ESPN host Stephen A. Smith said he was shocked at President Donald Trump's support for his potential White House run, CNN's "State of the Union" reported Sunday.
"I was aghast, to be quite honest with you," Smith said on the show. "I wasn't looking for any kind of endorsement from anybody, especially him. But he is the president of the United States. There is a bit of flattery that comes with getting such words from the man who holds the highest office in the land, and I can appreciate that."
Smith said that "if I did take this very, very seriously and I moved forward and I decided that I wanted to be a politician, do I believe I could win? You're damn right. But it's by default. It's not because I'm the most qualified candidate in the world. It's because of the state of our politics in the nation's capital, the politicians that we're looking at, and the fact that we don't believe for one second that they are serving the interests of the American people, nor are they interested in it."
Smith added that "people look at me, and they know one thing. I would be interested in serving the American people and doing what's in the best interest of this country. That means you. That means me. That means the black community, the Hispanic community, the white community, everybody, because, if all of us are rife with chaos, all that's going to lead to is America's destruction."
The ESPN host insisted that "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."
Smith added that "if I had to run, it would be as a Democrat, but I'm not happy with the Democratic Party. So the Democratic Party, as presently constructed, it would pretty much need to be purged in order for me to assume that I would want to be associated with them and I would garner their support, because I don't like the way they have gone about doing a lot of things for a very, very long period of time."
Brian Freeman ✉
Brian Freeman, a Newsmax writer based in Israel, has more than three decades writing and editing about culture and politics for newspapers, online and television.
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