Stephen A. Smith says Democrats are giving Republicans an easy win by refusing to push back on their party’s left wing, pointing to transgender athletes in women’s sports as the prime example.
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On his YouTube show, “Straight Shooter,” Stephen A. said the Democrats’ answer to the country’s problems “is to remind people how divided and how petulant and how extreme they can be.”
He pointed to a story out of California. “There’s somebody in San Jose, California, a volleyball coach, a woman’s volleyball coach, reportedly getting fired for raising concerns about a transgender player on their team,” he said.
The coach is Melissa Batie‑Smoose, the former associate head women’s volleyball coach at San Jose State University. This week she filed a federal lawsuit against school administrators and the California State University system, claiming she was suspended and fired in retaliation for raising concerns about a transgender athlete on the team. She says the school punished her at least in part for her viewpoint and her religious beliefs. Batie‑Smoose was suspended in November 2024, shortly after filing a Title IX complaint, and was later told her contract would not be renewed. Title IX is the federal law that bars sex discrimination in schools that receive federal money, including in sports. A judge dismissed an earlier version of her lawsuit in September but allowed her to refile it.
The San Jose State team became a national story during the 2024 season, when several opponents forfeited matches rather than play against the team.
Stephen A. Smith said stories like this are exactly what Republicans will use against Democrats. “You know what that means, right? The Republicans are simply going to remind the world how far and out of touch and crazy folks on the left are because they don’t mind men transitioning to women and competing against girls in women’s sports,” he said.
He also predicted Republicans will dig up old clips of Kamala Harris. “That’s just going to regurgitate the old footage of Kamala Harris and how she doesn’t mind a sex change operation being paid for by taxpayers for those incarcerated,” he said. Stephen A. was referring to Harris’s 2019 support for taxpayer funded gender transition care for people in federal prisons and immigration detention, a position the Trump campaign hammered in TV ads during the 2024 race.
Stephen A. saved his harshest words for Democratic leadership. He said Republicans will also bring up “the other positions these folks on Capitol Hill on the extreme left did at the behest of DSA,” referring to the Democratic Socialists of America, a group that pushes the party further left on issues like health care, housing, and policing.
“The party is being pulled further and further and further to the left, showing no spine, no guts whatsoever,” Stephen A. said. “Nobody’s calling these people out, telling them to go to hell.”
The comments come with the midterm elections less than three weeks away, and in the same week Stephen A. Smith sat down for dinner at the White House with Trump, Bill Maher, and Kid Rock. Kid Rock said the group agreed at that dinner that socialism and communism have no place in the government.
Stephen A. has repeatedly floated a 2028 presidential run and has made criticizing his own side a regular part of his political commentary, arguing that Democrats keep losing everyday voters by letting their most progressive members set the agenda.
