Editor's Note: Steve Schmidt is one of the founding members of the Lincoln Project. He is a communications and public affairs strategist who has worked on several Republican campaigns, including John McCain's 2008 bid for the White House, and he is now a regular political contributor to MSNBC. On Wednesday, Schmidt reacted to Kevin McCarthy's handling of the Marjorie Taylor Greene situation on his Twitter feed. MaxNewsToday has assembled this 6-tweet thread and reprinted it as one easy-to-read op-ed for our ongoing segment, Schmidt Storm. It has been edited for grammar and clarity. Last night, Kevin McCarthy stood next to a flag-draped coffin of a murdered policeman. Today, he said he didn’t know what QAnon was. QAnon is the dangerous conspiracy theory that turned into the murderous insurrection that Kevin McCarthy stoked with his cynical lying. McCarthy’s cynicism is staggering. His dishonesty is pathological. There aren’t many instances to point toward of a political leader more unsteady and overmatched than Kevin McCarthy was tonight. What a debacle for Bakersfield Bohrmann. Just days ago, he was puffed up and confident. He was fresh from basking in the glow of the leader from his pilgrimage to Mar-a-Lago. He went on conspiracy loon Maria Bartiromo’s show to explain that Liz Cheney owed an explanation and apology to the House Conference. He got neither. Cheney basically gave him the congressional version of a “Go fuck yourself.” Liz Cheney didn’t apologize and didn’t explain. She called the question and asked for the vote that Kevin McCarthy stumbled into. The fringe freedom caucus was repudiated by that vote, while at the same time demonstrating their iron grip on Kevin McCarthy’s puppet strings. McCarthy branded himself as dishonest and weak, which would normally be enough for a night's work, but he was just getting started. By the time he walked out on stage tonight; red-faced and edgy, he had lost the fight he provoked and set in motion the events that will lead to his inevitable fall and the end of his career in national politics. The headline tonight is Kevin McCarthy lost his shot at ever being Speaker. That is good news for America.