Stephen A Smith struts into The Blvd at the Beverly Wilshire hotel a few minutes late for our lunch. I’m told there was some commotion with fans in the lobby as he arrived, which explains the delay.
We shake hands and I greet his burly bodyguard. Then Smith, dressed in the same powder-blue suit and black tie he wore for his television sports show on ESPN that morning, takes off his sunglasses and grabs a seat.
I ask how things are going, and he gives an appropriate answer for a man who spends at least 20 hours each week on live TV and radio: “Just working.”
Smith is ESPN’s $100mn man. Last year the 58-year-old agreed a new contract, reportedly worth about $20mn a year over five years, with America’s most influential sports media brand, owned by Disney.
It made him ESPN’s highest-paid TV star at a time when legacy networks are cutting jobs and under pressure from streaming rivals. He also has a deal, said to be worth $36mn over three years, with radio broadcaster SiriusXM and makes the occasional film and TV acting cameo.
Since starting out more than three decades ago as a basketball beat reporter, Smith has become America’s leading provocateur of sports media. He has faced plenty of critics, who see him as pushing the sort of culture that rewards conflict and forgets nuance. But he undeniably draws an audience.
Now he is looking to make a leap into politics, whether interviewing and endorsing candidates on his SiriusXM show — or running for office himself.
The waiter arrives to take our order. Smith asks for a lemonade and a grilled chicken sandwich on a toasted hamburger bun with a side salad instead of fries. I try to nudge us towards appetisers but he isn’t game — “I don’t eat much,” he adds with a laugh. I go for an iced tea, the tuna poke bowl, a side of avocado and a tomato focaccia for the table.
Often referred to simply as Stephen A — the middle initial is now part of his brand — Smith is known for his long diatribes, breathless sentences, dramatic pauses and an ornate vocabulary. In his telling, however, his bluster is underpinned by the hard yards he puts in.
“I’ve always conducted myself in a way that upholds the standards of journalism,” he says. “I don’t go on the air and run off at the mouth. I research. I have sources all over the place. I’m still a reporter.”
For more than a year now, Smith has fed speculation that he may launch a campaign for US president in 2028, although he has more recently played down the prospect. (He is an independent but has said that he would run as a Democrat.)
The talk has been met with more openness in a world where Donald Trump won the White House with zero political experience and where the greatest superpower is the ability to command attention.
Smith says he isn’t surprised by how seriously people have been taking talk of his candidacy because of what he sees as deep-rooted frustration with both political parties. “I pride myself on being as honest of a broker as I possibly can be,” he says. “And I’m one who inherently believes that most of the problems that exist in this country are because of the politicians running our country.”
Befitting a man who projects all the confidence in the world, Smith predicts his candidacy would be a box-office draw that would attract 100mn people to watch him debate the other Democrats.
“I think the entire sports world would watch it. I think the entire Black community would watch it,” he says. “And I think a whole bunch of folks on the other side would want to see what happens if I’m on the stage with these Democrats.”
He doubles down on the claim he made on his SiriusXM show the other day that he could win the Democratic nomination “in my sleep”.
“How much did Trump know going into the election in 2016, or 2020 for that matter? How coherent was he? How communicative was he? He’d win with one-liners and saying, ‘Believe me, believe me, they’re much worse than me,’” he says. “I know I’d be more than that, but it’s all that’s really required.”
Smith lists the flaws as he sees them for several would-be Democratic challengers, such as Gavin Newsom’s problematic record governing California and congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s “faux pas” when she attended this year’s Munich Security Conference. He’s a fan of Rahm Emanuel and Josh Shapiro — both guests on his SiriusXM show — but he thinks US antisemitism will overwhelm their potential campaigns.
With what he sees as such an open lane, why wouldn’t he seriously consider a run?
“The only reason why it’s not viable for me is because I’ve been told that, because of FCC [Federal Communications Commission] equal time regulations, by virtue of what I do for a living, I would immediately have to give up my job. Which means I’d have to give up my cheque that I worked for for three decades,” he says. “Now, if you told me I had to give it up because I won the election, that would be different.”
