Eric Greitens

Schmitt, having reinvented himself as a hard-line culture warrior, can now revel in his Senate nomination, while Greitens has met what appears to be a ...

One of them, Paul Holzer, eventually came forward in a Missouri radio interview to take credit for making the video, which had become weaponized during the 2016 primary for governor. We’d like to thank you for reading The Times and encourage you to support journalism like this by becoming a subscriber. Breitbart’s glowing write-up of the race noted that he finished “just deciseconds behind the third and fourth place United States finishers,” without adding that he placed 22nd out of 25 competitors. By the end of this campaign, however, Greitens had alienated all of his onetime admirers. Doing so will give you access to the work of over 1,700 journalists whose mission is to cover the world and make sure you have accurate and impartial information on the most important topics of the day. (“To say that ‘Charlie Mike’ glorifies Greitens is like saying God comes off well in the Bible,” one former colleague of Klein’s wrote in a scathing reassessment of Greitens after his resignation.) J.J. Abrams, the filmmaker, called Greitens “one of the great Americans of our time.” Tom Brokaw called him “my hero,” while Joe Klein, the former Time magazine writer, devoted half of an entire book, “Charlie Mike,” to Greitens and his military exploits. He sat for interviews with Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart to promote his books, which now read with an eerie irony in light of his subsequent fall from grace. Guilfoyle, according to two people who heard accounts of her lobbying efforts, sought to persuade Trump that Greitens was truly ahead in the race. Trump trashed polling by the Remington Research Group, a survey firm linked to Jeff Roe of Axiom Strategies, which managed Schmitt’s campaign. The 45th president himself never clarified, a hedge that allowed him to claim victory either way. Was it Greitens, the retired Navy SEAL, humanitarian Rhodes scholar who once openly admired Barack Obama? Or Schmitt, the mainstream Republican who reinvented himself as an anti-mask and anti-vaccine warrior in preparation for this week’s victory?