‘It’s Hilarious to Me!’ Stephen A. Smith Says ‘I’m Laughing’ Over Suggestion He Will Run for President
Composite image via Evan Agostini/AP and @TheKarenHunterShow on YouTube.
ESPN personality Stephen A. Smith is rejecting claims he will run for president in 2028, calling the notion that he’d dip his toes into politics “hilarious” while on the SiriusXM podcast Karen Hunter Is Awesome!.
Smith, 57, who has spent the last few weeks slamming Dems — even going so far as to say he could beat anyone the party put up against him — has apparently changed his tune, telling journalist Karen Hunter he can’t believe anybody took him seriously.
“You know, I’m laughing like, are y’all serious? You really serious?” Smith told Hunter on her podcast, Karen Hunter Is Awesome! “And then I start joking around, ‘I’m Stephen A. Smith and I approve this message,’ you know? ‘Oh God bless you. And God bless the United States.’ It’s fun, It’s hilarious to me. It really, really is.”
Smith did little to quell the rumors of a White House run during a Mar. 5 appearance on The Tonight Show, when he was presented with a headline asking whether Smith can “save” the Democratic Party.
“I mean, they’re lost,” Smith told host Jimmy Fallon. “They had a bad few months. We all know this. And even though there’s a lot of qualified Democrats all over the country from a local perspective — governors, mayors, stuff like that — there’s no real national voice. Enter moi. They’ve come to me. And so, I mean, I did not ask for this. I don’t want this. I happen to have a very, very, very good life, very good job. I’m good, very good.”
Read the full exchange with Hunter here:
STEPHEN A. SMITH: You know, I’m laughing, like, are y’all serious? You really serious? And then I start joking around, “I’m Stephen A. Smith and I approve this message,” you know? “Oh God bless you. And God bless the United States.” It’s fun, It’s hilarious to me. It really, really is.
KAREN HUNTER: Where we are as a nation right now is not funny, you know?
STEPHEN A. SMITH: Right, right.
KAREN HUNTER: And I feel like we’re at the precipice of a severe, we probably are broken already and don’t know it. And I don’t know if it could be put back together, but this is why, you know, I’m different ’cause I can’t play a game when so many lives are impacted. I’m fine. I’m gonna be fine. You know, I’m always gonna be fine. It’s the way I’m wired and fortunately I come from fine. So, you know, we, but I look around and it pains me to see the amount of pain that folk, because of misinformation and disinformation, they didn’t even advocate for themselves. And this wasn’t about Democrats and Republicans at this point. You got a lot to say about Democrats, but you, we we’re the people. We’re the party. So if the Democrats are failing, that’s you failing. If the Republicans aren’t representing, if they’re representing Nazis and racists, that’s your fault. If you call yourself a Republican and that doesn’t line up, would you do something about it?
STEPHEN A. SMITH: Right.
KAREN HUNTER: So I’m like super frustrated that we don’t even have the political maturity to have a conversation about resources, because that’s what politicians are. They deliver resources for the people at the local, state, and federal level. Are we sending people that are delivering resources? Are we doing a popularity contest? And once your name starts getting circulated, here we go again. Yeah, you say win. I’m like, why? Why are you even in the conversation?
STEPHEN A. SMITH: First of all, I didn’t put myself there. I didn’t ask for that. Don’t do that to me.
