Stephen A. Smith spent the last week trading shots with Trump, who called him a low IQ individual and dumb as a rock, and then went on CNN and still managed to hand the man a compliment. Asked whether Trump, who just turned 80, is sharp enough to keep doing the job, the ESPN star said he would not associate the word sharp with Trump, before pivoting to praise him as more alert than Joe Biden.
“He is certainly an upgrade from what we were seeing from Joe Biden in terms of his alertness,” Smith said, adding that he was not there to insult Trump. For a lot of people watching, that was the part that did not sit right. This is the same Trump who, only days earlier, had publicly torched Smith’s intelligence and questioned whether he had the aptitude to do anything in politics. And the answer Smith offered was a soft landing.The back and forth kicked off around the NBA Finals. Smith criticized Trump’s decision to show up to Game 3 of the Knicks and Spurs series at Madison Square Garden, calling the move selfish and narcissistic and arguing it piled unnecessary stress on New York City and on Knicks fans. He even predicted Trump would get blamed if the Knicks lost. The Knicks did lose that night, Trump was booed during the national anthem, and the clip of him appearing to doze off in James Dolan’s private box went viral within hours.
Trump did not let any of it slide. He unloaded on Smith, branding him a low IQ individual, dumb as a rock, an arrogant fool and a loudmouth huckster, and claiming Smith would get annihilated in a debate by even the most incompetent politician. He went after Smith’s long rumored political ambitions too, saying you need a high IQ to run for office and that he was not sure Smith had it. It was personal, it was loud, and it was aimed squarely at Smith’s brand as a serious voice.
To his credit, Smith did not completely roll over. He fired back by daring Trump to a debate, telling CNN’s Laura Coates that if Trump wanted to question his IQ, he should put him on a stage and find out. You want to find out, Smith said. Come get some. He vowed to show up anytime, any place, anywhere, and he poked at Trump over the napping footage, reminding everyone that this is the same man who nicknamed his predecessor Sleepy Joe and asking what people should call Trump now.
So the picture is mixed, and that is exactly the problem. In one breath Smith is challenging Trump to a debate and clowning him for falling asleep at a basketball game. In the next, he is going out of his way on CNN to say he would not insult Trump and to frame him as an upgrade over Biden. That is the tap dance. After a man calls you dumb as a rock in front of the entire country, handing him a clean talking point about being more alert than the last guy is a strange way to defend your own honor.
None of this is new for Smith. His relationship with Trump stretches back more than a decade, to a 2014 phone call about Trump’s failed bid to buy the Buffalo Bills. Over the years Smith has defended Trump in various media appearances, a pattern that has repeatedly drawn backlash from his core audience, and he has flirted openly with the idea of running for office himself. The current clash is the most personal it has ever gotten between them, but the instinct to soften the blow, to reach for the both sides framing even with someone who just insulted him, has become a Stephen A. Smith trademark.
For Baller Alert readers, the frustration is less about Trump and more about Smith. He is one of the most powerful Black voices in all of media, a man who built an empire on never backing down and saying exactly what is on his mind. So watching him get personally disrespected and respond by complimenting his attacker’s alertness reads to a lot of people like a missed moment. The debate challenge had the right energy and the right edge.
There is also the simple matter of whether the debate Smith keeps demanding ever actually happens. Trump has no real incentive to share a stage with a professional talker who does this for a living, and Smith has acknowledged he is not willing to give up his ESPN and SiriusXM money to chase politics full time. So the showdown may stay theoretical, a challenge thrown and never answered, which makes the softer CNN comments stick out even more.
The bigger takeaway from the week is the whiplash. Trump called Stephen A. Smith dumb as a rock, and Stephen A. Smith answered by saying he would not insult Trump and that the man was looking sharper than Joe Biden. Somewhere inside that contradiction is the whole story of how Smith has always handled Trump, holding the microphone in one hand and softening the punch with the other.
