A couple of months ago, I made a vow to myself that I would not write about Stephen A. Smith again, at least not for the rest of the year. If you know me, you know I don’t consider Stephen A. an honest broker or even a legitimate debater. He routinely argues against points nobody made, then congratulates himself for winning arguments nobody was having. At this stage of his career, I believe his cultural disconnect is willful. So why keep talking about a man who can turn a yes-or-no question into a 17-minute hostage situation? Then he sat down at the White House with Donald Trump, Bill Maher and Kid Rock, and suddenly the man I had placed on editorial probation was back in my damn workload.
Stephen A. is the backdrop here. The larger question is when political engagement constitutes a good-faith exchange and when breaking bread with the president amounts to lending credibility to a man who treats the White House like a combination country club, personal ATM and witness protection program for his wealthy friends. This conversation is much bigger than one cable sports host with a microphone and an allergy to brevity.
Ever since what I’ve called the cavalcade of dumb fuckery went down, the noise hasn’t stopped. Rapper Luther “Uncle Luke” Campbell, who recently made a bid for Congress, took to Twitter to defend the meeting. “Our people in the Black community are out here suffering. Why wouldn’t we have a conversation with the people in power?” he wrote. “You have to be willing to sit at the table and ask for what your people need.” Now, I know Uncle Luke is new to electoral politics, and he may still have some sour grapes toward Florida Democrats after Debbie Wasserman Schultz moved from the 25th District into the 20th and defeated him. I know what Debbie did was a little underhanded, Luke, but that’s politics, my dude. Nobody promised you a congressional seat with a complimentary fruit basket. Talking to MAGA ain’t fixing that. Stick around the political game long enough, and you’ll discover that intraparty competition can be every bit as vicious as the general election. And if you think Donald Trump is going to help you settle a score with Debbie Wasserman Schultz, I have some beachfront property in the Everglades I’d love to sell you.
Jemele Hill answered him directly. “Donald Trump has zero interest in improving the lives of Black folks in this country,” she wrote. “He got exactly what he wanted out of this dinner.” Then she landed the line that should have ended the debate: “You can’t appeal to a bully. They don’t care.”
Stephen A., of course, did not let it end there. He went on The View, where Ana Navarro had torn into him the day before, and told the panel, “Whether you like it or not, he’s the president of the United States of America. He’s not going away until 2028.” His conclusion: “I’m not apologizing for that to anybody.” This from a man who apologizes so frequently that ESPN should install a confessional booth next to the First Take desk and hire a priest on a five-year contract. Stephen A. will issue a three-part apology, complete with commercial breaks, for something he said on a Tuesday. But ask him to explain why he spent four hours entertaining Donald Trump, and suddenly he’s standing on principle like Patrick Henry at the Virginia Convention.
Social psychologists have a concept called effort justification: the tendency to assign greater value to something after investing significant effort in it. Stephen A. invested four hours of his evening, his reputation and a week of public backlash in this dinner. Admitting the evening accomplished nothing would mean accepting that he spent four hours listening to Donald Trump talk about himself when he could have stayed home and watched Donald Trump talk about himself on television. At least the television has a mute button. So the dinner must have been worthwhile, and the justification gets constructed backward from there.
Which brings us to his best rationalization yet. On his show, Stephen A. asked whether his critics expected him to do nothing and pass up the opportunity. Then he invoked Kim Kardashian. “So I can watch a Kim Kardashian go and get an Alice Johnson released from jail and say I can’t have no impact?”
