Stephen A. Smith might not think that he should be president, but he is extremely confident in his ability to win votes.
The ESPN First Take host stopped by The View on Tuesday, where he was asked about calls for him to get in the ring for 2028. “In the polls, you’re nearly tied with Pete Buttigieg, AOC, Governor Gretchen Whitmer. You have a higher favorability than John Fetterman and Vice President Harris. What do you make of this?” Alyssa Farah Griffin asked Smith.
“I make of it that citizens, particularly on the left, are desperate,” he replied. “And I mean it when I say it: I think I can beat them all.”
Calls for Smith to run for office began in 2020, and he blasted the fact that his name was even mentioned back then on his podcast, in a clip the View played on the show. “Stephen A. Smith is in the news because y’all don’t have anybody,” he says in the clip. “Who we got? I’m not in the news because I’m here.” he adds, holding his hand above his head. “I’m in the news because the Democratic Party is here,” bringing his hand way lower, “Damn it, lower than that—down at the bottom. They suck right now.”
Despite his comments back then and his assertion that he would “beat” any of the party’s emerging stars in a race if he were to jump in, Smith said on the show that he’s not interested.
“I have no desire whatsoever to run for office. I am not a politician, I am not qualified,” he said, but the question of whether or not a talk show host would be a better candidate than working politicians in the party is the problem, he reiterated. As he put it, Trump’s 2024 win was “indictment against the Democratic Party and what the Democratic Party was offering the American citizens.”
And yet, just last month he told the New York Times that running for office isn’t off the table. “I wouldn’t mind being in office,” he said then. Earlier in the month, he told the Daily Mail, “If the American people came to me and looked at me and said, ‘Yo, man, we want you to run for office,’ and I had a legitimate shot to win the presidency of the United States, I’m not gonna lie, I’ll think about that.”
