Stephen A. Smith, who is best known for his sports commentary but in recent years has made a big push into covering politics, sat down with President Trump for a face-to-face interview that I thought was really good.
I’m not here to say Stephen A. is the second-coming of journalism, but I do think this is far superior to any interview you’re going to see from the “Mainstream Media”.
He was tough but respectful, and that’s what you want to see.
I don’t want to see a softball interview, but I also don’t want to see an hour worth of gotcha-questions that are designed only to create a 5 second soundbite and not at all designed to have an honest and open conversation.
Stephen A. did a great job having a tough, but open and honest conversation, and I can respect it.
It also helps that these two have known each other for many years.
I thought it was great and I wanted you to see it.
Watch here:
If this is helpful, here’s a Table of Contents:
0:00 Intro: Inside the White House Roosevelt Room
1:11 Analyzing the 2026 Midterm Election Losses
5:45 Ken Paxton, John Cornyn & GOP Primary Endorsements
8:47 The War with Iran, Nuclear Threats & Gas Prices
16:16 How Tariffs Are Bringing Back U.S. Manufacturing
19:18 Debating “Fake News” & Political Messaging
25:33 Trump’s Record with Black Voters & HBCU Funding
27:45 Criminal Justice Reform & Alice Marie Johnson’s Story
36:24 Hypothetical Matchup: Donald Trump vs. Barack Obama
38:31 Border Security & Chief of Staff Stephen Miller
44:24 Jensen Huang Steps Down at Nvidia (Tim Cook Suggestion)
46:28 How Trump Will Spend His Last 2 Years In Office
And a full transcript here if you prefer:
Chapter 1: Intro: Inside the White House Roosevelt Room
I asked, he answered. Weeks ago, when I visited the White House for dinner with the president of the United States and Bill Maher, I made sure to slide in a request that he would sit down with me to conduct an interview. The president promised that he would do so, and that’s exactly what he did.
This is Stephen A. Smith. I am with you right now inside the White House, the famous Roosevelt room, and I am here with the president of the United States of America.
Mr. President, thank you for doing this. Thank you. You promised me that you would do it and you kept your word. I really, really appreciate it.
ADVERTISEMENTNo problem. Before I even start this interview, let me say that I just did a show at an H.B.C.U., Tuskegee University, and the ladies in the administration there wanted me to extend a personal thank you to you. That’s right. When you basically eliminated debt for H.B.C.U.s back a few years ago in the price of $1.6 billion at least. So want to thank you for that.They wanted to make sure I extended that thank you.
Nice. Thank you.
Sure. Let’s get right to it because I got a lot of tough questions to ask you. We sit here today in the aftermath of the midterms and what happened.
Chapter 2: Analyzing the 2026 Midterm Election Losses
What happened, Mr. President?
Well, number one, I wasn’t on the ballot and if you look at the numbers that I had just a short time before, they were a record. Every one of them was a record number. I won Texas in a record. I won Florida. I won Alabama. I won virtually every state of the states we talk about by a record number.
What happened? I guess they probably—well, there are a couple of different answers to that. When you look at what’s going on in Alaska where you have two Dan Sullivans running—shouldn’t be allowed when you add them up. And they actually added another person. And so they put two people on against one person. That’s an unfair thing. And I think some people would say there were some disparities that shouldn’t have happened.
But beyond that, I would say that maybe the war was not unpopular as a war, but unpopular because of the fact that the gasoline prices were higher, the oil prices. And I actually thought that that was something that people would be able to handle pretty well. Well, you know, it’s not a big price to pay for stopping the number one state sponsor of terror, which is the Islamic Republic of Iran, stopping them from having a nuclear weapon. And we’ve done that. And it’ll end soon, but we’ve done that.
And I really thought that that was something that the other candidates could wither. I think I would have done fine, but they weren’t able to do that because to the voter, I think gas prices went up and that seemed to be I think the biggest impact.
But that doesn’t seem to be what your own party is saying. I interviewed Governor Ron DeSantis last week on my show.Obviously, I’ve spoken to several Republicans and then you look at some of the numbers. Net loss of eight seats with Alaska still uncalled. Gubernatorial seats, Republicans lost five governorships in Georgia, Iowa, Nevada, Ohio, and Texas. House Republicans are projected to lose more than 40 seats. And from a state legislative standpoint, Democrats flipped more than 500 seats.
