Stephen A. Smith's Relentless, Preposterous, Probably Inevitable Road to Political Clout

New York Times

15-05-2025

Stephen A. Smith has had something on his mind for a while now.
'Let me switch to a subject near and dear to my heart,' he said on his podcast recently. 'Me.'
Mr. Smith, 57, is the terminally expressive face of sports media, ESPN's $100 million opinion-haver. Each day, and on many nights, he is beamed into living rooms, bars and airport lounges to sling hours of sports-debate chum, whether or not there are hours' worth of viable material.
And for the industry's most inescapable voice, its high priest of the big fat adjective — ludicrous officiating, preposterous coaching, blasphemous choke-jobs — 'Stephen A. Smith' is perhaps the sole matter on which all parties can agree that Stephen A. Smith is an expert.
He is a first-person thinker ('When I think about me. …' he said, twice, on the podcast, 'The Stephen A. Smith Show'), third-person talker ('Stephen A. Smith is in the news') and occasional simultaneous first-and-third-person thinker-talker. 'Calling things like I see them,' he wrote in his memoir, 'is who Stephen A. Smith has been my entire life.'
So it has been striking lately, friends allowed, to find Mr. Smith lamenting the chaos of federal tariff policy ('utterly ridiculous!') and floating a flat-tax plan.
He has applied the signature cadence once reserved for segments on LeBron James and the Dallas Cowboys — the hushed windup, the all-caps name-dropping, the yada-yada of certain details — to geopolitical discussions for which he prepares diligently.
'You asked me to read about the Yalta Conference — you didn't ask me a damn thing about it,' he complained in March to the former Fox News host Bill O'Reilly, whom he had joined at a Long Island concert venue to talk politics with Chris Cuomo before a paying crowd of hundreds. 'So, in 1945, if I remember correctly, you got CHUR-chill, you got F.D.R., you got STA-lin. …'
Mr. Smith — and it feels preposterous to call him that; he is 'Stephen A.' to millions — is campaigning for something.
By 2028, he has teased, it may well be the White House, though some in his life have their doubts.
But what he is seeking already, without ambiguity, is what he has long held in higher esteem than any single job anyway: a crossover American media ubiquity and influence that few have known.
He does not want to be President A. Smith. He wants to be Joe Rogan — while remaining Stephen A. Smith, the most famous sports-talker sports-talking.
And if he happens to alter the course of the nation's politics incidentally, well, is that so ludicrous in the scheme of current events?
'I resonate,' Mr. Smith said in a 50-minute interview, repeatedly citing Mr. Rogan and his Trump-approved mega-podcast as a model, at least in its political clout. 'I've been climbing, scratching and clawing all of these years. But it's been primarily in an effort to say: 'Will you take a look at what I can do? Would you stop looking at me and assuming that I'm this one-dimensional individual?''
For years, Mr. Smith has seemed almost agnostic about how and where he expands his footprint. He has guest-hosted Jimmy Kimmel's late-night show, charmed the women of 'The View,' made recurring cameos on 'General Hospital' as a mob surveillance expert named Brick.
Yet Mr. Smith's political thrill-seeking, and its wide embrace across the political industrial complex, says as much about the overlapping worlds of news and entertainment as it says about him.
It says more still about a Democratic Party so desperate to reach red-blooded, sports-minded, lecture-averse (and male) voters that attention has turned to a former Philadelphia newspaper columnist and unrepentant Democrat-basher renowned for his bench-the-scrub brevity.
The typical dynamic looks something like this:
'There's a dream in this land with its back against the wall,' Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey said on Mr. Smith's podcast in April, shortly after his 25-hour Senate speech, invoking Langston Hughes. 'To save the dream for one we must save it for all.'
'Well, let me interject,' Mr. Smith said eventually, 'because I'm talking about winning.'
Despite such flourishes — or maybe because of them, given the Democratic capacity for self-flagellation — 'The Stephen A. Smith Show' has become an unlikely hub for the party rebuild.
With more than a million subscribers on YouTube (and no affiliation with ESPN), the podcast has hosted boldface Democrats including Gov. Wes Moore of Maryland; Gov. Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania; and Hakeem Jeffries, the House minority leader.
Mr. Smith, a self-described independent, has also welcomed MAGA luminaries like Steve Bannon and Candace Owens, noting with interest that right-wingers yield bigger audiences.
'People should pay attention to what he's talking about,' Mr. Moore said of Mr. Smith in an interview. 'He has a remarkable ability to put his finger on the pulse of where people are.'
Mr. Smith, peerless at the performance of reluctance, has said he has 'no choice' but to consider a 2028 run, claiming that politicos, strangers and his pastor have encouraged him. Nameless billionaires, he said, have approached him about 'exploratory committees and things of that nature.' He has also called himself 'woefully unqualified.'
