News Anchor Has 1 Eyebrow-Raising Update About Eric Schmitt

A certain GOP senator does not want to deal with the Schmitt-storm he started.

Politico’s Dasha Burns, who also hosts C-SPAN’s “Ceasefire,” offered an eyebrow-raising update about Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-Mo.) Thursday: “Now, we should mention that Senator Schmitt was supposed to appear on this program with Senator [Chris] Coons, but he pulled out a day after that hearing,” Burns said in a “Ceasefire” clip she retweeted from C-SPAN on X.

The hearing Burns was referring to is the now-infamous Tuesday Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, in which Schmitt completely fumbled what he thought was perjury evidence against former special counsel Jack Smith.

Smith, a GOP target because of his probe into allegations of President Donald Trump’s interference in the 2020 election, appeared before the committee on Tuesday to defend himself.

During the hearing, Schmitt tried to catch Smith in potential perjury by arguing he was in Georgia on Feb. 3, 2024, to watch an Atlanta Hawks game.

After much confusion in the hearing and a lot of back-and-forth, it was revealed that Smith did go to a “Hawks” game that day, but it wasn’t in Atlanta. Instead, he attended a University of Iowa Hawkeyes women’s basketball game against the Maryland Terrapins — in College Park, Maryland.

As Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) pointed out during and after the hearing, in the Midwest the Hawkeyes are commonly referred to as the “Hawks.”

After announcing Schmitt would be MIA in the clip shared on X Thursday, Burns asked her guests if they think it’s a good idea for the Missouri Republican to be “laying low in the wake of this?”

“If you don’t have a good answer, you’re better off not giving any answer at this point,” Republican strategist Doug Heye said. “It’s not clear that he’s going to have a good answer on this… I’ve never seen such a proactive mistake in a hearing before.”

Burns’ other guest, Democratic strategist Joel Payne, compared Schmitt’s reluctance in speaking to the media to a very popular Homer Simpson GIF.

“I think laying low does nothing — particularly if Senator Schmitt has big ambitions beyond this moment,” Payne said, referring to buzz before his basketball blunder that Schmitt was poised to become a vice presidential pick for Republicans in the upcoming 2028 election.

Payne went on to explain that he believes we’re in a current news media environment in which the public tends to give “more grace to people who have these missteps in public.”

“This was a pretty significant one,” Payne admitted. “But I think if you believe you can go away, shirk into the shrubbery like ‘The Simpsons’ meme, I don’t think that’s an effective strategy.”

Payne also saw no point in Smith’s hearing and felt it signaled the GOP’s current agenda was falling apart. To hear more, check out the clip above.