The idea of Stephen A. Smith running for president of the United States is continuing to gain traction, and now, so are the conspiracies.
Smith joined Hannity’s Fox News show Tuesday night after the ESPN host claimed “I have no choice” but to consider running for president over the weekend. And despite already dipping in the polls, it appears those declines won’t impact Smith’s decision because he doesn’t believe them. During the Fox News segment, Smith and Hannity both implied Democratic leaders could be falsifying the ESPN host’s polling numbers because they don’t want to throw him any support.
“I don’t believe that poll,” Hannity told Smith of a January poll that showed him sitting at 2%. “That’s my gut instinct. The first poll that came out had you at 7%. Maybe you’re at five, six, seven percent. Do I think that the party that is now led by AOC and Bernie Sanders and Jasmine Crockett and the radical left would ever accept you or want your input?”
Smith and Hannity both agreed that the answer was a resounding no.
“Do I believe that people would have a conversation with me and get my perspective on things? Sure,” Smith said. “Do I believe they would ever really support me? Meaning those that have been entrenched within the Democratic Party now and for the last seven years? Absolutely positively not. I saw the poll. Listen, I’m not an expert in this, but I’ve been following politics for a very, very long time.
“We understand what comes with the process,” Smith continued. “You know people are going to stand in your way…and at least on the left, what they say is they eat their own, especially when they don’t like you. They don’t know me; the chances are they don’t like me…Here’s what it comes down to. Poll comes out about two months ago or so, I’m at around 7.5% or whatever, ever since then I’ve been in the news ad nauseam every single damn day and suddenly I’m at 1%? I don’t believe that for one second. That’s not how this works.”
After a Jan. 27 poll conducted by McLaughlin & Associates showed Smith at just 2%, a more recent poll commissioned by Pablo Torre Finds Out earlier this month had much more promising results for the First Take host. Promising enough to question the accuracy of the 2% polling from January.
Whether Democratic leaders are already wasting their time by attempting to temper Smith’s polling numbers, it’s fair to assume they’re not looking toward the ESPN personality as their savior either. Smith’s celebrity status and bravado have many believing he can be the Democrats’ version of Donald Trump. But Democrats still don’t really know what platform he would be running on.
To this point, his political takes are loud, but they’re largely empty. They’re the sports equivalent of saying, “Lamar Jackson can’t win a Super Bowl,” while offering no additional context or insight.
Maybe AOC and Bernie Sanders are working behind the scenes to ensure Stephen A. Smith isn’t polling too high. But it seems just as likely they’re not considering someone who signed a $100 million contract with ESPN as a legitimate political threat in their party.