The not-ruling-anything-out routine has invited pushback from inside and outside his orbit.
'Calm down, Stephen A.,' Charles Barkley, a friend and fellow basketball broadcaster, told Sports Illustrated. ('Even when he insults me,' Mr. Smith said, 'he insults me out of love.')
'Cable news people with delusions,' Tucker Carlson, the former Fox News host, said in a text message. 'I've known many.'
But like President Trump before he took office, Mr. Smith understands the power of television as a legitimizing force. Like Mr. Trump throughout his life, he recognizes the value of foils — of accruing attention, even negative attention, on one's own terms.
During a viewer question-and-answer session on a recent podcast, Mr. Smith aired a video message from a belligerent follower.
'Why do I just have to see you everywhere, man?' the listener asked. 'You're not a journalist. You're just an influencer. Your political career is laughable.'
Mr. Smith smirked.
'I guess my answer to the question would be a question,' he said. 'Why the hell do you know I'm everywhere?'
'How You Build an Audience'
Some years ago, a friend of Mr. Smith's who was starting a radio show was curious about growing her modest Twitter following.
'He was teaching me, 'Here's what you need to do,'' the friend, Karen Hunter, recalled. ''You throw something out and you get in fights with people. And you have your people get in fights with the people who are fighting with you. And you just sit back.''
Ms. Hunter resisted. 'But that's how you build an audience,' Mr. Smith said.
It is largely, though not entirely, how he built his.
For a time, Mr. Smith hoped to be the kind of athlete other people would be paid to talk about.
Raised in Hollis, Queens, Mr. Smith revered the broadcasters on his television — Howard Cosell, Bryant Gumbel, Ed Bradley — but found the basketball court outside to be his refuge from an often difficult youth: The son of Caribbean immigrants and the youngest of six siblings, he struggled in school with undiagnosed dyslexia and learned around age 10 that his father had a second family nearby.
With 'completely unfounded' professional basketball aspirations, in his telling, Mr. Smith played for the Fashion Institute of Technology in Manhattan before transferring to Winston-Salem State University, a historically Black college in North Carolina.
When an injury sidelined him, Mr. Smith found his way to writing, once authoring a school newspaper column — while still on the basketball roster — urging his coach to retire for health reasons.
Eager but swaggering, Mr. Smith was a young reporter in a hurry, peers said, whirring through newsrooms in his suit and tie amid legions of white men in khakis.
'He still had that face, that dead-serious face,' said Dave Kaplan, a former editor at the New York Daily News, remembering a meeting in which Mr. Smith, a couple of months into the job, wondered when he could finally ditch the high school sports beat. 'It was something to the point of, 'How do I elevate myself? How do I get to the next level?''
The answer, in part, was 'The Answer,' as the man was known: Allen Iverson, the brilliant and volatile basketball star.
In the late 1990s and early 2000s, Mr. Smith covered Mr. Iverson's Sixers for The Philadelphia Inquirer, gaining trust and access and becoming a local celebrity in parallel.
'No other writer would approach players on the court when they were out there warming up,' said Billy King, the team's general manager at the time. 'I would say, 'Why are you doing that?' He said, 'Why not? There's no rule.' And he was right.'
Mr. Smith became a general sports columnist and television commentator, the sort of journalist whose face was plastered across city bus stops.
Colleagues recalled him as the first writer they knew who filed articles by BlackBerry — and it showed, some said, in the hasty prose.
But on the page, equivocation was weakness, anyway. Mr. Smith would let others hedge and strain.
'With Stevie, it's 'He can't dribble,'' said Garry D. Howard, a mentor who helped bring him to The Inquirer. 'He hits you right where it's going to hurt the most. It's an art form.'
That skill set is precisely what ESPN was looking for in its nascent debate-show era: big personalities, little subtlety.
In one internal meeting in 2003, an executive, Mark Shapiro, polled the room on hiring Mr. Smith. No one wanted him, Mr. Shapiro said.
'Which is when I knew, exactly, we had to bring him on,' he said, 'and that he would cut through.' (Mr. Shapiro, now the president and managing partner of WME Group, later became Mr. Smith's agent.)
As a consciously polarizing figure — 'Screamin' A.' to hate-watchers — Mr. Smith often trafficked in conspicuous binaries. A player was an all-world talent or a 'bona fide scrub.' ('No disrespect!') An opinion could be delivered loudly or very loudly.
Mr. Smith did demonstrate some range, at least in subject matter.
When ESPN gave him a talk show, 'Quite Frankly with Stephen A. Smith,' in 2005, guests included Senator John McCain and Mr. Trump, who walked out to the theme from 'The Apprentice.' ('Quite Frankly' was canceled in 2007. ESPN let Mr. Smith go in 2009 and rehired him in 2011.)
