After covering Congress for more years than I care to admit, one incident stands out in my memory as the most embarrassing thing I’ve ever seen on Capitol Hill.
On Sept. 29, 2015, then-Rep. Jason Chaffetz summoned then-Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards to appear before the House Oversight Committee, and the Utah Republican presented a piece of evidence he apparently thought would be devastating: Chaffetz unveiled a chart, which he insisted he’d found in the organization’s annual report, that appeared to show rising abortion rates and declining breast-cancer screening rates.
The chart was itself a bizarre mess (its y-axis, for example, didn’t exist), though it became far worse when Richards explained to the committee chair that it hadn’t come from Planned Parenthood’s annual report. In fact, it quite literally said, “Source: Americans United for Life,” in all capital letters, on the slide Chaffetz was so excited about.
The GOP congressman, with a deer-in-the-headlights look, quickly realized that he and his staff hadn’t done their homework — indeed, they had failed to read their own slide — and his “gotcha” moment had backfired. Clearly embarrassed, Chaffetz immediately abandoned his dramatic moment and moved on.
Exactly 11 years to the day later, Republican Sen. Eric Schmitt of Missouri tried to hatch a “gotcha” moment of his own, which backfired in ways that proved to be far worse.
🤡 Schmitt beclowns himself 🤡Schmitt concocted an elaborate conspiracy theory that Smith traveled to Atl for a Hawks game and to collude with Fani Willis, & flashed his “evidence” before accusing Smith of perjury. There’s just one problem — his facts were totally wrong.Here’s the whole sequence:
By now, much of the political world is probably familiar with what transpired. The GOP senator, who had months to prepare for the hearing, tried to ensnare former special counsel Jack Smith in a perjury trap. Schmitt instead failed in every possible way: The Missouri Republican confused a college basketball game with an NBA game, and even pointed to a specific seat in a venue that doesn’t exist.
When Democratic Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota tried to highlight Schmitt’s careless mistake, he grew loud and furious, as if he’d been wronged.
Instead of setting a perjury trap, Schmitt actually dug a ditch — which he proceeded to fall into.
There was a time in American politics when a senator in this situation would simply fess up, express some regret, perhaps tell a self-deprecating joke or two and move on. It’s what adults do: They take their medicine after they get caught making a mistake.
But Schmitt chose a different course. After embarrassing himself in a high-profile Senate hearing, Schmitt spoke to Capitol Hill reporters and pretended that his line of inquiry was legitimate. Asked if he believed Smith had perjured himself, Schmitt, indifferent to the fact that he had confused the Atlanta Hawks and the Iowa Hawkeyes, said, “We’ll find out.”
The Missouri Republican added, “My job here today was to ask questions and get answers.”
Except he wasn’t just asking questions. He had prepared a little show, complete with a juvenile poster board, with the clear intention of getting his perceived bête noire, culminating in an explicit (and false) suggestion that the former special counsel had perjured himself. (Even the underlying point was absurd: If Smith had gone to a basketball game in Atlanta, that wouldn’t have meant he was secretly in cahoots with Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, which is the foolish point Schmitt was trying to make.)
In the hours that followed, the GOP senator not only continued to insist that he hadn’t made a mistake, he even appeared on a far-right talk show and pretended that nothing had gone wrong.
It’s an incident that will haunt Schmitt for a long while, whether he’s prepared to admit it or not.
Steve Benen is a producer for “The Rachel Maddow Show,” the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He’s also the bestselling author of “Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans’ War on the Recent Past.”
