Stephen A. Smith Storms Off Town Hall After Getting Heated With Members of Congress

Stephen A. Smith stormed out of a NewsNation town hall on Wednesday after getting heated at three members of congress over the ongoing government shutdown.

“I’m trying to be very respectful to everybody because they deserve it,” said Smith during the town hall with Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH), Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA), and Rep. Madeleine Dean (D-PA). “But let me say this, I don’t think Washington understands how ticked off we truly are.”

He protested:

Think about the conversation that we’re having right now. You brought up the single-payer system, emulating Canada. You know, we’re looking at a president that just gave $20 billion to Argentina. We’re hearing about, or witnessing what I consider to be a retribution tour, and even though to some degree I don’t blame him because of how people went after him, still it appears to be counter-productive. We’re listening to this kind of stuff while a young man walked up to the microphone and said that he had to leave here to go and work on DoorDash to help pay for his daughter’s tuition, meanwhile everybody up here gets paid. But he ain’t. It’s this kind of stuff, right here, that’s how you know, and I’m not accusing any of you directly or personally of feeling this way, I’m just talking about the apparatus that is Washington, the nation’s capital. This is why you have so many Americans, excuse my language, so p***ed off at Washington because somehow, some way you get to have these conversations, engage in specific elements of it, to talk about what we need to do to get things better– Our debt is $37.8 trillion. Somehow, some way, the tax payer has been paying this, been throwing money, because we all look at our check and it’s been going to the government, and somehow, some way you’re supposed to be doing something constructive and productive enough to make sure that we don’t have that kind of deficit. It isn’t happening.

Smith concluded, “A government shutdown is going on right now. A man has to work on DoorDash when he’s really an air traffic controller that we applauded and we’re up here talking about how much some money is going to cost, and the only person that don’t have a check coming is him. You know what I’m gonna do? I’m gonna take a break.”

Smith then walked off the stage as host Chris Cuomo moved on to questions from the audience.

Watch above via NewsNation.