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Senator Eric Schmitt showed up to the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing to stomp Jack Smith, the special counsel who investigated Donald Trump. Instead, the Missouri Republican stepped on the biggest rake in Washington when he wrongly accused Smith of perjury.
Republicans making fools of themselves at this point isn’t news; it’s just part and parcel of being in Trump’s party. The story just served as a reminder that MAGA is a political enterprise not so much indifferent to truth as outright hostile to it, led by people who accuse others of weaponizing our institutions while doing exactly that. It also showed that this tendency is here to stay, even as people try to look beyond the horizon of the Trump moment.
During the hearing, Schmitt asked Smith if he had been at an Atlanta Hawks home game in February 2024. Smith said that he had not. An increasingly giddy Schmitt then pressed the question and also asked Smith whether he had met with Fani Willis, a district attorney who pursued a criminal case against Trump, during that time.
“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 February 3, 2024?” Schmitt said with all the confidence of Wile E. Coyote setting a trap for the Road Runner right before it blows up in his face. A poster board was flashed at Smith that supposedly showed the messages in question. But it was taken down before he or anyone could carefully examine it.
Schmitt then became very cagey about what he characterized as the smoking gun. “I think you’ve already perjured yourself,” he said after Smith asked for a better look.
“You’re the villain,” Schmitt continued. “You will go down as a total dirtbag.”
Chuck Grassley tried to move things along, and might have, were it not for Amy Klobuchar, who noted the unusualness of Schmitt’s reluctance to subject his evidence to proper scrutiny. And when the supposedly damning text messages were finally put on full display, it turned out that Schmitt had nothing. His allegations rested entirely on messages that did not say what he claimed.
Smith, moreover, recollected that he had been at an Iowa Hawkeyes game in Maryland on the date in question, to see conservative favorite Caitlin Clark play no less. Katie Britt looked on, eyes wide and mouth agape, as she realized how hard her colleague had blundered.
Klobuchar then patiently pointed out that Schmitt had apparently mixed up the Hawks and the Hawkeyes. In response, he shouted over Klobuchar and doubled down on calling Smith a “dirtbag.” The juxtaposition of a calm, collected Klobuchar and an emotionally incontinent Schmitt might have been the most amusing part of the whole thing. Maybe the Longhouse isn’t so bad after all. Maybe some men need a Den Mother in their lives, lest they be left to their own devices for the detriment of all.
Schmitt accused someone of a federal crime based on evidence so shoddy that it is hard to believe his team didn’t know that beforehand, though it’s certainly possible. Republicans don’t actually believe in merit much these days, even though that’s one of their favorite words. Far more important is loyalty—at least in a superficial sense—to the cause, to Trump. A distant secondary consideration is competence, which might have come in handy, given that the whole spectacle seemed to have been planned as part of Schmitt’s angling for a bigger job in the GOP.
Just hours before he beclowned himself, Axios reported that Schmitt is currently under consideration as a possible running mate for Vice President JD Vance in 2028. Conservative media personalities, including influencer Benny Johnson and Fox News host Sean Hannity, also shared the same clips at almost the same time as what was supposed to be the big gotcha moment. Both Johnson and Hannity deleted their posts, but not before people noted how the entire thing smelled like a coordinated campaign to crown Schmitt. By then, though, Schmitt had already hopped in front of a camera for a post-hearing interview with Blake Neff and Andrew Kolvet of Turning Point USA. The duo ensured that their audience was kept under the impression that Schmitt had the goods on Smith.
It’s hard to say or do things these days that shock Americans who have already become more inured than anyone ought to be to official depravity after a decade of Trump, the ringmaster of our political circus. But Schmitt managed to remind us that new lows are not only possible but sustainable. There are glimmers of hope among some that after Trump shuffles off the stage, a kind of return to normalcy will surely occur. Schmitt’s performance, and MAGA’s reaction to it, suggest that this is not guaranteed.
What were once considered character flaws are now virtues of the highest order. Schmitt’s refusal to back down, even when humiliated and discredited, is seen as a sign that he is a fighter. If a fighter lies, it is only because he won’t let little things like facts get in the way of truth. Likewise, the MAGA media ecosphere functionally precludes the possibility of honesty. Commentators can’t tell the truth because honesty would demolish all the lies that sustain the project. This creates another problem: an audience that demands lies that reinforce the delusions fed them by liars who, in turn, become like hostages to lies. Honesty is only interpreted as a sign of weakness, a violation of the Trumpian formula so familiar now: attack, counterattack, and never apologize.
Whether Schmitt is really being looked at as a potential running mate for Vance, or whether these events will have any bearing on that, is all beside the point. More important is the fact that there’s no indication MAGA is ready to put down the bottle. The movement is addicted to the hard and stupid stuff. But there is a silver lining there.
MAGA’s preferred kind of government is some flavor of authoritarian. But it also selects for leaders who regularly make fools of themselves. And in that, there is some cause for optimism.
This was a particularly humiliating turn of events for the Republicans. But if you pay attention to politics long enough you’ll see that Republicans have moments like this constantly. And I used to wonder, why? Why is it that in 30 years of investigating Hillary Clinton, who is almost admittedly shady as hell, they haven’t been able to find anything to pin on her? Is it just that Republicans are not good at this? That the talented, intelligent people are all working for the Democrats? And then I realized, this is all for show. This is basically WWE. None of this is investigated deeply or prepared with any real effort because none of it is designed to go anywhere, none of it is designed to shape public policy, none of it is intended to change a dang thing. Literally all they want is their sound clip so they can keep stringing their voters along.
What I find most discouraging is that "normal" is the ship slowly sinking. What we have when either party gets in power is the ship sinking, just with more stupidity. I'd like someone to stop the ship from sinking, but apparently that's not in the cards.