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'A Bit Haphazard': Stephen A. Smith Gives Mixed Reaction To First Few Months Of Trump's Presidency
Forbes Breaking News
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5/5/2025
On CNN's "State of the Union" on Sunday, sports analyst and television personality Stephen A. Smith spoke about the first few months of the Trump administration.
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00:00
What was your reaction when he said that the other night?
00:05
I was aghast, to be quite honest with you.
00:07
I wasn't looking for any kind of endorsement from anybody, especially him.
00:11
But he is the president of the United States.
00:13
There's a bit of flattery that comes with getting such words from the man who holds the highest office in the land,
00:19
and I can appreciate that.
00:20
But in the same breath, I'm saying to myself, you know what, evidently I'd have no chance
00:25
because if somebody like that is throwing out my name, clearly they'd think that, yeah, go ahead and do it
00:30
so we can beat you, we can romp you, too.
00:32
So I'm not falling for it.
00:33
It was nice.
00:34
It was nice to hear, and I appreciated it.
00:36
But obviously, it is what it is.
00:38
I hear where he's coming from, but I wasn't thinking about it any more seriously than that.
00:44
President Trump's been in office now for more than 100 days.
00:48
What's been your reaction to his administration so far?
00:53
I think it's been a bit haphazard.
00:54
That's something I've been on the record as saying.
00:57
Certainly, we understand that waste, fraud, and all of that stuff needs to be addressed,
01:01
but the manner in which he went about it with Elon Musk gave me cause to pause with Doge,
01:06
so I certainly wasn't happy about that.
01:08
The tariff wars, I thought he was going to focus first on lowering taxes.
01:11
That's what I would have liked to have seen, because that was something that he campaigned on,
01:15
even though he campaigned on tariffs a lot as well.
01:17
I certainly expected him to—I would have liked, rather, to see him focus more on lowering taxes first
01:23
as opposed to engaging in a tariff war, particularly a tariff war that didn't just include China,
01:28
but practically everybody else, at least for a short period of time before folks got in his ears
01:33
and got him to sort of retract a little bit.
01:36
So I see that.
01:37
I have no problem with what he's done with the borders.
01:39
I thought it was absolutely necessary.
01:41
So I definitely think that that was a plus, because I was never a proponent of open borders.
01:46
But outside of that, I take a wait-and-see approach, because, you know, history has taught me
01:51
that the prism of history is how you determine the success of a president,
01:55
as opposed to looking at things in the moment, in real time,
01:58
because usually that's going to garner extreme reactions one way or the other,
02:02
and I try not to lean in either direction of the extreme.
02:06
I'm a centrist and a moderate at heart, and I try to make sure I'm as balanced in my thinking as I possibly can be.
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