Earlier today, former FBI director James Comey testified before the United States Senate Intelligence Committee regarding Russian interference in the recent presidential election. Arizona Senator John McCain was on hand to ask some questions and he seemed to have, uh, let’s say, misunderstood some of the basic facts at play. As is so often the case, it is Major League Baseball’s fault.
McCain somehow conflated the FBI’s now-closed investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server while serving as Secretary of State, and the wholly separate and still ongoing investigation into whether Russia interfered with the 2016 election in an effort to illustrate some sort of double standard at the FBI under Comey’s leadership.
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“You’re gonna have to help me out here,” the Senator said. “I think it’s hard to reconcile, in one case you reach a complete conclusion, and on the other side you have not.”
Comey attempted to explain, several times, that A.) these are two separate investigations, and B.) the Clinton investigation had been closed. Nevertheless, McCain persisted.
The reaction to his confusion was swift and the Senator was forced to issue a statement, in which he literally blamed his performance on a lack of sleep due to watching the Arizona Diamondbacks last night. “I get the sense from Twitter that my line of questioning today went over people’s heads,” he said in an official statement.
With all due respect to the gentleman from Arizona, I’m not sure his questions were in the same ballpark as folks on Twitter. If John McCain is Bryce Harper and Twitter is Hunter Strickland, his questions were Harper’s helmet. However, to be fair to the Senator, the Diamondbacks did play an inexplicably long game against the San Diego Padres that would have ended well after 1 AM in Washington, D.C. Perhaps McCain—and the truth—would have been better served if he watched the NBA Finals, which ended a bit earlier.
The Diamondbacks beat the Padres 7-4.