Yeah. So, you said going into the midterms, “put you on the ballot.” I did. So, how can it not be that you were?
ADVERTISEMENTWell, they didn’t do it. They didn’t put me on the ballot. The people didn’t believe in the candidates perhaps. Look, I won the state a short time before, every state we’re talking about, in almost records. Ohio was a record. I won by many points,like 14, 15 points. In Florida, I won by the largest vote in history. In Texas, I won by the largest vote in history. Again,Alabama, so many I could name them. I think it’s over 30. I have the highest—Alaska, I had the highest vote in history. I had so much. And I think I still have it. You saw with the rallies, I mean, the rallies were packed. We’d have 15, 20,25,000 people at every rally.
But isn’t it possible that people might have liked you, but they may not have liked the candidates you endorsed? Or is it one of those simple situations where the price of groceries, the price of gas, and so on and so forth? Those kind of things,the cost of living, affordability became an issue America felt you didn’t address because you were preoccupied with the war.
No, I think it’s both. I feel I had to do what I did in Iran. I think historically that’s going to be a great decision. I hope. But short-term I guess it is tougher politically. I knew that. I mean I had this thing going so perfectly and it’s still going. Look,we have the highest stock market we’ve ever had. Now it’s interesting that the day after the election the stock market lost $3 trillion in value and that tells you the people are in love with the Democrats because they were voting on Democrats.
And but your approval rating was lower than them. Your approval rating is lower than the Democrats.
Well, I have an approval rating on CNN of 99% in the Republican party and I have an approval rating on—they compared myself, Abraham Lincoln and Ronald Reagan, and Lincoln was at 8%, Reagan was at 14% and I was at 56% or something like that. So, I think my approval rating is good, but I wasn’t on the ballot. When you’re not on the ballot, you don’t pull them in. Don’t forget I was on the ballot three times and every time I was on the ballot we won.
But Mr. President, you said “put you on the ballot” and now you’re saying they didn’t. That means they didn’t listen to President Donald Trump.
Chapter 3: Ken Paxton, John Cornyn & GOP Primary Endorsements
That’s not what we know when it comes to you, when it comes to MAGA, when it comes to your supporters. I mean,they’ve spent the vast majority of the last decade listening to the things that you have to say. So when you told them to put you on the ballot, now you’re saying they didn’t listen to you.
Well, I say that they maybe didn’t like the candidates. Look, I mean, I understand.
ADVERTISEMENTDid you like them?
Some of them I liked, some of them I liked less, but I thought every one of them was better than the Democrats in terms of policy.
But I’m talking about did you like them better than the other Republicans that they would have gone against. I’m thinking along the lines of a Ken Paxton compared to Senator John Cornyn in Texas.
I think Cornyn would have done badly. I don’t think he would have done very well. I think Paxton, you know, didn’t do too well, but I don’t think Cornyn would have done any better. I mean, I understood that the base liked him better. He—look, they had a race and he won. It’s not a question. I did endorse him and he won after I endorsed him. But Paxton had a race against Cornyn and the Republicans put him out there, and when they put him out there, he didn’t do as well as perhaps he should.
Why did you endorse Paxton to begin with? I mean, his record coming into it wasn’t that great. I know you say as an attorney general, but he had a relatively stained past, to be kind, and there are those that would ask why. I mean, he had issues. Why him?
Because he was a good attorney general and I had problems with John Cornyn in the past where he was not supportive of me and a couple of things that I was not—that I didn’t like. So I decided that I’d go with Paxton. I don’t think Cornyn would have done—I’m not—I have nothing against Cornyn really, but he was very disloyal to me early on. He was disloyal at certain parts when it perhaps was maybe a good thing for him to be, you know, when I wasn’t in as much favor as at other times, but he wasn’t for me. And I remember that, you know, I have a very good memory.
One of the things I brought up when—and I’m going to get off Paxton, but one of the things I brought up, I want to use him as an example because I don’t believe any candidate that refuses to show up for a debate spending 12 years deserves public office. I just think, excuse my language, I think that’s a punk move. And that’s not something anyone will ever accuse you of. You’re debating anybody. You showed up all over the country. This is—you’re here right now. It’s what you do. Yet you’re endorsing people that are running from the public. That’s not the Donald Trump that I know.