Our drinks arrive and the focaccia isn’t far behind. I dive in but Smith shows no interest. The bread is warm and crunchy, and accompanied by sun-dried tomato paste, olive oil and balsamic vinegar.
There is a buzz about the dining room, even if the crowd is sparse for the LA lunch rush. To avoid distraction, I’m sitting with my back to the barside TV showing Manchester City’s game with Bournemouth. As a result, after waiting 22 years, my team Arsenal are Premier League champions for a full two hours before I learn the news.
A serious run for the White House may be unlikely, but Smith is at the very least priming himself to act as a kingmaker. He talks about aspiring to the sort of influence that podcaster Joe Rogan wielded in the 2024 election.
Rogan’s conversation with Donald Trump attracted tens of millions of views on YouTube before he went on to endorse Trump for president. Smith wants presidential candidates to feel compelled to make a pilgrimage to his SiriusXM show.
“What I have no doubt I’m qualified for is to be what Joe Rogan was to Donald Trump. In terms of being somebody that listened to him, interviewed him and decided, based on what he was campaigning on, that his philosophy, in Joe Rogan’s mind, was better for America than what Kamala Harris was offering,” he says.
Menu
The BlvdBeverly Wilshire, 9500 Wilshire Boulevard, Los Angeles, California 90212
Focaccia bread $19Grilled chicken sandwich $36Tuna poke $39Side avocado $10Lemonade $8Iced tea $8Tea x2 $20Total (including tax and tip) $183.65
Smith and Rogan are both broadcasters who cut their teeth in sports media. Their appeal with audiences, especially younger men, is reflective of broader frustrations with political coverage by traditional media outlets. But their approaches differ, with Rogan’s multi-hour interviews a contrast to Smith’s sharp takes.
As I make this point, our food arrives and Smith quizzes our waiter about the parmesan cheese on his salad. He sends it back and asks for another plain salad with the dressing on the side. He prepares to tackle his chicken sandwich. I tuck into my tuna poke.
Smith agrees that he and Rogan have different styles. “They tune into Joe Rogan to listen to him be curious, introspective, while probing his subjects. They listen to me to hear what I have to say. Then they want to hear everything else,” he says.
Given Smith’s reputation, it surprises me how softly spoken he is. So much so that I worry that my recorder may struggle to pick up his words. I ask whether this calmer Stephen Smith I’m speaking with is the real man behind the rambunctious persona we see on ESPN. He maintains that any difference is only in his presentation and his opinions are always consistent.
“If I’m talking to you, as I’m talking to you right now, that’s entirely different than me staring into a camera and talking for a few minutes to hundreds of thousands live, millions, or in my case, billions who are watching on YouTube and beyond,” Smith says.
As he’s speaking, a woman at the neighbouring table stops by to say she’s a fan of his character on General Hospital. Since 2016, he has had a recurring role on the long-running US daytime soap opera as Brick, a fixer for the show’s mob boss. He informs her that he’s going in on Thursday to film some more scenes.
“I like you on that,” she says. “Other things, maybe not so much.” He chuckles and tells her to take care.
Smith’s career is an improbable rise from his roots in Queens, New York. He was the youngest of six children, and his household often struggled for food and heating as his father diverted income to support a second family.
A basketball scholarship took him, somewhat incongruously, to the Fashion Institute of Technology and then to Winston-Salem State University. Injury ended whatever hopes he may have had for a professional basketball career. He then moved into journalism, working as a sports reporter and columnist for regional newspapers before going into TV and radio.
“I started off as a newspaper writer. I was pretty damn good at it,” he says.
But Smith’s career hasn’t always been smooth sailing. His first ESPN show got cancelled in 2007, and he spent a few years in smaller roles at the network and at Fox Sports Radio. He got another crack at the big time with ESPN in 2011 with the programme First Take, on which he sparred over sports with Skip Bayless, a veteran columnist and broadcaster. The show was a hit — viewers couldn’t get enough of the pair disagreeing — and although Bayless left First Take in 2016, Smith continues to face off with a rotating cast of characters.
