'A Bit Haphazard': Stephen A. Smith Gives Mixed Reaction To First Few Months Of Trump's Presidency

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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.

Transcript

00:00What was your reaction when he said that the other night?

00:05I was aghast, to be quite honest with you.

00:07I wasn't looking for any kind of endorsement from anybody, especially him.

00:11But he is the president of the United States.

00:13There's a bit of flattery that comes with getting such words from the man who holds the highest office in the land,

00:19and I can appreciate that.

00:20But in the same breath, I'm saying to myself, you know what, evidently I'd have no chance

00:25because if somebody like that is throwing out my name, clearly they'd think that, yeah, go ahead and do it

00:30so we can beat you, we can romp you, too.

00:32So I'm not falling for it.

00:33It was nice.

00:34It was nice to hear, and I appreciated it.

00:36But obviously, it is what it is.

00:38I hear where he's coming from, but I wasn't thinking about it any more seriously than that.

00:44President Trump's been in office now for more than 100 days.

00:48What's been your reaction to his administration so far?

00:53I think it's been a bit haphazard.

00:54That's something I've been on the record as saying.

00:57Certainly, we understand that waste, fraud, and all of that stuff needs to be addressed,

01:01but the manner in which he went about it with Elon Musk gave me cause to pause with Doge,

01:06so I certainly wasn't happy about that.

01:08The tariff wars, I thought he was going to focus first on lowering taxes.

01:11That's what I would have liked to have seen, because that was something that he campaigned on,

01:15even though he campaigned on tariffs a lot as well.

01:17I certainly expected him to—I would have liked, rather, to see him focus more on lowering taxes first

01:23as opposed to engaging in a tariff war, particularly a tariff war that didn't just include China,

01:28but practically everybody else, at least for a short period of time before folks got in his ears

01:33and got him to sort of retract a little bit.

01:36So I see that.

01:37I have no problem with what he's done with the borders.

01:39I thought it was absolutely necessary.

01:41So I definitely think that that was a plus, because I was never a proponent of open borders.

01:46But outside of that, I take a wait-and-see approach, because, you know, history has taught me

01:51that the prism of history is how you determine the success of a president,

01:55as opposed to looking at things in the moment, in real time,

01:58because usually that's going to garner extreme reactions one way or the other,

02:02and I try not to lean in either direction of the extreme.

02:06I'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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