Stephen A. Smith defends meeting with Trump: ‘I’m not apologizing for that to anybody’

Stephen A. Smith explains why he believes engaging with President Trump is necessary to advance issues, despite criticism.

Stephen A. Smith does not shy away from sharing his opinion, and most recently, the ESPN host brought his concerns directly to President Donald Trump. Smith was one of the select guests at a four-hour dinner on Oct. 15 with the President thanks to an invitation from Bill Maher. After receiving criticism for attending the event, the “First Take” host discussed his decision to attend on “The View.” 

“I came there with three agendas,” Smith told the daytime talk show hosts. “Number one, to address unemployment with Black women in this country. I came to address the ‘Protect College Sports Act’ that obviously was passed through the Senate and now has to go through the House, which I’m not a supporter of because I don’t think it has representation for the student-athlete. And of course, number one on my list was HBCUs.” 

“That’s something, as an HBCU graduate, that’s near and dear to me. And because of his initiatives against DEI, you have a lot of folks in the corporate stratosphere that are a bit reluctant to donate and be as charitable as they’ve been in the past because their fear is that it’s going to be interpreted as a DEI initiative, which will cause the attention of the government to come raining down upon them,” he added. 

With all of these issues in mind, Smith says he went to the White House to look Trump in the face and address these concerns to him directly. And according to the sports commentator, the results were fruitful, as the President reportedly admitted he hadn’t considered the corporate impact his anti-DEI push could have on HBCUs. 

“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,” he shared. 

And to those who criticized his decision to break bread with the president, whose approval rating continues to reach new lows, Smith points to what he considers “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,” he emphasized. “Until 2028, he has the power of the pen of the executive office of the commander-in-chief of the United States of America. You’re going to have to deal with him, and when it comes to getting things done, I’m all about exhausting every means and every measure to try to do what’s in the best interests of our community. I’m not apologizing for that to anybody.”

To which Goldberg responded, expressing what many Americans, especially the 92% of Black women who voted for Harris, feel: exhaustion. 

“I am tired of having to go back time and time again and explain why this man is not understanding,” she stressed, “But I have watched them do things to people, not just to Black people but to Latinos, to women, that are just inexplicable to me. And until you can explain yourself in a way that doesn’t require you to call everybody by weird names, and when you can explain why you’ve gone to a war that we shouldn’t be in because people are dying…when you can’t explain it!”

And while Smith says the president addressed some of those issues in their dinner, Goldberg noted that Trump should be sharing this information with the public.