Mr. Smith positioned himself as a jack of all opinions, appearing on 'Hardball' on MSNBC during the 2008 presidential primaries to reflect on 'the war on terrorism and things of that nature' and to call Rudy Giuliani 'a dictator.'
Ed Rendell, then the governor of Pennsylvania, often encountered Mr. Smith at a Philadelphia television studio where both filmed remote interviews.
'The studio got paid by the hit,' Mr. Rendell said, claiming that, as the space's top earner, he had a plaque above the men's room in his honor, prompting Mr. Smith's jealousy. 'When my plaque went up, he complained and wanted his own plaque.'
But Mr. Smith's on-camera magnetism left an impression. One day, Mr. Rendell said, he asked if Mr. Smith would ever consider a Senate run.
Mr. Smith answered with a question: 'Why would I want to be one of 100?'
'Stephen A. Swift'
On March 6, Mr. Smith was seated courtside at a Lakers game, beside Larry David and the Hollywood executive Ari Emanuel, celebrating a new ESPN contract reportedly paying him roughly $20 million annually.
But during a timeout, an aggrieved ESPN-watcher in a (very authentic) Lakers uniform stalked over to unburden himself. LeBron James wanted a word.
The weeks that followed became a study in both Mr. Smith's reach and the modern sports-media-entertainment lines he has helped blur. It was Real Housewives for Hoops Heads and decisive evidence for his organizing theory of clout-building.
Mr. Smith had previously been on Mr. James's case about his son Bronny, a Lakers rookie, pleading with the superstar 'as a father' to recognize that the youngster was overmatched. (Mr. Smith, who splits time among the Miami, Los Angeles and New York areas, has two daughters and has never been married.)
After Mr. James confronted Mr. Smith at the game, the exchange was immediately everywhere.
As such, Mr. Smith said solemnly afterward, he had no choice but to address it publicly, which left Mr. James no choice, apparently, but to readdress it — and to mock Mr. Smith's implausible reticence.
'He's on, like, a Taylor Swift tour run right now,' Mr. James told another ESPN personality, Pat McAfee.
LeBron-iacs of the internet debuted a taunting nickname: 'Stephen A. Swift.' Mr. James imagined Mr. Smith cuddled with ice cream 'in his tighty-whities on the couch,' gleeful that the spat was continuing.
But the conflict had by then migrated to Mr. Smith's home court: the small screen.
He cleared up some details ('I don't wear tighty-whities — let you figure out why that is'), flubbed others (he wrongly accused Mr. James of skipping Kobe Bryant's memorial in 2020) and speculated that the hubbub probably stemmed partly from Mr. Smith's longstanding insistence that Mr. James was no Michael Jordan.
He led a Zapruder-style film breakdown of the original encounter. He said he would have 'swung on' Mr. James (and been roundly beaten) if the Laker had laid hands on him. (Mr. James later posted a less-than-menacing old clip of Mr. Smith boxing, appending 14 laughter emojis.)
A student of audience metrics, Mr. Smith has long been candid about the incentives of his business. 'We capitalize,' he wrote in his book, 'on the kind of polarization people supposedly abhor.'
That week on 'First Take,' the ESPN morning debate show he headlines, Mr. Smith seemed to remind viewers of the bargain. 'There's an audience out there that wants the drama,' he said.
Bomani Jones, a former ESPN colleague, was in Vietnam when the Smith-James beef escalated. Only two stories penetrated his travel bubble, he said: the Trump administration's Signal chat scandal and whatever this was.
'He is more famous than 98 percent of the people that he covers,' Mr. Jones said. 'When you work at ESPN, men in this country know who you are.'
The 'First Take' cameras remain trained on Mr. Smith's highly gif-able face even in silence — like a cable news feed of a rally stage awaiting its speaker, crossed with a series of Greek theater masks: Stephen A. aghast, Stephen A. delighted, Stephen A. ruminating.
Time has softened his public persona some.
'The 20-years-ago version of Stephen A. Smith was a lot bolder, a lot brasher, and I think even he would acknowledge a bit more insufferable,' Mr. Jones said, recalling a bygone Mr. Smith wearing sunglasses indoors. 'The game beat him down.'
Mr. Smith said he was simply better understood these days.
'For the longest time, I was perceived as this angry Black man,' Mr. Smith said. 'I'm like, 'Angry about what? Are you looking at my life?''
And what is the chief currency in his latest pursuit?
'American politics is a television contest,' Mr. Jones said. 'Nobody's got more reps at this.'
