Stephen A. Smith 'leaving all doors open' for presidential bid

Sports commentator Stephen A. Smith on Monday said he is “leaving all doors open” when it comes to a presidential bid.

“Time to stop messing around. Life is great. Especially at ESPN/Disney. Hate the thought of being a politician. But sick of this mess. So I’m officially leaving all doors open,” Smith said in a post on the social platform X in response to reporting that the sports personality said a bid for the White House is not out of his future.

Smith has a longstanding history of weighing in on politics, but has been particularly critical of the Democratic Party in the wake of President Trump’s success in the 2024 election, pushing for it to refocus on top issues for voters in last year’s election cycle including immigration and inflation.

In early March, Smith gave his seal of approval to talk that he could move from sports to politics during an appearance on NBC’s “The Tonight Show.”

“Folks are nuts, number one,” Smith said to comedian Jimmy Fallon at the time when asked what he thought about recent headlines calling him a possible future presidential candidate.

“Number two, the Democrat Party, they lost. They had a bad few months. We all know this. And even though there’s a lot of qualified Democrats all over the country from a local perspective — governors, mayors, stuff like that — there’s no real national voice.”

“Enter moi,” Smith said. “They’ve come to me.”

A little over a week ago, Smith went after Republicans for entertaining the chance of Trump going forward with a third White House bid.

“Wait a minute, you’re a Republican voter out there. I thought your party was the party that preached about the Constitution. I thought your party was the party that said, ‘We’re not violating, we’re not circumventing, we’re not slithering our way through to get what we want,’” Smith said during a live discussion on March 31.