Stephen A. Smith spent much of Wednesday defending himself for having dinner with President Donald Trump last week.
His midweek media appearances included not just “The View” but his own “Straight Shooter” SiriusXM show, on which he spoke about his dinner with the president, which was also attended by Bill Maher. But he began his day at the ABC morning talk show, sitting at the table with the very hosts criticized his decision to dine with Trump on Tuesday’s episode.
“Evidently he forgot he knew me for 35 years, because I immediately said, ‘Yes, I’m coming,’” Smith said. “I came there with three agendas.”
The radio host and political commentator explained he wanted to confront Trump about underemployment for Black women, underfunding for HBCUs and his opposition to the Protect College Sports Act. He told “The View” hosts he was surprised by Trump’s reception.
“To his credit, he said, ‘I actually didn’t think about that. I’m going to think about that a lot more and I’ll be talking to you about it,’” Smith said. “To his credit, thereafter, he called me after the meeting a couple of days later to ask me to reiterate what my points were about the HBCUs, because he plans on talking to people about that in the next few days.”
Smith added: “It points to a bigger issue. There are so many people that have this mentality [of] why even waste time talking to him? Whether you like it or not, he’s the president of the United States of America. He’s not going away until 2028.”
Over on his own show, Smith recounted the whole experience. He said initially Trump accosted him for coming after him on his show – which Smith reiterated he was constantly doing for anyone claiming he was a Trump supporter for attending the dinner. But he also wanted it understood that he went because he felt he’d get more out of a face-to-face interaction.
“When he finally saw me, he accused me of being nasty and mean to him because obviously contrary to what some of you may want to recognize, I have been critical of this president,” Smith said. “There’s a lot of things I don’t like.”
He added: “Let me tell y’all something. I’m not apologizing for this. You need to understand something. I don’t like what I’ve seen from this president. At all. Especially the second go-round in the administration. The first administration, the economy was thriving before COVID hit. We’re $40 trillion in debt, affordability is an issue, jobs have been lost, Black unemployment has risen. I ain’t happy about it. Not by a long shot.”
Smith got plenty of heat for his attendance to a Trump-hosted dinner. That heat included “The View” co-host Ana Navarro snapping on-air to Sarah Haines on Tuesday for making light of the idea of going to a dinner with the president.
Haines cracked a joke that Trump and Navarro wouldn’t be having a “Lady and the Tramp”-style dinner if she got the invite, getting a laugh from Alyssa Farah Griffin. But Navarro snapped back that this shouldn’t be a laughing matter.
“No, but, listen, stop, this is not funny!” Navarro said. “I know that he’s seen the polls of Latinos going against him, that he’s lost 50 points of support with Latinos, and his administration has doubled down on their cruelty.”
She added: “You think I’m going to go share a meal with that man?”
Watch Smith’s defense in full in the SiriusXM video above.
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