The editorial board of Missouri's largest newspaper joined the pile-on after Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-MO) embarrassed himself during his interrogation of former special counsel Jack Smith on national TV.
Schmitt, who previously didn't have much of a national profile, accused Smith of perjury while going for a "gotcha" moment, wrongly claiming the prosecutor had attended an NBA game in Atlanta when he was in Maryland watching an NCAA women's game.
"Wrong teams, wrong league, wrong state," the St. Louis Post-Dispatch's editors wrote. "It was based entirely on that sloppy staffing that Schmitt furiously accused Smith of perjury."
"Eric Schmitt couldn't possibly embarrass himself and his constituents any more than he already has," the editors continued, before laying out what he'd actually done, calling it a "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," the editors continued, comparing the exchange to "an especially cringey episode" of HBO's "Veep."
They noted the irony of Schmitt's outrage during the 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."
The editorial also took aim at how Schmitt handled the fallout. As Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) chided him for his recklessness and his "dirtbag" comment, Schmitt growled: "I stand by that statement."
The Post-Dispatch's editors left it to readers to judge who actually earned the "dirtbag" label in the episode — "let alone 'villain.'"