The Republican Party used to be full of people who were competent at their jobs. James Baker III springs to mind. The 21st Century GOP, however, is exactly the opposite. They no longer do their homework, and they no longer know how things work. Proof positive was on parade yesterday at the Senate Judiciary Committee grilled Jack Smith, the former special prosecutor who had the goods on President Trump. Senator Eric Schmitt (R-MO) set a trap for Mr. Smith, and then promptly tripped over himself on national TV. Mr. Schmitt should be removed from office given his deciet and dishonesty.
The senator has embraced a conspiracy theory that says Mr. Smith conspired with Fulton County Georgia prosecutor Fani Willis, who also had a case against the president that should have resulted in jail time, to take down the president. He claimed that Mr. Smith attended an Atlanta Hawks basketball game on February 3, 2024, and that during the same trip to Atlanta, he met with Ms. Willis as part of their insidious plot.
The GOP went so far as to print up a foam board display with some texts and photos — in short, they took quite a bit of time preparing this. Senator John Kennedy (R- LA, Brasenose College Oxford) held up one end of it, normally a staffer’s job, so he could be in the photo for the news later in the day.
“So your testimony today is that you did not go to a Hawks game on Feb. 3, 2024. Is that correct?” Schmitt asks sharply. “What would you say if I had a series of text messages from your team that said you were in Atlanta at a Warriors-Hawks game on Feb. 2, 2024?”
When Mr. Smith said he did not recall being in Atlanta then, Senator Schmitt stated that he thought the witness had perjured himself. He went on to call Mr. Smith a “dirtbag” who would go down in history as the villain not the hero.
Mr. Smith was escorted everywhere in 2024 by members of the US Marshall Service as his security team. So records demonstrated, while the hearing was going on, that Mr. Smith was in Maryland on that date. He attended a college basketball game between Iowa and Maryland, where future WNBA star Caitlyn Clarke of Iowa dropped about 30 points.
“Could it then be that the University of Iowa was the Hawkeyes?” Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota interjected. “Perhaps you should have looked at it more carefully,” she said to Senator Schmitt.
This is the proof of Republican idiocy. They do not read. They do not reflect. They do not check footnotes. They are intellectually lazy. Had they been otherwise, they would have noticed that the Lady Hawkeyes and the Atlanta Hawks of the NBA are two different teams and two different genders. Instead, their “gotcha” moment turned into the worst own goal since the World Cup. The smoking gun they were after was the one they used to shoot themselves in the foot.
Thus far, Mr. Schmitt has not issued an apology nor an explanation. He is a disgrace to just about everything. Bad enough that he tried to trick a public servant into committing perjury, but also he did it with lies rather than the truth. He is not a gentleman, an honorable man, a decent human being nor an American patriot. He is worse scum than John Gotti and El Chapo combined because he is in a position of trust which he has betrayed. He is free to sue this journal if he thinks he has a case. Discovery will be fun.
The nation has a big decision to make in 34 days. Will the Republican Party be punished for its incompetence and deceit? They have already failed the test of character. The American voter faces the same test, and one hopes they fare better.