The funniest thing about this whole debacle with Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-Mo.) and his questioning of former special counsel Jack Smith on the Senate floor on Tuesday is that, before the hearing, most of us had never heard of Schmitt.
Apparently, there were rumblings about Schmitt being at the top of the list of potential running mates for Vice President JD Vance, who, I guess, is expected to run for president in 2028. I mean, it makes sense: before Vance became President Donald Trump’s running mate in 2024, we didn’t know who the hell he was either—but the potential Vance/Schmitt ticket has to be over with now, right?
For those of you who don’t know what I’m talking about, Smith, the special counsel who investigated Trump for the DOJ, beginning in 2022, sat down for a four-hour Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, where he defended his investigation, which MAGA minions considered to be anti-Trump lawfare, because it couldn’t be that the 34-time felon and adjudicated sexual predator who uses his Mar-a-Lago bathroom as a bank vault for classified documents is a corrupt criminal who needed to be held accountable.
Well, Sen. Schmitt saw the hearing as an opportunity to boost his profile and make himself a MAGA hero. Schmitt had a plan. In fact, Schmitt not only had a plan, but he had poster boards. Schmitt not only had a plan and poster boards, but he had a prepared speech about what a perjuring “dirt bag” Smith is. However, Schmitt apparently didn’t have a staff capable of doing bare-minimum research before he went before Congress with the equivalent of a class presentation that proved he didn’t read the assignment.
“Did you go to an NBA game between the Golden State Warriors and the Atlanta Hawks on Feb. 3, 2024?” Schmitt asked Smith, to which the former special prosecutor replied, “What city would that be in?”
“Atlanta,” Schmitt clarified, to which Smith responded, “No.”
And that’s when Schmitt thought he had him. Schmitt thought he had Caine from Menace II Society in the interrogation room, setting himself up for the perfect “You know you done f*cked up, right?” moment.
That’s not how it played out, though.
From NBC News:
Schmitt pressed him again about whether he was in Atlanta on that date and then said he’d give him some “context” — it was the day after Fani Willis, the district attorney of Fulton County, Georgia, “came clean” about her romantic relationship with a prosecutor in her then-pending criminal case against Trump.
“The next day were you in Atlanta?” Schmitt continued.
“I do not believe so,” Smith responded. “I definitely did not go to a Hawks game. I’m sure of that.”
Schmitt then asked whether he ever met with the local prosecutors in Atlanta who charged Trump. “No,” Smith said.
“What would you say if I had a series of text messages from your team that said you were in Atlanta, at a Warrior-Hawks game, on Feb. 3, 2024, the day after Willis and [Nathan] Wade announced their affair?” Schmitt continued as a staffer held up a poster board that had three text messages about Smith’s going to an event.
The staffer quickly took the poster down as Smith looked on, appearing confused.
“I don’t think you know that we have this stuff, so I’ll give you a second to process it so you don’t perjure yourself,” Schmitt said.
Only it turned out the good GOP senator didn’t have Schmitt.
Sorry, I couldn’t help myself.
Actually, while I’m already here, I might as well get it out of my system.
Schmitt totally Schmitt the bed on this one. He found himself up Schmitt’s creek because his Schmitty-ass investigators didn’t double-check their work to make sure the senator would have his Schmitt together once his big moment came. I know he had to be thinking, “Boooy, these staffers ain’t Schmitt! I could’ve Schmitt better employees than them. Everybody is getting fired if this ends in my political career being flushed down the Schmitter!“
OK, I’m done.
As quickly as Schmitt’s staffer flashed the poster board — which featured images of Smith, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, Nathan Wade, and what appeared to be text messages from a staffer confirming whether Smith had seats reserved for an unspecified sporting event — and then took it down before Smith or anyone else could read it, one would think Schmitt realized his blunder at that point. But instead of retreating, he went full steam ahead, with a whole speech about how history wouldn’t remember Smith as a “hero,” but as “a total dirt bag.”
“I think you’ve already perjured yourself,” Schmitt told Smith after Smith asked him if he could see the poster again, so he could address the allegation that he was in Atlanta at a Hawks game, which, of course, it turned out he wasn’t.