And for the record, just so we can remind everybody, you and I have gone back decades now. We’ve known each other for a long time. I think we’ve liked each other.
Yeah. Yes. Absolutely.
So, he should have done the debates. I thought he should have done the debates. I thought it was a mistake. I thought it was close enough that the debates were very important. So what that means and others too, you know, others skip the debate. A lot of them thought if they get my endorsement, they don’t have to debate. I think getting the endorsement with some hurt them because it didn’t hurt them, but they didn’t work as hard as they should have worked.
What about people who look at it and they say there’s two things that cost the Republicans all these seats? It’s the war with Iran and it’s your tariffs.
Chapter 4: The War with Iran, Nuclear Threats & Gas Prices
They blame that. And I even heard you mention something about your tariffs along those lines. What role do you think that played in the GOP losing as much as they did in these midterms?
Well, the war is just something I had to do regardless. I knew the war would be—wars are always very difficult when you have elections, but I had to do it. That should have been done long before me by other presidents. It should have been done a long time ago. The USS Cole, 400 people killed, so many people. Well, even recently, they killed 75,000 protesters. Who ever heard of that? Much more than 75,000 now. That was as of two or three months ago. It’s an evil empire and we’ve knocked the hell out of them and they won’t have a nuclear weapon. We’ve taken that away and we’ll make sure we take it away. That’s why I’m there.
Why is it still going on? Why haven’t they been finished? Because I’ve heard you say you could take them out. You can end this. Why haven’t you?
I could end it immediately, but at the request of the nations that I’m looking to protect, we are doing it a little bit longer way, a little bit more civilly. Saudi Arabia has asked me to please just let it be the way it is now for a while because they’re disintegrating. Qatar, if you look at that, Kuwait, UAE, Bahrain, all of them would much prefer the waiting period.We put a very big financial hurt on them and they are—look, they have 300% more than that of inflation. They have no money. They haven’t paid their guard. They haven’t paid their soldiers. They haven’t paid their police and it’s a nation that’s in serious trouble. So, they’ve asked me to do that and I’m doing that. I’m not sure I agree with it, but we’ve taken them largely out.
As you know, their navy’s gone, their air force is gone, their anti-aircraft is gone, everything is gone. Frankly, their leaders are gone for the most part.
But that’s the reason we’re still there. That’s the reason we’re still in this war because the people that we’re looking to protect and that includes Israel—the people that we’re looking to protect, which is basically the Middle East and we’ve had great relationships with them, they’re tremendous investors in our country, they spend trillions of dollars in our country—the people that we’re here to protect would rather have me do it the way I’m doing it now.
I’m going to say this, Mr. President. I’ll take you at your word, but I don’t believe that all that that’s all that there is. I’m going to ask you this question because I watched you on 60 Minutes and particularly when it came to the issue of hating your enemies and Nancy Pelosi’s name was mentioned, James Comey’s name was mentioned. And I’m thinking about, as you said, look at what they, as in the Democrats, tried to do to you in terms of throwing you in jail and things of that nature. I’m thinking along the lines of, well, they tried to throw you in jail. Iran tried to kill you. Vengeance is not something that you mind exacting against those you perceive to be your enemies, one would say. I don’t think you would deny that. So, if that’s the case, how much of a role does that play in the United States still being in the position that it’s in with Iran, knowing how much you hate them because they’ve tried to kill you?
Well, it’s a human reflex. I mean, I feel that way. I know you would feel that way, too. I think I know you well enough to say that you’re probably not a lot different than me in that way. But no, it’s certainly if somebody treats you with—differently, let’s say nicely as opposed to the opposite. I hate my opponents. And it’s not a question of opponents, I hate certain people. I don’t hate all my opponents. I respect a lot of my opponents, but there are some that I think were way across the line, and I have a certain hatred for them.
So do many people. I’ve heard it said about some old—”he never hates.” Well, there’s a lot of hatred in the world and when you get treated the way I got treated by various people—I won’t use names, but various people politically—and I survived, I became president again and we have a country that’s hot as a pistol. And by the way, speaking about your tariffs, without tariffs would be almost a dead country. We have right now thousands of plants being built all over the United States and that’s only done to avoid tariffs. If we didn’t have the tariffs, we wouldn’t have any. If I said right now,”I’m going to stop the tariffs,” all of those plants would stop construction.
