Stephen A. Smith challenged President Trump, Vice President J.D. Vance, and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to a debate over slashing DEI programs.

“President Trump: I’m happy to sit down with you and have that conversation sir. I’d love for you to try and defend it,” Smith said.

“Vice President Vance, you to. Pete Hegseth, you to. Stephen A. Smith is calling you out on national television. I’d love for you to sit down with the cameras rolling and try to defend this. It’s ridiculous,” he continued.

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Daily Mail reports:

Stephen A. Smith has taken a furious swipe at Donald Trump over his stance on DEI programs and urged the president to debate him on TV over the controversial topic.

In his first week back in office, Trump issued a series of executive orders to restrict DEI (Diversity, Equity and Inclusion) initiatives in the US after branding them a form of ‘discrimination’.

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DEI laws and measures had been under attack for years by Republicans who believe they threaten merit-based hiring, promotion and educational opportunities of white people, specifically white men. Some Asian Americans also argue DEI unfairly limits opportunities for students and workers, while certain members of the black community claim it undermines years of progress.

However, supporters of the programs are adamant that they are necessary to ensure institutions meet the needs of increasingly diverse populations.

Smith, who has emerged as a shock candidate to run for presidency in recent months, sits on the latter side of the debate after accusing Trump of ‘forgetting’ about the black, Hispanic and young voters who helped him return to office.

‘Nobody is calling out the president Donald Trump. I will,’ the ESPN host and political commentator said in a passionate rant on the latest edition of ‘First Take’. ‘And I’m not gonna call him names and all of this stuff like stupid folks on the left are doing, engaging in incendiary rhetoric. It’s unnecessary, it’s immature and it’s uncalled for.

Per Breitbart:

On Thursday’s edition of his ESPN show First Take, Smith took Hegseth to task after the Department of Defense (DOD) removed an article about Robinson’s military service from its website. The article on Robinson was not targeted by DOD; instead, it was one of several scrubbed as part of the effort to purge diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) content from government websites.

Once criticism of the move reached DOD officials, the article was restored.

This did not placate Smith, who, after spending considerable time blasting the administration, challenged Trump, Vance, and Hegseth to defend the government’s actions.

“Similar to civil rights legislation in 1964, similar to things like affirmative action, similar to things like the Rooney Rule in the National Football League, etcetera, how dare you try to get away with highlighting why it needed to exist in the first place?” Smith said. “It was because of the iniquities of folks in the United States of America — primarily the White power structure that exists. It is a fact. It is known throughout history that it is a fact. They want to gloss over and erase the need for those things to take place to begin with.”

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