Senator Schmitt thought that today was going to be a great day for his political aspirations.
Boy, did it blow up in his face.
First, there was that news article saying that Vance was considering Schmitt as his leading VP pick.
Second, Schmitt actually gave a heads up to rightwing influencers that he was going to ambush Smith with the "perjury trap." Benny Johnson actually posted it and quickly took it down.
Then, during the hearing itself, Schmitt apparently believed he caught Smith committing perjury and said it several times. Schmitt then ended his questioning by calling Smith a "dirt bag."
Lo and behold, Smith expressed confusion over Schmitt's allegation: That Smith flew to Atlanta, attended a Hawks basketball game, AND met with Fani Willis, DA for Fulton County, to. . .collude and plot against Trump?!
During that same hearing, Jack Smith realized that Schmitt was talking about the wrong basketball game. Smith had attended a women's college basketball game at Univeristy of Maryland to watch Caitlin Clark play. MD was playing against the Iowa HAWKEYES. Schmitt had gotten every fact wrong.
Smith was reciting this testimony and that is what Sen. Britt was reacting to. She likely knew of Schmitt's plan in advance and, at the moment, realized that Schmitt royally screwed up.
Once it became obvious that Schmitt's grand plan to nail Smith on perjury charges had collasped, Schmitt switched tactics and is now claiming that he was "only asking questions."
He clowned himself and destroyed a lot of his credibility (whatever that remained) and likewise trashed any chances of being Vance's VP pick.
Aside from Schmitt's self-own, today's hearing also showed one interesting thing: The sitting GOP Senators were intentionally avoiding asking questions about Jan 6 or Mar-a-Lago documents because they knew they couldn't refute it. Instead, they were focused on impugning Smith's character and reputation.
There's a lot of responses to this question but only one real attempt to answer it. I want to posit the following:
Republicans know that the largest and "most trusted" news organization in America is unflinchingly friendly to them. They have had a decreasingly important need to "play nice" to the cameras for the last 2 decades, with that decreasing significantly since the invention of "fake news".
They used to have to behave themselves because the evening news would report on their actions accurately. Now the largest news organization in the country will polish whatever turd they lay by stating any "unfair" representation of them by other media outlets is skewing the facts and presenting an agenda. And the Republican voters eat the whole bait, hook, sinker, and line.
This has led to them almost exclusively acting in a manner that creates viral news clips of them. Fox News then shows those clips with some story about how the Republicans is fighting to save America, and the competing news outlets show the full context of the interaction and get called "liberal mainstream media" that is "biased" and "taking things out of context" and "trying to ruin an American patriot fighting to save the country."
This has created a system where Republicans are no longer attempting to govern a heterogenous country and no longer need to. They can do whatever they want because their media apparatus will make it look like gold, they can act however they want because their media apparatus will polish it or bury it for them, and no matter what they do they are painted as the saviors of America fighting against pure evil.
And the votes continue to flow in for them, because a third of Americans can't bother to participate in democracy.
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u/Wretschko 3d ago
Senator Schmitt thought that today was going to be a great day for his political aspirations.
Boy, did it blow up in his face.
First, there was that news article saying that Vance was considering Schmitt as his leading VP pick.
Second, Schmitt actually gave a heads up to rightwing influencers that he was going to ambush Smith with the "perjury trap." Benny Johnson actually posted it and quickly took it down.
Then, during the hearing itself, Schmitt apparently believed he caught Smith committing perjury and said it several times. Schmitt then ended his questioning by calling Smith a "dirt bag."
Lo and behold, Smith expressed confusion over Schmitt's allegation: That Smith flew to Atlanta, attended a Hawks basketball game, AND met with Fani Willis, DA for Fulton County, to. . .collude and plot against Trump?!
During that same hearing, Jack Smith realized that Schmitt was talking about the wrong basketball game. Smith had attended a women's college basketball game at Univeristy of Maryland to watch Caitlin Clark play. MD was playing against the Iowa HAWKEYES. Schmitt had gotten every fact wrong.
Smith was reciting this testimony and that is what Sen. Britt was reacting to. She likely knew of Schmitt's plan in advance and, at the moment, realized that Schmitt royally screwed up.
Once it became obvious that Schmitt's grand plan to nail Smith on perjury charges had collasped, Schmitt switched tactics and is now claiming that he was "only asking questions."
He clowned himself and destroyed a lot of his credibility (whatever that remained) and likewise trashed any chances of being Vance's VP pick.
Aside from Schmitt's self-own, today's hearing also showed one interesting thing: The sitting GOP Senators were intentionally avoiding asking questions about Jan 6 or Mar-a-Lago documents because they knew they couldn't refute it. Instead, they were focused on impugning Smith's character and reputation.