Stephen A. Smith is known as a brash, boisterous, and confrontational host for ESPN. Rarely, if ever, does he insert a comment not designed to spark controversy among his fellow co-hosts or viewers.
He’s also employed by the woke ESPN company and has made previous comments in support of movements for changes surrounding the death of George Floyd and the ouster of Colin Kaepernick from the NFL while also railing against political commentators like Tucker Carlson
So it came as something of a shock when Smith crisscrossed both of those histories and lent support to Donald Trump by saying he wasn’t “against black people.” The comments came amidst a larger speaking engagement at the Semafor Media Summit.
Adding to that defense, Smith went on to elaborate on a more complex past with the former president. He said that prior to Trump’s foray into politics, he considered himself a friend of the real estate mogul and reality television star. Both were from New York and enjoyed sports, and it didn’t hurt that Trump held swanky events at his New Jersey casinos.
At one point during the interview, Smith said that he “knew Trump” before he ran for office, adding, “I thoroughly enjoyed talking to him. He was a huge sports fan. He used to throw a lot of events at his casinos and stuff like that and I genuinely liked him.
However, Smith claims that the person he knew was not the same person running for president. “I didn’t know who this guy was, running for president. Um, I think he’s changed,” he said.
Of course, that seems to be about one of the most preposterous ideas out there. If anything, Trump resonates with people precisely for the opposite reason. Whoever he was as a person before politics largely seems to be the same person he is in politics. He speaks his mind, he doesn’t clutter his speaking with nonsensical and empty political phrases, and he seems to genuinely care about his fellow Americans.
If anything about Trump is different, it’s that he no longer identifies with the Democrat Part of old. He hasn’t moved on; the party has. In that vein, he is like another former president – Ronald Reagan. It doesn’t help that people have been conditioned by corporate media to react differently to Trump.
In other words, Stephen A. Smith might have gotten exactly one thing correct – that Trump isn’t racist – and got pretty much everything else wrong. Par for the course. In addition to being completely wrong about Trump being a changed person, Smith also singled out Trump for apparently only being about himself, as if no other politician were ever self-serving or had their own interests in mind.
“But I will tell you this, I think when people call him racist and stuff like that – I’ve never thought about Trump like that,” Smith continued at Semafor.
He declared, “He’s not against Black people, he’s against all things not named Trump. There’s a difference.” The summit audience broke out into laughter at the observation.
Elsewhere during the interview, Smith noted that he would not vote for Trump despite having conservative views on several issues. He said he is not “beyond voting Republican,” but affirmed, “I am beyond voting for Trump.”
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