Stephen A. Smith’s potential presidential candidacy took on new life over the weekend as the First Take host joined ABC’s This Week for an interview about his political future. For the first time, his former ESPN teammate Bomani Jones is weighing in on the matter with a hilarious analogy that highlights just how absurd the idea is.
While Jones has a strong professional relationship with Smith and respects him as a media figure, he is shocked by Smith’s rise to political relevance. That said, Jones admitted he would probably explore a run if he were in Smith’s shoes.
“If I were him in the same place and I had Stephen A.’s constitution, I absolutely would explore running for president,” Jones said Monday on his podcast The Right Time with Bomani Jones. “I’d totally look into it. Why not?”
Rather than panning Smith for entertaining the idea, Jones flipped the framing and questioned why anyone was clamoring for it in the first place.
“The things that bother me about this have very little to do with Stephen A. Smith. He is allowed to say whatever he thinks about matters … we’re the ones who listen,” Jones added. “That’s not his fault.”
Using a sports analogy, Jones explained just how unqualified Smith is and how preposterous it is that he could run the country.
“If we heard that Stephen A. Smith was one of ten finalists to be named head coach of the New York Knicks, we would dismiss that s*** as the dumbest thing that anybody had ever said in this world,” he said. “They’d be in the streets outside of Madison Square Garden, ready to burn that motherf***er down.”
The obvious reason Smith is in any of these conversations is that he knows how to hold people’s attention and communicate his point. Because of that, Smith has a clear edge over many of the uninteresting people who get into politics.
Jones believes Smith is in the same stratosphere as President Donald Trump regarding his Q-score and the average person’s awareness of him.
“He is more famous than most of the people that he covers. His name recognition is quick,” Jones explained. “It was an advantage that Donald Trump had that I thought was very important. If someone said Donald Trump, nobody was like, ‘who’s he?’ No matter what you thought about him, you knew who he was … Stephen A.’s in that same space.”
With Washington party elites encouraging a run and these obvious advantages, Jones believes Smith is right to listen. At the same time, he is imploring people to come to their senses and stop the freight train before it runs away.
