month ago, implying that somehow Joe Biden was being mischaracterized as being out of it. And they can’t do that anymore. 

“So, now they want to dump him because they know that President Trump’s winning. But I don’t think they’re gonna be able to pull that off.”

What of election integrity?

With the New York Post reporting that “welfare offices and other agencies in at least 46 US states are providing voter registration forms to migrants without requiring proof of citizenship,” conservative voters are seriously concerned about election integrity. Some local officials, including in New York, have even sought openly to allow illegals to vote in their elections.

And while the Republican-led House on Wednesday approved the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act requiring proof of citizenship to vote in federal elections, Democrats almost uniformly oppose it – and President Biden has promised to veto it in the unlikely event it survives the Senate.

Democrats claim it’s already illegal for noncitizens to vote in federal races. Perhaps, but such a law only punishes violators after the fact, in the unlikely event they’re caught or that someone in power cares enough to find out. The House bill would prevent them from being registered in the first place.

Moreover, existing laws likely aren’t preventing it.

“Having laws on the books does not guarantee their compliance,” warns the Heritage Foundation’s Matthew Tragesser, noting all-too-common violations of such laws as speed limits.

“In Virginia, for example, more than 11,000 aliens were initially listed on the state’s voter roll within the past decade,” he writes. “The fact is, alien voting can change the outcome of close elections …”

In addition, Biden issued an executive order in 2021 requiring federal agencies, many of which aren’t involved in the electoral process, to, among other things “expand access to voter registration.”

Asked on a scale of 1-100 how confident Schmitt is in the integrity of the upcoming election, he says merely that he is “hopeful.”

“I know that the Republican Party is going to have a lot more observers and lawyers on the ground. I’m a little concerned that the Democrats are opposing this idea that an individual should have to verify that they’re legal in this country to vote; I don’t know why they would be opposing that. I think part of their play for getting 10 million people here illegally is to affect the Census, because you don’t need to be a citizen to be counted in the census. 

“But I’m hopeful. I think President Trump has run a great campaign. I think the polling is showing that he’s pulling ahead. The Democrats are in total disarray right now.”

Is this even legal?

The Hatch Act was approved in 1939 to prevent federal employees from engaging in political activities. As noted by History.com, it was passed due to concerns that President Franklin Delano Roosevelt had “pressured federal employees from the Works Progress Administration, a relief agency, into working on campaigns of candidates who were his allies or supporters.”

Schmitt sidesteps whether Biden’s executive order violates that law, but he points to the single-minded pursuit of dominion by today’s Democrats.

“Well, it’s all about power and control for the Democrats now,” Schmitt says. “There’s no rule or norm they won’t break to maintain power, and that’s where we’re at. 

“So if you want to understand why the 10 million [new illegals] they want to be counted in the Census, or why they’re trying to jail their political opponent, it has everything to do with maintaining permanent power and control.

“And it’s my hope that the American people are going to weigh in on that. They see it for what it is, and they’re going to reject that. And we’ll have a new administration led by President Trump in just a few months.”