ESPN host Stephen A. Smith stood up for Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer during an interview on ABC’s “This Week.”
Speaking with guest host Jonathan Karl, Smith said Whitmer was doing her job and critics needed to grow up.
“She’s the governor of Michigan. She has no choice but to do that, and anybody that thinks otherwise is just being foolish and immature and childish,” he said.
Smith’s defense came after former President Donald Trump praised Whitmer during a meeting in the Oval Office last week. Trump called her “a great person” and said she had done “an excellent job.” Smith said backlash over her presence was just “utterly ridiculous.”
“The fact is she’s the governor of a state in the United States of America. You need to do business with the federal government. He’s the president of the United States, you don’t get to circumvent him. So, as a result, you have to be an adult in the room and be prepared to do business and anybody who would encourage her to do otherwise is just being utterly ridiculous,” Smith said.
But Smith didn’t stop with Whitmer’s defenders. He went after Democrats too. He said Trump’s win in 2024 came down to one thing — the party is lost.
“He seems very convincing in letting people know what he feels in getting them to see his way of thinking, but I think it’s a product, a by-product, rather, of the Democratic Party and the fact they don’t seem to have any mission, any vision, any kind of leadership,” Smith told Karl. “They seem rudderless, to say the least, and now it’s at a point where they’re getting mocked religiously.”
Smith said Americans now see Trump as “closer to normal” than Democrats.
“And so, as a result of that, you’re going to look at him and, regardless of the troubles you think he might bring forth, unless things become disastrous economically, the fact of the matter is the American people have already said during the last election he’s a bit more normal or closer to normal than the Democratic Party and that’s where the real problem lies,” Smith said. “It might be a two-party system but there’s only one party running this country right now, because the Democrats have no muscle whatsoever.”
Smith also criticized the Democrats’ messaging. He said their focus on cultural issues missed the mark.
“You’re going to have a multitude of Democratic representatives on with you. They talk and they talk and they talk, but what can they do?” Smith asked Karl. “They position themselves to do absolutely nothing.”
He said voters didn’t care about “woke” issues — they wanted results. And Trump, Smith argued, at least talked about things that mattered.
“I didn’t hear anything about tariffs from the Democrats before the election. Trump had been preaching about this for the longest time,” Smith continued. “The way people decry his strategy, he’s been bloviating about that. They said nothing about it. Instead, they talked about everything from woke culture to cancel culture to abortion rights and all of this other stuff, but that wasn’t going to win the election and that’s what we have to look at. What is it going to take to get the job done? That’s why somebody who is a sports analyst, for cryin’ out loud, is in the daggone polls. It’s not somebody bigger than me, it’s an indictment against the Democratic Party that doesn’t have leadership and doesn’t have a vision, and it’s sad.”