There was so much highly-deserved and scathing ridicule of Sen. Eric Schmitt (MAGOP-MO) on Tuesday in his disastrous, pathetic attempt to "get" former Special Prosecutor Jack Smith in his Senate hearing that there's nothing much I want to add. But I can't let the moment pass without mention, since it was so hideously awful -- not just for his grueling mistake, but also because it was followed by calling the 30-year, highly regarded federal prosecutor a "dirtbag." And never apologizing after his profound mistake was revealed.
I also don't want to let the moment pass because of two small parts of the story.
To recap, just because repeating it is too wonderful, Schmitt thought he had a great "gotcha" moment against Mr. Smith, even sneering that Smith had just "perjured" himself. Schmitt even had big charts printed up -- which he pulled away before even letting Jack Smith read them.
Schmitt's claim was that Jack Smith had attended a basketball game to see the Atlanta Hawks, as part of his supposed conspiracy to meet up with Atlanta D.A. Fani Willis. A sporting event Jack Smith denied attending. To which, aha!!!, Schmitt pulled out supposed texts that proved Smith had, in fact, been there. And subsequently called him a "dirtbag."
Now, why in the world Schmitt thinks going to a men's pro basketball game is a big deal -- and why he thinks for some inexplicable reason there's a conspiracy between Jack Smith and Fani Willis, and that somehow it involves going to a basketball game -- and why he thinks that 30-year federal prosecutor Jack Smith would lie about going to a basketball game, that's between him and his god. Moreover, why on earth he thinks that remembering the details of attending a pro basketball game, to the point of actually lying about it under oath, would reach the high level of "perjury," let alone getting a perjury "dirtbag" conviction is an even more bizarre, inscrutable matter of the occult. After all, convicting someone of perjury requires more than even intentionally lying under oath! It has to be proven, beyond a reasonable doubt, that the person not only deliberately lied about a detail -- rather than just remembered it wrong -- but knowingly lied about a fact that was material to the matter under investigation!
Actually, the much bigger question is why on earth the MAGOPs are holding a hearing at all with Jack Smith about events that began almost six years ago and which have all been discredited, just days before early voting starts for the Mid-Terms, when their party's leader has a 32% approval, and most of the public is concerned with soaring gas prices, tariffs, high consumer prices, abusive immigration policies and an unnecessary war in Iran that Trump began and can't end -- and are not even remotely concerned with Jack Smith and why he got court approval to access telephone numbers. But we'll put that lunacy aside.
As it turned out, and almost immediately, Sen. Amy Klobuchar spoke up, having figured out where Schmitt had gone so deeply, shamefully and clowinshly off the rails . (It's worth jumping in here to note that earlier in the day, an article had appeared -- likely leaked by Schmitt's office -- suggesting he was being looked at as a possible VP selection by MAGOPs in 2028. A dream for Schmitt that was about to go up in smoke in four seconds. 3-2-1...) Klobuchar explained that the same night as the Atlanta Hawks NBA game, the University of Iowa was playing at Maryland in a women's college basketball game, and Iowa's nickname is the "Hawkeyes." And -- yes, Jack Smith said, he was at the Iowa Hawkeyes game in Maryland, because he wanted to see the Hawkeyes' big star Caitlin Clark play.
The Hawkeyes. Not the Hawks. College basketball. Not the pros.
Women. Not men.
Hawkeyes. Not the Hawks. Hawkeyes.
Schmitt not only still hasn't apologized but is actually trying desperately to take an embarrassing victory lap, saying he got Jack Smith to admit he was at a basketball game, which is as pure a definition of today's MAGOP as one can make, and which, with appreciated great timing, also impeccably supports my article yesterday about how tweets by MAGOP officials on social media have gotten so egregious that my default response to them is now "this is a lie." And making the "Hawkeye" debacle even worse for Schmitt is that it turns out when the crackerjack Justice Department sent him the erroneous texts (which he tried use as his "perjury" gotcha proof), Schmitt was warned that the texts had not been vetted, and that he should fact-check them first. Which would have been incredibly easy to do -- for starters, the texts said that Jack Smith was sitting in Row 1 -- but the arena where the Atlanta Hawks play doesn't have a Row 1. It starts at Row AA!! But Schmitt used them anyway. So smarmy sure that he had "got" Special Prosecutor Jack Smith. (Not surprisingly, an unnamed senior MAGOP senator told RawStory, “I'm pretty sure the White House asked him to do it. And, probably, the White House provided the material.”)
In Schmitt's hometown newspaper, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch wrote a blistering editorial slamming their senator. It was titled, ""Wrong teams, wrong league, wrong state."
Which leads me to the two tiny points I got such a kick out of, beyond the richly-deserved humiliation of Eric Schmitt.
The first is that, as soon as I saw on the video that it was Amy Klobuchar picking up on the team name issue, my immediate thought was "The Big Ten comes through!!" Most reporters said it was because Sen. Klobuchar from Minnesota had knowledge of Midwest college sports. But it was actually much more specific than that. Minnesota and Iowa are both in the Big Ten conference. And as a Big Ten guy myself, I was well aware that any Big Ten fan knows the nicknames of all the 10 original Big Ten universities, and knows that Iowa is the Hawkeyes. So, I burst out laughing when I saw Minnesotan Amy Klobuchar get a twinkle in her eyes as she was smacking Eric Schmitt at the kneecaps. And letting him glop there in total disgrace.
And the second thing I loved in the story is that the deeply taciturn, all-business, 30-year federal prosecutor Jack Smith, who has prosecuted war crimes at the international tribunal in The Hague against former members of the Kosovo Liberation Army — including former Kosovo President Hashim Thaçi -- wanted to go see Caitlin Clark play basketball.