In fact, it was Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) who helped to clarify things, allowing Smith a chance to review the text messages and explain that the only game he remembered going to around that time was a University of Maryland basketball game against the Iowa Hawkeyes, which he attended because he wanted to watch Caitlin Clark play.
“We have confirmed that, in fact, you are right, Mr. Smith. Iowa, the Iowa Hawkeyes, played Maryland on Feb. 3, 2024. The final score was 93-85. Iowa won, and Caitlin Clark scored over, scored 30 points,” she said
Then Klobuchar really went in.
“I would just say for a U.S. senator to have false information and imply, based on a confusion about the name of a team, which I knew, knowing my Midwestern sports, and imply that you were in another city, that you were somehow involved that day in what was happening in Georgia and then call you a dirtbag is something that deserves an apology,” she said.
So, Schmitt thought he had this big “gotcha” moment, but instead, he handed Smith and Klobuchar an easy layup.
Actually, I shouldn’t even be using that metaphor, because — does Schmitt even know enough about basketball to know what a layup is?
I can just hear him talking to his staff before the hearing now, saying, “Maybe one of the Hawks hit a touchdown in the ninth inning, and the NHL jumbotron caught Smith doing the wave. We should really look into that.”
Schmitt didn’t know if Smith went to see the Hawks, the Hawkeyes, Hawkeye from the Avengers, the “hawk-tuah” girl, or a re-screening of Bruce Willis’ 1991 film Hudson Hawk.
Here’s the thing, though: Even if Smith had been in Atlanta attending a Hawks game on Feb. 3, 2024, what would that have proven? Smith was not involved in the Fulton County RICO election interference case against Trump, which was only dismissed by a judge because Trump became president and shielded himself with presidential immunity.
Schmitt was trying to connect imaginary dots between Smith and Willis, who had a relationship with Wade, whom she appointed special prosecutor in the case; that ultimately led to them both being disqualified from prosecuting it, which didn’t matter because Trump dodged the case by getting elected anyway.
So, Schmitt’s best-case scenario would have been him being right about Smith being in Atlanta the day after Willis admitted to her relationship with Wade, giving him the opportunity to present an audience of idiotic QMorons with a fresh conspiracy that would have been the equivalent of “2+2= the Earth is flat, and the moon landing was fake.”
Mind you, that would’ve been enough to make him a hero in the MAGA world, where facts don’t matter, but it ended up being such a big, obvious fail of epic proportions that even dedicated MAGA stooge Sen. Katie Britt could do nothing but look on in absolute horror as she realized before Schmitt did that he was about to get cooked.
And you know that was genuine horror, because we all know Britt can’t act for shit, from her fake dramatic rebuttal to former President Joe Biden’s State of the Union Address in 2024.
In 2024, Britt sounded like she prepared for her speech by studying hours of infomercials about starving children in Africa, but when she saw Schmitt about to humiliate himself in real time, her face did what she thought it was doing in that rebuttal, and in that moment, she instantly became a part of everyone’s meme collection.
But even Britt’s deer-in-the-headlights-ass expression is arguably not as funny as the Schmitt job (OK, that was the last one) Schmitt has been doing of trying to play the whole episode off by playfully asking, “Who knew Jack Smith was a Caitlin Clark fan?”
Yeah — ain’t nobody buying that bullSchmitt, sir. (Nah, but seriously, Ima stop now.)
Here’s Schmitt telling a TMZ reporter that “people can decide if that’s the truth or not” about Smith being at the Hawkeyes game, only to be told there is video footage of Smith at that game in Maryland on the date in question.
And here he is on the Charlie Kirk Show with a couple of idiots masquerading as journalists, who don’t seem to understand that we can all see footage of the full exchange with Smith.
And here’s pseudo-journalist Sean Hannity appearing to have that same delusional issue, as he presented an edited version of the exchange on his Fox News show.
Oh, and here’s Willis getting in on the fun.
“Hey Senator @Eric_Schmitt — I love Caitlin Clark but never saw her or Jack Smith at an Atlanta Hawks game,” she tweeted.
I mean, that man has to wish he never even got out of bed Tuesday morning.
What a dipSchmitt! (Whatever, y’all knew it was coming.)
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