I’m going to come right back to the tariffs, but I still want you to finish answering about the hatred that you feel for Iran.They’ve got a billboard in Tehran right now talking about killing you.
Yeah. That has nothing to do with why you’re still there. They’re an evil enemy. They’ve killed many Americans. They’ve killed many American soldiers, sailors, as you know, with the USS Cole, but other than that, they’ve killed 75,000 protesters recently, and it’s much more than that. They’re a very evil group of people, and I certainly—I don’t hate the people of Iran, but I think their leadership has been a horrible, horrible thing. It truly is. It’s the number one state sponsor of terror in the world. Everybody said that. That’s not a phrase used by me. It’s a phrase given by many people that know what’s happening, including the United Nations.
And so when I say “hate,” I certainly don’t love them. They have done—they’ve killed a lot of American soldiers.
But like you’ve said, you’ve basically disarmed them. You’ve obliterated them to some degree. At least that’s what you say.
No, no, no, no. It’s not what I say. It’s what happened. I mean, you just take a look, you sound like the New York Times.They try and justify everything. That’s what happens. Look, they are a very bad group of people. The leadership I’m talking about, they’re violent. They hate us. They say “death to America” constantly. They say “death to Israel.” They say “death” in many cases to the Middle East. Look, they attacked five countries that weren’t even their enemies and they attacked them, which was the biggest surprise of that war because they went after Saudi Arabia, they went after UAE, and they went after Qatar.
Okay. So, let’s put it this way. If it wasn’t for the other nations, particularly in the Middle East, that don’t want you to do that, would you have already taken them out?
Yes, I would. I would have.
And by taking them out, that means what? What exactly?
Going further than I went. We’ve gone very far. We’ve attacked them pretty far, but we for the most part left their bridges alone. We took out one big bridge because they behaved very badly. But and we’ve let their electric manufacturing capability survive and we haven’t attacked their energy at all. We haven’t attacked their energy. If I want to take them out,I hit their energy. In one day their energy is gone. In one day, their bridges are gone. And in one day, their manufacturing capability is gone. It would only take me three days. One day each.
Chapter 5: How Tariffs Are Bringing Back U.S. Manufacturing
Let’s go back to the tariffs because you brought that up and I brought that up. Kansas is a state. You lost. First time—
No, no, I didn’t lose. I won Kansas in a record number.
I’m talking about the midterms. I’m just talking about the midterms. Turned over since the first time since 19—
Again, I’m not on the ballot. I went, I made a speech for some people, but I’m not on the ballot. If I was on the ballot, I think it would have been a difference. But in the Midwest, you’re talking about tractors and what have you. It was at $4 per gallon for diesel fuel, and now it’s over $6. People are using that.
That’s because of the war. But remember this, under Biden, gasoline was higher than Trump. Under Barack Hussein Obama, gasoline was higher than Trump, and they didn’t take out Iran. I did. I did something that they were not willing to do. In fact, Obama gave them a path to a nuclear weapon. He signed the JCPOA. It’s a disastrous deal. One of the dumbest deals I’ve ever seen. That was a path for Iran to have a nuclear weapon. It expired three years ago, by the way, if I didn’t terminate it, but I terminated it before that. It was a short-term deal. It gave a path for Iran to have a nuclear weapon.
If Iran had a nuclear weapon, they would use it, Stephen, immediately.
So, with that being said, basically what you’re saying is the tariffs, the war, even though obviously it contributed to an elevation in prices, affordability, creating affordability issues, at least in people’s minds in the United States of America.You’re saying at the end of the day, you have no doubt that you did the right thing and you wouldn’t do anything differently.
Well, I look, can you say no doubt? Look, there’s a possibility that they wouldn’t have used—possibility. I think it’s a small possibility that they wouldn’t have used the nuclear weapon that they were two weeks away from having, in which case I guess I would say I shouldn’t have done this. But I think the probability, the strong probability, is they would have used it and they would have wiped out the entire Middle East and they would have gone beyond that. I know my customer. You know, my whole—my whole thing in life is deals. Even the presidency, that’s a deal. Like, you know, you have to wheel and deal and everything else. Someday you may try it. But my whole thing is deals. My whole life has been a big deal. And I know people, and if you don’t know people, you wouldn’t know how to make a deal.
