Stephen A. Smith Hits Back at MAGA ‘Megaphone’ Label: ‘I Don’t Trust Either Side’ | WATCH

foraa754@gmail.comApril 6, 2025

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Stephen A. Smith Hits Back at MAGA ‘Megaphone’ Label: ‘I Don’t Trust Either Side’ | WATCH

*Stephen A. Smith has joined the political battlefield, with addressing an MSNBC writer who labeled him a “megaphone for MAGA propaganda,”

Not one to let a critique against him slide, Smith took 30 minutes of time on his podcast “The Stephen A. Smith Show” to address the scribe, Ja’han Jones, while setting the record straight and taking aim back at “the left” for its precociousness and hypocrisy regarding messaging.

For him, it’s never been about taking sides, so much as it is providing views on each side on the hot issue that folk are speaking on.

“I think that’s the exact problem with the left,” Smith said. “You see, if I don’t agree with you, I must be MAGA. It must be the case. I’m ‘platforming’ MAGA propaganda, is that so? I don’t see it that way. First of all, even though I lean left, particularly with how I vote in presidential elections, I want to emphasize that I’ve always been a centrist my entire life. I’ve never once described myself as a Democrat or a Republican. I’m a centrist. I’m a moderate. I don’t trust either side.”

Smith’s response comes days after Jones shined a light on him with the MAGA megaphone” descriptor in an Op-Ed at MSNBC. ESPN sports analyst has crossed over into the political conversation with his noted unchained opinions on the movers, shakers and happenings impacting constituents like him who stay knowing about issues that affect us all.

Smith’s interviews with far-right representatives Candace Owens and ICE director Tom Homan have made him put him on the radar of Democrats. Yet he has also raised eyebrows since the election from chats conservative commentators like Ben Shapiro and Megyn Kelly in addition to his long-running relationships with Sean Hannity and Bill O’Reilly.

Nevertheless, Smith emphasized that he does not and will not ever agree with those folks on everything, Awful Announcing noted, adding that he brings his political guests on his show for the purpose of needling them about situations to have it out with him on the airwaves.

“I don’t agree with everything, but they feel that way,” he said. “And so now we have to get into a discussion into whether or not they have a right to express their point of views and whether or not you have a salient point to debunk what they’re going to throw in our direction before you excoriate them.”

Trump-adjacent hosts aren’t the only ones that have been in Smith’s hotseat. Democratic politicians – including Maryland Gov. Wes Moore, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro and House minority leader U.S. Rep. Hakeem Jeffries – have sat where their Republican rivals have sat to face off with the “First Take” co-host.

Overall, balance is the objective for Smith with conversating with those in the national conversation, no matter what side of the political coin they are on.

“I’m going to talk to everyone that I can,” he said. “I think people have a right to feel differently … but I’ve been on the record stating in the past that I could interview the Ku Klux Klan and I wouldn’t blink. As long as I could ask them what I want to ask them, their answers are their answers. It’s for you to absorb and to take. On this platform, I will interview anybody that’s resonating with the masses about significant, pertinent issues. Left, right, in the middle. It does not matter to me. That’s not providing a megaphone for one side.”

Despite striking a nerve with how he comes off, Smith believes his grip on the pulse of the content and communications machine better than party traditionalists in the party and at corporate media entities like MSNBC.

“The right takes what it can get to publicize and disseminate their message,” he stated. “The left wants to hand-pick who they want to be messengers, instead of listening to the public say to them, ‘excuse me, this is how we feel. This is where we’re coming from. what we stand on. That’s who we support’ … the Democratic party is always intervening and getting in the way of what the voters want. That’s why y’all lost, and if you don’t learn, you’re going to continue to (lose).”