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Notes -
Schmitt hits the fan in a judicial hearing, as senator Eric Schmitt embarrasses himself with a flawed accusation against Jack Smith. I'll be using their first names since last names are so similar.
First as a small recap, Senator Eric was trying to prove that Jack had secretly traveled to Atlanta to conspire with local prosecutor Fani Willis, who was pursuing criminal charges against Trump for the attempted overturn of the 2020 elections. He asked Jack if Jack had been to Atlanta, and when Jack denied it, Eric accused Jack of perjury. It was made into a big show with them even making a giant poster for the media pointing to text messages showing Jack had watched a joke game in Atlanta between the Hawks and the Golden State Warriors only for things to immediately fall flat when it turns out Jack was actually in Maryland attending a WNBA game Maryland Terrapins and the Iowa Hawkeyes. This has been confirmed with both video evidence of Jack Smith at the Maryland game, and analysis of the stadiums (the specific seats they had mentioned do not exist in the Atlanta Hawks stadiums). Barring a clone, Jack Smith was not in Atlanta that day.
Eric Schmitt had the rollout planned with conservative influencers such as Benny Johnson and Sean Hannity, who have since deleted their tweets celebrating his callout in the hearings. Eric and his associates also seemed to have a planned article in Axios to come out afterwards as a potential 2028 VP pick. Basically, he went all in on making this his moment to shine, and he flopped.
Of course as per modern politics, there is no apology for the false accusation. As Hanania puts it
And as Johnathan Chait jokes, there's a funny nominative determinism to be seen here
I think some of the reaction is overly harsh, but there's also no denying that the reaction to his mixup among the right has been weird. Eric Schmitt was actively being praised on the Charlie Kirk show right after!
But as the community note points out, and as Eric Schmitt was already aware of at the time the text messages did not (and could not) confirm Jack Smit was going to a Hawk's game because Jack was not at the Hawks game to begin with. Of course he's dumbfounded by the claim, he literally was not there.
But time to get started on the overall point here. Schmitt claims his job is to "ask questions" but that's clearly not what he was actually doing. Schmitt wanted to put on a show and advance his political career, not to engage in fact finding. If he was just asking questions, why did he have all the theatrics planned afterwards? Why did he so readily accuse perjury? Why won't he apologize now for the false accusation? And why break protocol like this? It would have saved him from embarrassment if he went through the normal process
Congressional hearings are political theater, they don't serve for fact finding anymore. And why is this? Because they're public. They're on camera, so politicians put on a show. Like reason writer Binion says
The more directly public that politics has gotten, the more it's become a trashy reality TV show, exemplified of course by the trashy reality TV show host president. I live in a pretty red district and one thing I've definitely noticed with many around me is that their political interest is one of entertainment. It's why I'm one of the few people who can even name our governor (Josh Stein) yet alone the local mayor. Local politics are boring, too much sausage making and not enough fun despite having far more direct impact into our life. Eric Schmitt's failure here might be funny, but it's also just another sign of the degeneration of politics in the modern social media era and I don't think that's going away anytime soon. Nate Silver might think this is one of the greatest self owns in the history of the Senate but I say, it's one of the greatest so far. Just wait and see.
Imagine falsely accusing someone and then not apologising for it! You're right, that would be embarrassing.
I'm sure you personally didn't do exactly the same thing to me lower down in the thread, where you mistook me for another commenter and threw a bunch of accusations at me:
Then, when I pointed out that I hadn't said any of the things you were accusing me of, what was your response?
Nice apology after accusing a person of throwing a tantrum based on your lack of reading comprehension.
The absolute chutzpah to accuse your political opponents of beclowning themselves with false accusations, and then not apologising for those false accusations, a couple of hours after doing the exact thing yourself. Truly incredible.
Too much heat. You've actually eaten a previous ban for letting this user get to you before, and this response is moddable on its own. Relitigating grudges in every thread does not make for quality discussion.
I'm making it a two day ban this time, in hopes that you get the idea.
I argued against this sort of ban when it was applied to someone calling out Dean, and I will argue against it here as well. I don't think prohibiting this kind of response is actually improving discussion quality. There are few things as infuriating as hypocrisy, where people seek to reap the discourse benefits of having principles when it is convenient, but refuse to pay the tax of being bound by them. The "heat" was already introduced when OP decided to be a hypocrite; stopping people from venting it will not let you cheat the Second Law of Thermodynamics, but just make them bottle it up and release it gradually over the course of future interactions with him (amplified by the additional anger over him getting away with the initial offense thanks to jannie cover). Presumably, this will result in OP feeling treated unfairly/diffusely persecuted by the community, which will in turn encourage him to needle his opposition more.
I'm not sure if this is what you are referring to as "the initial offense," but magicalkittycat was banned for it. What is "jannie cover?"
It's not strictly that call-outs that are banned, I would say, so much as heated ones. Posters who are aggravatingly hypocritical can certainly have that spelled out, but it still has to be within the context of a rule-abiding post--more light than heat, ample charity, etc. We do actually mod people when it seems like they are baiting others deliberately, but that doesn't mean we're going to refrain from moderating people who snap at the bait. As always, bad behavior is not excusable by other people's bad behavior.
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