Fox News analyst Brit Hume (Photo: Screen capture)
Fox Business host Brit Hume shamed Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-Mo.) for trying to worm his way out of his disastrous 10-minute questioning of former special counsel Jack Smith on Tuesday in the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Schmitt was caught in an embarrassing mistake when he tried to claim that Smith was somehow colluding with Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis over the 2020 election fraud in Georgia. He alleged that Smith was somehow at an NBA game to see the Atlanta Hawks play on Feb. 3. Over and over, Schmitt mocked Smith as committing "perjury" and said he was lying or that he'd somehow caught Smith in a lie.
The reality is that Smith was at the Iowa Hawkeyes game as they played the Maryland Terps. As Smith explained, he wanted to see Caitlin Clark play. She was a big story in the news at the time, and College Park, Maryland, is not far from the Justice Department.
Hume blasted Schmitt, saying, "He brought this on himself and deserves the obloquy."
Schmitt appeared on several far right outlets attempting to claim that he was somehow still right because the only "men's basketball" game he could have seen was in Atlanta. Smith made it clear he was watching women's basketball. It was such a notable comment that even Sen. Katie Britt (R-Ala.) went off on a tangent about women's sports and keeping them "safe."
It wasn't until the Hollywood site TMZ caught up with Schmitt and hammered him on the lie he refused to acknowledge that the senator finally confessed that Smith could have been where he said.
"He's not answered truthfully before," Schmitt kept saying to justify his beliefs. "So, people can decide if that's the truth or not. I mean, I suppose that the Department of Justice really knows where he was that night. I don't know."
"The Hawkeye game! Wasn't he?" the TMZ person laughed.
"That's what he says!" Schmitt said awkwardly.
"Oh, no, no, no. There's — we can see he's in the audience and he's in that section. I've seen him in the section that night," said TMZ
"That's great. For that night? Great. Well, then he was at the Hawkeyes' game. I just asked him if he was in Atlanta cause there's a text message of him at a game, and the only NBA game that night was in Atlanta," Schmitt said.
The reality is that Schmitt wasn't merely "asking questions." He falsely claimed that he had "a series of text messages" that said Smith had attended the Warriors-Hawks game. It was not only a lie, he also didn't have those texts; but Schmitt also mistook what information he actually had.
As "March Madness" fans know, there are many more basketball games than the NBA. In fact, there's the WNBA, the women's NCAA and men's NCAA. There's also the NBA-G, which is like a minor-league basketball league, Ice Cube's Big3 professional basketball league and the TBL (The Basketball League), which is a minor professional semi-pro league. That doesn't count international clubs or leagues, the junior college league and the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics. There are also the Skyhawks, Black Hawks, Seahawks, a slew of regular "hawks" as well as the Hawkeyes.
As legal commentator Liz Dye wrote, "Schmitt did not explain how attending a basketball game in Atlanta would be evidence of Smith cahootsing with DA Willis. But the GOP playbook relies on an absolute lack of shame, so Schmitt dutifully bellied up to the microphone to celebrate his flawless victory with the chuds keeping the grift alive in Charlie Kirk’s old studio."
After a full day of ridicule, Schmitt finally posted on X, "Who knew that Jack Smith was a Caitlan Clark fan." The reactions were about what one would expect.