There are political mistakes, and then there is Senator Eric Schmitt of Missouri accusing a man of perjury because he apparently cannot tell the Atlanta Hawks from the Iowa Hawkeyes.
This would be funny if Schmitt were arguing with his brother-in-law over nachos at Buffalo Wild Wings.
He was not.
He was sitting on the Senate Judiciary Committee, questioning former Special Counsel Jack Smith under oath, armed with blown-up text messages, prosecutorial indignation and the unmistakable swagger of a man who believes he has just found the bloody glove.
(If the glove does not fit you must acquit.)
Schmitt asked Smith whether he had attended an Atlanta Hawks game on February 3, 2024.
Smith said no.
Schmitt pressed harder. He suggested Smith might want to think carefully because, according to Schmitt, he had text messages from Smith’s own team placing him at a Hawks game. The implication was considerably more serious than basketball. Schmitt appeared to be suggesting Smith had secretly been in Atlanta around the time Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis was prosecuting Donald Trump. He even raised the specter of perjury.
There was only one small problem.
Jack Smith wasn’t in Atlanta.
He was in Maryland.
At a women’s college basketball game being a good girl dad.
Watching Caitlin Clark and the Iowa Hawkeyes play the University of Maryland.
Hawks.
Hawkeyes.
Atlanta.
College Park.
Only about 650 miles, gender and an entire level of professional basketball separate them.
Senator Amy Klobuchar finally supplied the missing piece of detective work: perhaps, she suggested, somebody had confused the Hawkeyes with the Hawks.
And just like that, the Zapruder film became a basketball schedule.
But the revealing part wasn’t merely that Schmitt was wrong. Politicians are wrong every day. If error disqualified anyone from Congress, C-SPAN would be broadcasting an empty chamber.
What made the episode so perfectly MAGA was the method.
Most of us were taught ready, aim, fire.
Check the facts. Establish the target. Then pull the trigger.
The MAGA version too often operates as fire, ready, aim.
Launch the accusation first. Call somebody a liar, a criminal, a dirtbag or a traitor. Let cable television and social media do the distribution. Then, perhaps sometime before dessert, see whether the underlying facts actually support what you just said.
In Schmitt’s case, they didn’t.
The accusation came first. The certainty came second. Verification apparently never made it out of the locker room.
That is the MAGA playbook. Begin with the desired conclusion. Find a fragment that appears to support it. Strip away whatever context proves inconvenient. Add outrage. Add certainty. Add a few capital letters.
Schmitt didn’t cautiously ask whether Smith had been in Atlanta. He constructed a dramatic confrontation around the proposition. Perjury was invoked. Sinister connections were suggested. Smith had already been publicly called a “dirtbag” by Schmitt.
That word deserves a moment.
My definition of a dirtbag is not a career public servant who answers a question under oath and turns out to be telling the truth.
My definition is someone who, hunting for an “aha” moment, accuses a principled public servant of perjury without first bothering to establish the facts.
That seems a considerably better fit.
Then came the amplification.
Conservative commentator Benny Johnson declared that Schmitt had caught Smith committing perjury. Sean Hannity also celebrated the supposed revelation. The posts were subsequently deleted after the premise fell apart.
Fire.
Ready.
Aim.
That sequence has become one of the defining habits of the MAGA information ecosystem. Begin with the desired conclusion. Find a fragment that appears to support it. Strip away whatever context proves inconvenient. Add outrage. Add certainty. Add a few capital letters.
Then launch.
If the claim survives, wonderful.
If it doesn’t, quietly delete the post and move along to the next emergency.
Conspiracy theories no longer require particularly good conspiracies. They merely require a wisp of information—a text message, a photograph, a name, the word “Hawks”—plus enough ideological enthusiasm to spin the pieces together into conspiratorial cotton candy before anybody asks whether it is worth getting your hands sticky.
Here is the thing. If you have serious allegations, bring serious evidence. It is simple:
Ready.
Aim.
Then fire.
Don’t reverse the order because the accusation is more entertaining than the truth.
On this particular question, there isn’t much ideological fog to hide behind. Jack Smith said where he was. The evidence supported him. Schmitt’s accusation was wrong because he was so excited that he couldn’t contain himself.
Hmmm. There is medication for that. Its called “reading.”
We know who the dirt bags are now. We kinda already knew. The real question is how much longer are we going to put up with the MAGA playbook and when are we going to return to decorum, decency and the rule of law.
Winston Churchill once said that if you were not a liberal when you were young you had no heart, and if you were not a conservative when you were older then you had no brain. I know I have both so what does that make me?
