ESPN commentator Stephen A. Smith continues to stoke the fire that he’s eyeing a campaign for president in 2028.
“I’m not ruling anything out, but I’m not thinking about that right now,” Smith told The Hill during an exclusive interview last week. “I love what I do, and I’m not willing to give up my money.”
Despite that a growing number of close confidants, from members of his family to political strategists and his pastor, have encouraged him to run for elected office.
“I don’t know if I’m going to run for president one day,” he said. “But what I do know is I want to have a profound impact on who the next president is going to be. If you’re an elected official, I want to be a place you’re going to have to come through if you’re going to get to where you want to go.”
Smith didn’t shy away from his excitement about potentially being under the brightest political lights.
“I do know the one thing that I would absolutely love to do is be up on that [presidential] debate stage … especially against those on the left,” said Smith, who hosts the top-rated ESPN table talk program “First Take” and has been critical of both Trump and progressive Democrats.
“I would give anything. … I can’t even tell you how much I salivate over that kind of opportunity,” he said of the millions of eyeballs that typically tune into the spectacle of presidential debate night.
In front of a live studio audience in Washington, D.C., Smith recently interviewed Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) about rumors surrounding the senator’s own presidential ambitions.
Cruz brushed the question aside, saying he is sole focus was “serving the people of Texas,” before the two traded jokes about Cruz’s Houston Rockets and pledged to dive deeper into a conversation on college athlete pay and the competitive landscape.
Smith mentioned sports media colleagues Michael Wilbon, Jeff Saturday, and Mike Greenberg as famous figures he could see running for elected office, but conceded there is little upside to entering the world of politics for famous sports figures.
Yet for Smith, the self-described “conscientious observer,” one gets a sense of inevitability about an eventual leap into politics.
“Just look at the landscape, though. There’s nobody that really stands out wanting to do that,” he said of a major sports media figure running for president. “But this is not new to me; it’s just more people are starting to notice … and I’m not running from being entrenched in it.”
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