Losing his first show taught Smith that he would live or die by the ratings. These days, he says, “I get up every day with two missions in mind: how do I make my bosses more money and how do I get some of it?”
Debate plus conflict has been a winning formula. But Smith’s success has also been derided by athletes and other journalists. Some complain about the distraction of his public feuds with players. Most notably, there was a spat last year with basketball superstar LeBron James over comments that Smith made about James’s son, Bronny James, who plays with his father at the LA Lakers. And just days before our lunch, Boston Celtics star Jaylen Brown called Smith “the face of clickbait media”.
How does he respond to critics who argue that his format has been bad for the discourse in sports?
“I didn’t create it. I inherited it,” he replies. “When I walked on the air, I wasn’t doing anything different than anybody else did. Evidently, the audience gravitated to me.”
One person who gravitated to Smith was Donald Trump. Calling into NewsNation last year during a town hall that Smith was doing with former Fox News host Bill O’Reilly, Trump said Smith had “great entertainment skills” and that he’d “love to see him run” for president.
Smith, who regularly rails against Trump on his show, says the two men know each other from years ago when the now-president was enmeshed in the sports world and his casinos would host boxing matches. He says these dealings give him a different perspective on Trump, who has been accused of fomenting racial tensions during his 10-plus years in politics.
“To call him racist is to imply that he’s got something against Black people. And I’m like, no, he has something against anybody that’s not for Trump,” Smith says. “He don’t give a shit who it is, Black, white and anything in between.”
Statements like this have led to a backlash from some African American commentators. Two years ago, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People rebuked Smith for agreeing with Trump that “Black folks find him relatable” after he was criminally charged. Most recently, former NBA player Etan Thomas wrote a piece for The Guardian with the headline “I can tell Stephen A Smith why many Black people don’t like him”. Smith admits these criticisms are painful.
“It hurts that me, being who I am, having fought the battles that I’ve fought on behalf of my community spanning decades, that you will hear a couple of opinions and then want to erase and eradicate everything that I have strived to do for our community,” he says.
We’ve been sitting with our food for almost an hour. There’s still about a third of his sandwich left. Our waiter returns to clear our plates. Smith orders an English breakfast tea with milk and honey. I ask for peppermint tea.
Turning back to politics, Smith says it will be a mistake on the Democrats’ part if the party drifts towards what he describes as its “extreme left”. That’s despite it being where the energy in the party currently seems strongest, with the likes of New York mayor Zohran Mamdani and congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
Smith considers himself on the centre-left of the political spectrum, socially liberal and fiscally conservative. He says Democrats will be in trouble until they get a leader who can rein in the party’s more extreme factions.
“God knows I’ve said plenty of stuff about Donald Trump. Because I am not a fan of his decorum, his behaviour, certainly not some of his policies, his style of leadership. I’m suspect on all of that. But what I cannot deny is that he is the unquestioned leader of the GOP,” Smith says. “That to me is the number one thing the Democrats have to establish.”
Our teas arrive. Smith adds two small jars of honey and some milk.
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With the TV and radio commitments, acting cameos and his own media production company, does he ever worry about overexposure? Can people have too much Stephen A in their lives?
“I don’t want to oversaturate,” he replies. “But in the same breath I don’t ask for these things. These folks come to me.”
We’ve been talking for more than two hours. Every other table has left and new diners have arrived. As we get up to leave, Smith gives me a firm handshake and a wink goodbye. He buttons up his jacket and heads off.
Hours after our lunch, on the red-eye flight back to New York, I look across the aisle at a passenger’s screen and see Smith. He’s back on ESPN, still in the same powder-blue suit, talking about that evening’s epic victory for his beloved New York Knicks over the Cleveland Cavaliers. Just working.
Joshua Franklin is the FT’s US banking editor
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