Once you decide that your loyalty is to a specific man or movement, and not to objective reality, you are likely to get sloppy. This is especially true if you are trying to make your “argument” and “evidence” fit a predetermined conclusion.
Congressional hearings and their penchant for committee members to try and turn the events into “gotcha” moments are frequently quite absurd, but we now have an all-timer courtesy of Senator Eric Schmitt (R-MO).
He thought he had caught Jack Smith committing perjury, but it all fell apart when, in the room, it became clear that Schmitt was basing his attack on the fact that he had evidence that Jack Smith was at an Atlanta Hawks game, when, in fact, he was at an Iowa Hawkeyes game.
This kind of stupidly bad research is hard to fathom from a college freshman, let alone from a US Senator who brags during the whole thing that he is a former prosecutor.
Here’s the whole exchange:
What makes it even dumber is that the poster board with the texts proves nothing (see the screenshot at the top of this post).
An edited version for time is here:
Here’s the NYT write-up:
It was meant to be a dramatic confrontation, a public accusation of perjury against Jack Smith, the special counsel who investigated Donald J. Trump. Instead, Senator Eric Schmitt’s amateur sleuthing into basketball led him to the wrong game, league and state.
During a four-hour Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, Mr. Schmitt, a Republican from Missouri, struck a conspiratorial tone and asked Mr. Smith if he had attended an Atlanta Hawks home game in February 2024.
Mr. Schmitt focused on the basketball game in the hopes that he could show Mr. Smith had perjured himself and was involved in a conspiracy with local Atlanta prosecutors to ensnare Mr. Trump. In a hearing where Republicans repeatedly accused Mr. Smith of lying, what Mr. Schmitt first presented as smoking-gun evidence against Mr. Smith turned out to be a misfire.
[…]
When the former special counsel insisted he had not gone to see the Atlanta Hawks play in that time period, Mr. Schmitt declared, “I think you’ve already perjured yourself,” and called Mr. Smith a “dirtbag.”
The accusation appeared to unravel almost immediately.
Invited to respond by Senator Amy Klobuchar, a Minnesota Democrat, Mr. Smith said he had, in fact, attended a basketball game on that day, but it was to see the Iowa Hawkeyes at the University of Maryland. That night, Caitlin Clark, the star point guard who now plays in the W.N.B.A., scored 38 points and had 12 assists.
Ms. Klobuchar suggested that Mr. Schmitt’s accusation was rooted in the senator’s confusion between the “Hawks” of Atlanta and the “Hawkeyes” of Iowa.
While all of this is ridiculous and laughable, I actually don’t find it funny. This is yet another example of deeply unserious members of the Republican Party eschewing somber, thoughtful governance in service of a corrupt, criminal, and authoritarian administration. It is servitude to a false narrative in the service of power.
To borrow from and modify Arendt: it is the absurdity of evil.
And, of course, the authoritarian peanut gallery is happy to chime in their approval.
Smith was stunned, alright, as anyone would be in such a scenario.
