'I AINT HAPPY'

Trump’s Favorite Sports Commentator Rips Into Him After Secret Meeting

Stephen A. Smith said Trump confronted him for being “mean and nasty” during a White House dinner.

ESPN star Stephen A. Smith is tearing into President Donald Trump days after the pair quietly met at the White House.

Smith, a critic of the president despite Trump calling him his favorite sports commentator, joined Bill Maher and Kid Rock for a dinner at the White House this month. After supporters criticized him for even attending a Trump dinner, Smith set the record straight on his podcast.

“It was not my meeting,” Smith explained. “The president had reached out to Bill Maher.”

Smith said that Maher told him that Trump pushed him to “bring one of your crazy leftist friends with you” and that the late-night host landed on Stephen A. Smith. Once Trump heard the name, Maher says that he encouraged him to bring the ESPN pundit to Washington.

Smith alleges that Trump then said, “‘Bring him. I got a lot of things I wanna say to him, too.’”

“Evidently he forgot he knew me for 35 years, because I immediately said, ‘Yes, I’m coming,’” Smith said.

Smith claims that Trump launched insults at him as soon as he arrived at the White House.

“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. There’s a lot of things I don’t like,” he said on his podcast, before rattling off a laundry list of things he does not like about Trump, like his foreign policy and tanking the economy.

During a follow-up appearance on ABC’s The View, Smith said he came to the four-hour dinner with an agenda.

“I went to the White House to look him in the face and to address things,” Smith said, explaining that he confronted the president on what he views as policies “basically impeding the willingness of folks in the private sector to be as charitable and as philanthropic as they’ve been in the past” against HBCUs and diversity initiatives.

Smith added, “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.’ 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 said Trump once tried to bring the sportscaster over to his side of the political aisle.

“He said, ‘Do you not understand? Just wait for it. I’m bringing trillions of dollars into this country. Trillions. Trillions,’” Smith recalled. “I said, ‘Where is it?’ He said, ‘You’ll see. Wait for it, wait for it.’ I said, ‘Really? That’s all you’ve got to say?’ He said, ‘Absolutely, Stephen, do you understand that? I’m the greatest president who’s ever lived.’”

“He absolutely positively believes he is the greatest president,” Smith added.

Smith also hit back at those who criticized Smith for even meeting with the president.

“Let me tell y’all something, I’m not apologizing for this,” he said. “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.”

Smith added, “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.”

Trump, meanwhile, had nothing but nice things to say about their dinner.

“It was a great dinner; it was a very informative dinner. Smart people. Stephen A. is great,” he said.

Trump suggested that Smith and Maher actually like him, even if they pretend they don’t “for their people.”

He added, “Even though they have to sort of put on a certain little facade for their people, they like Trump, and I actually like them.”

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