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Stephen A. Smith not only doubled down on his viability as a presidential candidate during a Tuesday appearance on The View, the ESPN pundit bragged that he’d be the favorite in the Democratic field if he ran in 2028.
“I can beat them all,” he confidently proclaimed.
Smith, who has veered further into political punditry in recent months, sat down for a lengthy discussion on the ABC daytime talk show to promote his interview with former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who used Smith’s podcast to first discuss his announcement that he was running for New York City mayor.
Speaking of Cuomo, who resigned in 2021 as New York governor amid allegations of sexual harassment and claims that he purposely underreported Covid deaths in nursing homes, Smith insisted “he’s learned a lot and thinks he’s coming back better than ever” in his mayoral campaign.
“I would say this, you have to respect the governor that’s a three-term governor that would have been in a position to capture a fourth term or run for president,” Smith said “He’s looking at it from the standpoint of ‘I know what it takes to lead a state and I’m looking at the city within the state that I governed three separate terms and the bottom line is, I don’t like what I’m seeing.’ So that’s a reason he’s leading in the polls right now and you can’t argue with that.”
After promoting his Cuomo interview a bit more, the hosts began asking Smith about his recent criticisms of the Democratic Party following Donald Trump’s 2024 victory, which has included the sports commentator repeatedly boasting about some polls giving him low single-digit support in the 2028 Democratic presidential primary.
Airing a clip where Smith shouted that Democrats “suck” and that’s why he’s “in the news” as a potential presidential hopeful, host Alyssa Farrah Griffin brought up the polls showing him with similar support among Democrats as Pete Buttigieg and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY). “What do you make of this?” Griffin wondered.
“I make of it that citizens, particularly on the left, are desperate. And I mean it when I say it: I think I can beat them all,” he responded. “And I have no desire whatsoever to run for office. I am not a politician.”
While acknowledging that he’s personally “not qualified” to be president, Smith said that one merely needs to “consider who is on the other side” and how Trump has “gotten away with saying very little in terms of being coherent and articulating his thoughts clearly and concisely.” At the same time, Smith argued, the president has still “owned the Republican Party since 2015” and other GOP hopefuls have been unable to unseat him as their party’s standard-bearer despite the countless scandals, impeachments and crimes surrounding Trump.
“What does that say about the Republican Party?” View host Sunny Hostin wondered.
“It’s not what it says about the Republican Party,” Smith retorted. “It’s about what it says about the Democratic Party!”
The bombastic sports personality asserted that Democrats were once the “party for the working class” but are “not known for that now,” insisting that the party began “catering towards others and other issues and forgot about the people that brought them there” over the previous few decades. “That’s why they lost,” he continued. “He didn’t win.”
Meanwhile, not everyone has been a fan of Smith’s recent flirtation with politics.
“When it comes to sports, I find him to be really insightful,” veteran Democratic strategist James Carville said last month. “When it comes to politics, he don’t know his a** from a hole in the ground.”
Carville added: “Before you start running your f***ing mouth off about politics, a topic of which you really don’t know anything about, you ought to sit back and think about it and call some people.”