Not Not Running for President
Both political parties have convinced themselves, rightly or not, that Mr. Smith's new platform matters — an ascendant venue where the president's border czar and his chief antagonists may each feel compelled to spend their time.
Less certain is precisely what kind of audience Mr. Smith is talking to.
There is a campaign maxim that the greatest divide is not between left and right; it is between those who follow politics closely and everyone else.
Mr. Smith can feel like a member of the first group who speaks to the second.
His high regard for Mr. Rogan — whose hold on younger, male and often apolitical listeners was central to the Trump 2024 strategy — flows from a two-word judgment: 'He resonates.'
'I have a strong, strong aspiration to be in Joe Rogan's — not literally his seat, but a similar seat,' Mr. Smith said, adding that the two had met only in passing. 'His impact is undeniable.'
Like Mr. Rogan, Mr. Smith can sound most comfortable hammering Democrats, whose failings are a bipartisan fixation. But his personal politics are a kind of bespoke centrism: Mr. Smith says he has generally voted for Democrats but praises elements of the Trump immigration agenda. He sees a 'white backlash' to the Obama presidency but jokes that fellow Black Americans cannot abide his friendship with Sean Hannity of Fox News.
Some Democratic lawmakers have discussed inviting Mr. Smith to address the party's Capitol ranks as a blunt-force communications czar. 'I'm not going to be kind!' he pledged.
His firmest conviction may be that the party needs someone with 'sizzle' in 2028, someone who sounds quite a bit like him.
'I don't think he wants to be POTUS,' Mark Cuban, a friend of Mr. Smith's, said in an email, 'but I know he is loving the discussion.'
Mr. Smith has said he would like to see Mr. Moore, Maryland's Democratic governor, as president; Representative Byron Donalds, a Trump acolyte, as governor of Florida; and former Gov. Andrew Cuomo or Mayor Eric Adams leading New York City. All have recorded his podcast.
As with sports, Mr. Smith is happy to dissect even hostile stories about himself.
'James Carville Rips Stephen A. for Talking Politics,' read one recent chyron, quoting Mr. Carville, the Democratic strategist, appraising Mr. Smith: 'He don't know his ass from a hole in the ground.'
When the conservative commentator Ben Shapiro likewise called Mr. Smith 'a jackass,' Mr. Smith invited him on.
'Am I still a jackass?' Mr. Smith asked.
'Now you're the best,' Mr. Shapiro said, as both laughed. 'That's how this works.'
Mr. Smith's most potent exercise of political power to date might have come in 2023, when his friend, former Gov. Chris Christie, was working to qualify for a Republican presidential debate. A social media plea from Mr. Smith helped jump-start Mr. Christie's efforts to amass the small donations required to make the stage, according to Maria Comella, a top campaign adviser.
More often, Mr. Smith has framed his political expeditions as insurance against audience restlessness. 'There are days when people are just not interested in sports because something is going on with Trump or whatever,' he said.
Mr. Smith needed to be ready for those days. He has said that he prioritized his non-ESPN independence in his new contract, mindful that the network has often hoped to keep its talent away from politics. (Mr. Smith's production company, Straight Shooter Media, has a first-look deal with Disney, ESPN's corporate parent, to produce original series, he added.)
Asked about appearing recently on the Disney brand's Sunday political flagship, 'This Week' on ABC, Mr. Smith said his employer was simply following the buzz.
'I was in the news everywhere else,' he said. 'I'm quite sure that in their perfect world they would love for me to just do sports.'
Some friends would prefer that, too.
Ms. Hunter, the radio host and a former Daily News colleague, said she could not bring herself to watch his political interviews or bless the 'game show' of Mr. Smith entertaining a campaign, though she said she understood the logic.
'With the president we have now,' Ms. Hunter said, 'why wouldn't he think he could be president?'
And the president we have now sees a path for Mr. Smith.
During a live phone interview with NewsNation in April, conducted by a panel that included Mr. Smith, Mr. Trump seemed amused to hear a familiar voice: 'I remember you from a long time ago, Stephen,' he said.
When Bill O'Reilly, another interviewer, asked if Mr. Trump had any advice for the would-be candidate, Mr. Smith buried his face in his right palm with a half smile.
'He's got great entertainment skills, which is very important,' Mr. Trump said, encouraging a run. 'People watch him.'
A few minutes later, once Mr. Trump was gone, another figure from Mr. Smith's cinematic universe joined the program: Mr. Carville, on hand to talk politics beside the man he had deemed politically clueless.
In an interview afterward, Mr. Carville had not exactly changed his mind. But he conceded that Mr. Smith grasped 'the one rule for a public figure in America,' applicable in his old discipline and his newer one.
'People don't care if you're wrong,' Mr. Carville said. 'They care if you're boring.'