Speaking during the Tuesday, April 16 episode of “The Stephen A. Smith Show,” ESPN host Stephen Smith, who is generally seen as being on the left, if not the far-left, ridiculed the leftist attempts to sink former President Donald Trump’s 2024 campaign with lawfare, saying that it makes it look like they are worried they “can’t beat him on the issues.”
Smith’s comments came on the same day as the “hush money” case against Trump, brought by Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg, kicked into gear, with the first six jurors being sworn in. Smith, referring to the case, argued that it shows that Trump’s political opponents are having issues with trying to beat him on the issues and are relying on lawfare tactics instead.
Speaking on the matter, Smith addressed his “liberal friends” and said that the case is both a nothingburger and that the case shows the left’s political weakness. He said, “It’s much ado about nothing.” Continuing, he said, “To my liberal friends out there, all you’re doing is showing that you’re scared you can’t beat him on the issues and the merits.”
Smith then explained that that impression is why Trump “keeps saying ‘it’s a political campaign against me'” and is also “why he keeps saying ‘they can’t beat me at the election, at the polls. This is the only way they can do it.'”
Building on that, Smith explained that if the effort to get Trump fails, then he will have even more “fodder” for stirring up the MAGA base, saying, “And if you don’t put him in jail, and he still goes from being the presumptive GOP nominee to the official GOP nominee, and he goes to the polls, even though he was going to whine about winning and being rigged again, you have given more fodder to that argument, which means we’ll never have peace in this country.”
Explaining that perspective, Smith added that the GOP side can see the lawfare attacks on Trump and think those are attempts to defeat Trump in the courts rather than on the merits at the polls, saying, “Because tens of millions of people see what extent the other side is willing to go through just to keep him out of office because they can’t beat him on their own merits.”
Watch Smith here:
This isn’t the first time Smith has spoken about the lawfare attacks on Trump. In March, he said, “Four indictments, 91 counts and the man gets more campaign dollars, climbing in the polls, okay?” He continued, “And last time I checked, he still ain’t been in cuffs, he still ain’t been put behind bars. And he’s the presumptive GOP nominee. You can’t stop him. You cannot stop him.”
Smith added, “And so for me, I find myself ashamed of the Democratic Party for their lack of a competitive fervor.” He went on to explain, “You had since 2016 to come up with somebody else, and you still can’t do it? That is pathetic. It is pathetic.” He added, “And there is no excuse for it whatsoever.”
Featured image credit: Keith Allison from Hanover, MD, USA, CC BY-SA 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
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