Shoot, Ready, Aim
There are political mistakes, and then there is Senator Eric Schmitt of Missouri accusing a man of perjury because he apparently cannot tell the Atlanta Hawks from the Iowa Hawkeyes.
This would be funny if Schmitt were arguing with his brother-in-law over nachos at Buffalo Wild Wings.
He was not.
He was sitting on the Senate Judiciary Committee, questioning former Special Counsel Jack Smith under oath, armed with blown-up text messages, prosecutorial indignation and the unmistakable swagger of a man who believes he has just found the bloody glove.
(If the glove does not fit you must acquit.)
Schmitt asked Smith whether he had attended an Atlanta Hawks game on February 3, 2024.
Smith said no.
Schmitt pressed harder. He suggested Smith might want to think carefully because, according to Schmitt, he had text messages from Smith’s own team placing him at a Hawks game. The implication was considerably more serious than basketball. Schmitt appeared to be suggesting Smith had secretly been in Atlanta around the time Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis was prosecuting Donald Trump. He even raised the specter of perjury.
There was only one small problem.
Jack Smith wasn’t in Atlanta.
He was in Maryland.
At a women’s college basketball game being a good girl dad.
Watching Caitlin Clark and the Iowa Hawkeyes play the University of Maryland.
Hawks.
Hawkeyes.
Atlanta.
College Park.
Only about 650 miles, gender and an entire level of professional basketball separate them.
Senator Amy Klobuchar finally supplied the missing piece of detective work: perhaps, she suggested, somebody had confused the Hawkeyes with the Hawks.
And just like that, the Zapruder film became a basketball schedule.
But the revealing part wasn’t merely that Schmitt was wrong. Politicians are wrong every day. If error disqualified anyone from Congress, C-SPAN would be broadcasting an empty chamber.
What made the episode so perfectly MAGA was the method.
Most of us were taught ready, aim, fire.
Check the facts. Establish the target. Then pull the trigger.
The MAGA version too often operates as fire, ready, aim.
Launch the accusation first. Call somebody a liar, a criminal, a dirtbag or a traitor. Let cable television and social media do the distribution. Then, perhaps sometime before dessert, see whether the underlying facts actually support what you just said.
In Schmitt’s case, they didn’t.
The accusation came first. The certainty came second. Verification apparently never made it out of the locker room.
That is the MAGA playbook. Begin with the desired conclusion. Find a fragment that appears to support it. Strip away whatever context proves inconvenient. Add outrage. Add certainty. Add a few capital letters.
Schmitt didn’t cautiously ask whether Smith had been in Atlanta. He constructed a dramatic confrontation around the proposition. Perjury was invoked. Sinister connections were suggested. Smith had already been publicly called a “dirtbag” by Schmitt.
That word deserves a moment.
My definition of a dirtbag is not a career public servant who answers a question under oath and turns out to be telling the truth.
My definition is someone who, hunting for an “aha” moment, accuses a principled public servant of perjury without first bothering to establish the facts.
That seems a considerably better fit.
Then came the amplification.
Conservative commentator Benny Johnson declared that Schmitt had caught Smith committing perjury. Sean Hannity also celebrated the supposed revelation. The posts were subsequently deleted after the premise fell apart.
Fire.
Ready.
Aim.
That sequence has become one of the defining habits of the MAGA information ecosystem. Begin with the desired conclusion. Find a fragment that appears to support it. Strip away whatever context proves inconvenient. Add outrage. Add certainty. Add a few capital letters.
Then launch.
If the claim survives, wonderful.
If it doesn’t, quietly delete the post and move along to the next emergency.
Conspiracy theories no longer require particularly good conspiracies. They merely require a wisp of information—a text message, a photograph, a name, the word “Hawks”—plus enough ideological enthusiasm to spin the pieces together into conspiratorial cotton candy before anybody asks whether it is worth getting your hands sticky.
Here is the thing. If you have serious allegations, bring serious evidence. It is simple:
Ready.
Aim.
Then fire.
Don’t reverse the order because the accusation is more entertaining than the truth.
On this particular question, there isn’t much ideological fog to hide behind. Jack Smith said where he was. The evidence supported him. Schmitt’s accusation was wrong because he was so excited that he couldn’t contain himself.
Hmmm. There is medication for that. Its called “reading.”
We know who the dirt bags are now. We kinda already knew. The real question is how much longer are we going to put up with the MAGA playbook and when are we going to return to decorum, decency and the rule of law.
34 days.
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About 34orion
Winston Churchill once said that if you were not a liberal when you were young you had no heart, and if you were not a conservative when you were older then you had no brain. I know I have both so what does that make me?