Eric Schmitt

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Just when you think Sen. Eric Schmitt, R-Mo., couldn’t possibly embarrass himself and his constituents any more than he already has, he goes in for a rhetorical layup, gratuitously throws an elbow, spectacularly misses the shot and then stomps around the court indignantly when the ref calls foul.

That’s all metaphorical, of course. What Missouri’s perpetually seething junior senator really, truly did on Tuesday (in front of the whole country!) was to proffer a loony right-wing conspiracy based on some misunderstood text messages; falsely accuse a prosecutor of perjury; call him a “villain” and a “total dirtbag” — and then stand by that playground-level pejorative even after the whole thing turned out to be a lazy mistake on the part of Schmitt and his staff regarding, of all things, a basketball game.

This is the man representing 6 million Missourians in the “world’s greatest deliberative body.” Sheesh.

What felt like an especially cringey episode of the HBO political comedy “Veep” began when Schmitt went after former special counsel Jack Smith during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing. In the upside-down moral universe that Schmitt and his fellow MAGA apostles occupy, the worst offense against constitutional democracy in our lifetimes wasn’t President Donald Trump’s damnable attempt to overturn the 2020 election; it was Smith’s admirable attempt to hold him accountable for it with criminal charges.

That and other legitimate criminal cases against Trump evaporated when he was reelected president in 2024. Trump’s congressional lickspittles (none more lickspittle-y than Schmitt) have been trying ever since to prosecute the prosecutor.

It was in pursuit of that twisted goal that Schmitt asked Smith whether he had attended a February 2024 NBA game in Atlanta between the Atlanta Hawks and the Golden State Warriors. Smith — whose face conveyed that he was confused about the relevance of the question — said he was certain he hadn’t attended that game.

That’s when Schmitt sprung what he clearly imagined was his brilliant trap. A staffer briefly held up a poster board showing some text messages that, Schmitt declared, proved “you were in Atlanta, at a Warriors-Hawks game on Feb. 3, 2024.”

Why is that relevant? Because that was the day after Georgia prosecutor Fani Willis publicly admitted an affair with her special prosecutor, thus endangering her own criminal proceedings against Trump. In Schmitt’s telling, this supposed evidence of Smith being in Atlanta proved the two anti-Trump prosecutors were improperly colluding on damage control from Willis’ admitted affair for the sake of their joint obsession with nailing Trump.

“I don’t think you know we have this stuff,” said Schmitt, referring to the text messages in a tone that can only be described as glowering, “so I’ll give you a second to process it so you don’t perjure yourself.”

He subsequently added, “I think you’ve already perjured yourself,” and declared Smith “a villain” and “a total dirtbag.”

Got all that?

Good. So here’s the thing: None of it happened.

Smith did remember being at, not an NBA game in Atlanta, but a college women’s basketball game in Maryland around that time — Maryland Terrapins vs. Iowa Hawkeyes. It was Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., who finally put it all together. Schmitt and his staff’s “ah- ha!” moment came down to them discovering Smith had been at a basketball game that night but misconstruing which game it was.

Wrong teams, wrong league, wrong state. It was based entirely on that sloppy staffing that Schmitt furiously accused Smith of perjury.

You can tell a lot about a person based on how he reacts to making an embarrassing gaffe that, in this case, literally involved public, false criminal allegations. Is he apologetic? Regretful? Gracious? Even a little classy? Or does he lash out, his voice rising in anger, at the person he wronged?

As Klobuchar chided Schmitt for his recklessness and his “dirtbag” comment, Missouri’s junior senator growled: “I stand by that statement.”

And we’ll just leave it to readers to decide whose behavior in this story qualifies for the label “dirtbag” — let alone “villain.”

— St. Louis Post-Dispatch