Post

I've been pondering the whole Sen. Eric Schmitt clown show from yesterday, and I came to a conclusion that I should have seen right from the start. First off, why do you set up a board like that to try to snare someone for going to a sportsball game? Two reasons I can come up with:

1) Their presence at the game is actually central in some way to proving that they were doing something illicit or were part of some conspiracy; or 2) That the game was immaterial to the central accusation, and was intended purely as a gotcha.

Since going to a basketball game in Atlanta doesn't really seem to imply any kind of actual wrongdoing, I have to assume the latter. In either case, the whole board and gotcha moment depended on Jack Smith saying that he did not go to that game. Otherwise, there's no trap, no moment.

So how did Schmitt know so certainly that Smith would deny going to the game? Again, I see two possibilities:

1) He actually thought he had him backed into a corner where he was forced to lie to protect himself; or ...and this is key... 2) He KNEW that Jack Smith did not go to that game, and the whole utterly meaningless trap to provide him a great viral TV moment was based on a lie, not a mistake.

And think about it, this makes his response to Sen. Klobuchar make sense, which it doesn't otherwise. He did NOT imagine anyone would be able to ferret out the truth of the matter the way she did, live on TV, so instead of being contrite, confused, or embarrassed, he was purely angry.