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ESPN Star Dares POTUS To Debate After Viral Attack

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Stephen A. Smith
Photo Credit: Keith Allison from Hanover, MD, USA, CC BY-SA 2.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

President Donald Trump tried to clown Stephen A. Smith as a “low IQ” loudmouth, and the ESPN star answered by daring him to say it on a debate stage.

The fight started over Trump’s trip to Madison Square Garden, but by Wednesday it had turned into a full-blown cable-news-style brawl.

After taking his first shot following Game 3, Trump came back harder Wednesday morning on Truth Social.

“Stephen A. Smith is an arrogant fool, a low IQ individual,” Trump posted on Truth Social. “In other words, he’s ‘dumb as a rock,’ and totally unqualified to ever think of running for high political office, or even low political office, for that matter!

“He’d get annihilated in a debate by the most incompetent of politicians. Joe Biden’s now ‘fabled’ performance would look great by comparison to anything that this loudmouth huckster has to offer, which isn’t much! Within a few weeks, they’d laugh him out of politics!!!”

Smith’s past flirtation with politics gave Trump an easy target. Before ripping into the insult, Smith reminded viewers that Trump once sounded far more amused by the idea of him entering politics.

He pointed to Trump’s past remark to Chris Cuomo that he would “love to see” Smith run for president, then accused the president of flipping only after Smith criticized his Knicks cameo.

“Because I called them out for inconvenience in the momentum that we had built in route to entering game three for the NBA Finals, I’m a fool,” he said. “He actually called me arrogant. You, of all people, will call somebody arrogant? Really, Mr. President? That’s where you’re going?”

Smith tried to draw a line between attacking Trump’s post and personally trashing the man behind it.

“I will not disrespect this man on a personal level. And I have to say this before I go where I’m going. The president said I was a nice guy. I got to tell you something. He’s always been nice to me. The first insult or cruel thing he said about me was in the quote on his post on his Truth Social platform,” he said.

“Of all the years that I’ve known Donald Trump, that’s the first mean-spirited thing he’s ever done to me personally.”

The debate dig bothered Smith more than the political speculation. Rather than back away, Smith told the president to pick the venue.

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“You think those one liners gonna work, you got another thing coming. You did real estate, and you’re a businessman, and obviously you know what you have an idea about what you’re doing, whether people want to like it or not, as the presidency,” Smith warned.

“Debate? I do that every day. Every day. You really, really think being on a stage against me would be comparable to you being on a stage with Joe Biden?” he questioned.

“You really think that would be me, Mr. President? You sure about that? Name the time and place, and I’ll show up. Because you see, Mr. President, I don’t have a record when it comes to issues. You do,” Smith said.

From there, Smith turned the hypothetical debate into a rough cross-examination. His list jumped from pocketbook pain to foreign-policy flashpoints, including inflation, fuel costs, Iran, the Strait of Hormuz and the war in Ukraine.

He also questioned whether Trump had personally benefited financially during his second term.

Then Smith tied the feud back to New York, where Trump had won millions of votes before showing up at the Garden during the Knicks’ long-awaited Finals run.

“New Yorkers did that for you. What’d you do for them?” he said. “All we really wanted from you was to support the New York Knicks from afar so you could allow New Yorkers to truly enjoy an experience they’ll never get a chance to do in their lifetime. […] And you couldn’t do that for us.”

Smith had been trying to keep the Knicks complaint outside the usual red-blue food fight. Before Game 3, he argued that the president’s security footprint would disrupt the atmosphere around the Garden and derail the momentum surrounding the Knicks’ first Finals appearance in decades.

“This is about an individual engaging in a level of narcissism that really rakes my freakin’ nerves,” Smith said. “He’s got no business here tonight. It has nothing to do with politics. It was everything to do with the fervor that exists around the New York Knicks and he is disrupting everything the Knicks have been vibing with.”

Reporters gave Trump his first chance to answer Smith after the Spurs handed the Knicks their Game 3 loss.

“I think he’s a nice guy, but you need a certain aptitude to run for president,” Trump told reporters. “You need a high IQ. I’m not sure that Stephen has that. I don’t think he does actually.”

By Tuesday, Smith had taken the fight across both “First Take” and his own podcast. The segment even came with a patriotic soundtrack as Smith pinned the Knicks’ loss on Trump.

With patriotic music playing behind him, Smith told viewers that, “obviously, I’m blaming him” for New York falling in Game 3.

His complaints stretched beyond the scoreboard, from Midtown gridlock to canceled fan gatherings and nearby businesses squeezed by the security lockdown.

Smith even mocked photos that appeared to show Trump nodding off at the game. “If it was that important for you to be there, why did you look like you were asleep?” Smith said. “Didn’t you call out former President Joe Biden, ‘Sleepy Joe’? Well, what should we call you? Cause you weren’t awake.”

“To see them in this position and to disrupt the momentum they’ve built, I called narcissistic and selfish,” Smith noted on his podcast. “Why would I do such a thing? Because it’s Donald Trump, that’s why. Because it’s factually correct, that’s why. Because he had no business at the game.”

Whatever chaos Trump brought, viewers tuned in. ESPN’s Adam Schefter reported that the Trump-attended Game 3 peaked at 26.3 million viewers and averaged 23.8 million. The ratings made it the most-watched Game 3 of an NBA Finals series since 1998.

The arena drama did not end with Trump and Smith. Knicks owner James Dolan and New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani also clashed after another outdoor watch party outside the Garden was scrapped before Game 4.

The NYPD had said there would be no Game 3 watch party because of Trump’s appearance.

For Game 4, Dolan refused to move forward with a scaled-down outdoor setup capped at 1,000 ticketed fans.

“He gave us the gift of allowing us to screen 999 people and tell 20,000 no… Our hope was that the mayor and the commissioner would change their minds and then we’d put the screens up,” Dolan said in an interview on Wednesday.

“This is about celebrating the Knicks at Madison Square Garden, at the Mecca of basketball. This is what the mayor’s office and the commissioner’s office is trying to kill, they don’t want the celebration.”

Mamdani answered online by pointing back to MSG’s own permit request. MSG fired back in a statement shortly before tipoff, saying it declined to use the permit because only 1,000 ticketed fans would be allowed in while tens of thousands of others were shut out.

The City Reporter later surfaced MSG’s permit application, which said that the venue had been given an option to apply for an “unknown” crowd size.

The Knicks still gave the Garden something to celebrate, rallying from a 29-point deficit to beat the Spurs 107-106 in Game 4 and take a 3-1 lead in the NBA Finals.

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