Clay Travis and Stephen A. Smith Agree That ‘Practically Any Republican’ Other Than Trump Would Beat Biden in 2024

Stephen A. Smith thinks any Republican that isn’t Donald Trump could defeat President Joe Biden in the 2024 election, and OutKick’s Clay Travis agrees with him.

Travis appeared on Smith’s Know Mercy podcast Monday. At the end of their wide-ranging conversation, the two briefly touched on the 2024 presidential election. That’s when Smith asked Travis why Republicans seem adamant to make Trump the one to take on Biden.

“I believe practically any Republican candidate — other than Trump — would likely beat Joe Biden,” Smith said, to which Clay responded with a “yep.”

“I don’t view Joe Biden as receiving 80 million votes,” Smith continued. “I view it as 80 million people voting against Trump. Considering how divisive he appears to be, the serious questions about his ability to win a general election… what is this fixation that so many on the right have with this need for him to be that guy?”

Travis believes Trump’s success came from the fact that he connected “viscerally” with so many Americans who had grown tired of the politicians of the time.

“I agree with almost everything you said,” Travis said. “So let me unpack that. I think Trump connects viscerally with a huge segment of Republican and other non-affiliated voters because Republicans got tired of the Mitt Romney’s of the world, the guys who are frankly just gonna curl up in the fetal position and not stand up as soon as they get attacked.

“So they like the pugnacious nature of Donald Trump and the fact that he is willing to shake things up. My biggest issue with Trump — and I’ve said this to him — is he’s a bull in a china shop. I think he often gets to the right result, but in the process, he just breaks a ton of things.”

Travis predicts that Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis will officially announce his candidacy in the coming months, and he thinks has a good idea of what his strategy will be.

“I think we’re going to see a titanic struggle over the future of the Republican Party between Ron DeSantis and Donald Trump,” Travis said. “I think it’s going to be an absolute donnybrook, and the argument you’re making is the number one argument that DeSantis is gonna make: ‘I am a more effective version of Trump. He already lost Biden. I will kick Biden’s ass if you put me in that ring.’ Trump is going to argue that he is gonna beat Biden because he’s gonna argue that he didn’t actually lose in 2020.

“If Democrats could pick the Republican nominee, they would pick Donald Trump. And I would just say to anybody out there thinking, ‘doesn’t mean you can’t make a bad choice because in 2016, Democrats would’ve made the same choice and Trump beat Hillary [Clinton],’ Trump could beat Biden. But if your opponent is saying, ‘We want this guy,’ you should definitely contemplate why are they trying to make that pick.”

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