We know you read the news, Sen. Schmitt. Don’t lie to us. | Opinion
You don’t get to be state treasurer and not be able to read. You don’t get to be a nationally influential state attorney general without being up to date on current affairs. You don’t operate in the U.S. Senate effectively and be oblivious to the news. When you are a Republican, you don’t go on a show like ABC’s “This Week,” hosted by former Democratic partisan hit man George Stephanopoulos, without having a pretty good idea of the most obvious questions you’ll be asked.
But Missouri Republican Sen. Eric Schmitt wants us to believe all of those things aren’t true. He doesn’t read or follow current events. He’s ignorant of front page news about the legal doings of the most powerful member of his party. He went on a Clinton consigliere’s show with no idea whatsoever what he’d be asked.
Good Lord, must he think Missouri is filled with stupid voters?
When Stephanopoulos asked Schmitt, “Do you support this pardon of the former Honduran president?” — a man who was sentenced for importing tons of illegal drugs to the United States, drugs that supported crime and gangs and visited death upon American citizens — Schmitt’s answer was: “I’m not familiar with the facts or circumstances. But I think what’s telling here is to try to imply that somehow President Trump is soft on drug smuggling is just ridiculous. It’s totally ridiculous.”
Juan Orlando Hernandez — the former president of Honduras in question here — is only the most prominent of the dozens of dope pushers and their henchmen Donald Trump has pardoned during his presidencies, including, according to The Washington Post “Chicago gang leader Larry Hoover and Baltimore drug kingpin Garnett Gilbert Smith.”
Maybe at the rigorous Jesuit high school Schmitt attended in St. Louis, Missouri’s future chief law enforcement officer learned a deeper meaning of “ridiculous,” but to me, you can’t look at Trump’s Hernandez pardon as anything other than soft on drug smuggling. The idea is not ridiculous; it is a basic statement of reality.
The fact that Trump is incoherently, and perhaps illegally, engaged in what he calls a war with Venezuelan “narco-terrorists” in the waters of the Caribbean is no defense of his questionable pardons.
Trump is incoherent about a lot of things.
- He’s boosting the American military budget to protect our national security, while he undermines our national security by playing games with weapons supplies to Ukraine, repeatedly cutting off and restoring them.
- He boasts of a transparent administration while throwing reporters out of the Oval Office earlier this year.
- He imposes a raft of tariff and other trade restrictions on China while presiding over its record trade deficits of more than $1 trillion this year.
It is no surprise that Trump kills drug pushers with his right hand while his left hand opens the gates of prison for even worse drug pushers. Many of Trump’s policies can best be understood by assuming his right hand and left hand operate independently.
It’s also no surprise that Sen. Schmitt was reduced to denying the obvious and attacking Stephanopoulos when he went on TV to defend Trump’s ridiculous and incoherent policies. But he crosses the line when he treats his constituents like fools who won’t notice the fact that Schmitt is simply lying to them.
David Mastio is a national columnist for The Kansas City Star and McClatchy.
This story was originally published December 9, 2025 at 6:08 AM with the headline "We know you read the news, Sen. Schmitt. Don’t lie to us. | Opinion."
