Axios reported at dawn on September 29 that allies of Vice President JD Vance were floating Sen. Eric Schmitt as a top pick for his 2028 running mate. Six hours hadn’t passed before Schmitt was calling former special counsel Jack Smith a “dirtbag” in a Senate hearing, then watched his own gotcha question blow up in his face over a basketball mix-up.
The report cited unnamed sources describing Schmitt, a former Missouri attorney general now vice chair of the Joint Economic Committee, as “trustworthy, intelligent, articulate and a deft political operator.” It cast him as an alternative if Secretary of State Marco Rubio — reportedly Trump’s own preference for the job — keeps showing little enthusiasm for it.
Schmitt tried to catch Smith in an alleged lie before the Senate Judiciary Committee. Citing text messages, he asked whether Smith had been at a Warriors-Hawks NBA game in Atlanta on February 3, 2024 — evidence, he suggested, that Smith had secretly flown south to meet with Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis.
Smith’s actual whereabouts that night were at a women’s college basketball game between Maryland and Iowa, watching Caitlin Clark play with US Marshals at his side. The Hawks he meant were in Atlanta; the Hawkeyes were in Iowa. Sen. Amy Klobuchar seized on the mix-up: “Don’t call someone a dirtbag when you don’t have your own facts right.”
“There’s not a mistake,” Schmitt told TMZ, insisting Atlanta hosted the only game that night with a matching tipoff time. To CNN, he joked, “Who knew Jack Smith was a Caitlin Clark fan?”
Historian Kevin Kruse summed it up as “The Eric Schmitt Vice Presidential Boom (September 29, 2026-September 29, 2026).” A few conservative outlets cast it as a win for Schmitt anyway, even as the clip of Klobuchar’s rebuke spread everywhere else.