And I will tell you, these are very vicious people. They’re very violent people. They were trying to get a nuclear weapon to use it and I bombed the hell out of their sites. And now we have a site called Pickaxe Mountain, which I may do or may not do. They haven’t been very active there, but if they are, we’ll bomb that one, too. But we bombed—they would have had a nuclear weapon within—that was over a year ago now. The B2 bombers, they would have had a nuclear weapon and they would have used it.
So, if that’s the case, that makes oil going up actually a pretty small amount. You know, I thought oil was going to go much higher. If you look today, I’m taking out more oil through the Hormuz than they did before the war started.
Chapter 6: Debating “Fake News” & Political Messaging
You and I spoke weeks ago, and thank you again for hosting me to the dinner here, myself with Bill Maher. We won’t bring him up. But here’s my question to you. Back then, you told me, you said trillions of dollars are coming into America. You’ll see. You’ll see. The American people are saying, “When are we going to see it?” We haven’t seen it yet.
It takes a while to have the plants open. Look, right now they just announced massive car companies are coming in.They’re leaving Mexico. They’re leaving Canada. You know, they sold all these. They sold 60% of our companies.Mexico, Canada, if you look at South Korea, mostly Germany and Japan, those five, but others also, they took our car industry and they cut it in half, but more than half. And all of a sudden, we’re importing cars from all over the world. And we don’t have our workers. Our auto workers were—I did phenomenally in Michigan. I won Michigan, as you probably know. And I won the auto workers because they knew exactly what I was saying.
And what I’ve done is we have auto plants now being built all over the United States, including Detroit, where they’re doing massive expansions of existing plants. Without me, all those—we would be losing the rest of our auto plants. I also saved the steel industry. Without tariffs, it would be impossible. And the reason is, and it seems so simple, but I really believe that people are smart, but sometimes they’re just bad people. They just don’t want it to be known. The reason is that they were coming in and dumping steel in the United States, and our factories were all going bankrupt. We were down to almost nobody, nothing.
I saved US Steel. I made a merger. I worked out a merger saving US Steel, which used to be the biggest company. That was the big company of the day that when you hear about the Googles and the Apples and all these big companies, the big company used to be US Steel, the biggest company in the world for a long period of time. It was reduced to nothing. Now it’s thriving. It’s doing great.
Well, that’s not the message the American people receive. Why did they receive it? Because you’re the master—
How come they didn’t receive that message?
Because you have fake news that doesn’t want to report the message now.
But your bet—I mean, it’s gotten to the point where, you know, you’ve been saying “fake news” for years, but somehow,someway you were able to get your message across when you ran in 2015, 2016, 2020, 2024, etc. I mean, why now?
Well, I just think that it’s just a point in time and I think it had to do maybe with the war, but I don’t think it was the war as much as what the war did. It lifted up gasoline prices. I’m disappointed in people because I really think it’s a very small—it’s really a very small thing to pay to get rid of a country that would absolutely, in my opinion, use nuclear weapons on us, on others, but also on us. And by the way, if it’s others, that pertains also, you’re killing millions of people. They would kill millions and millions of people.
But the tariff thing has made this country so rich. We are building, people are leaving—now it’s, you know, tariffs were used against us by China and others. Now we’re using them much better than anybody ever used them. And we have somebody’s going to be president in two years and they’re going to say that person is an incredible genius because we have factories opening up and they’re starting now, but they’re opening up at levels never seen before.
Look at our jobs numbers. We had the best job numbers we’ve ever had. Look at the numbers from last week. We were expecting 20 jobs—20,000—and it turned out to be 165,000 jobs for the month. Nobody’s ever seen numbers like what we’re doing and that’s because of tariffs. Now, the Democrats say “tariff”—I always say that tariff is a word that needs public relations. It’s the best thing that ever happened to us. It’s made us strong again. It saved our jobs. We would be a country where the factories were all leaving under Obama. You know, Obama has been a bit—it’s been a bit—Obama said, “We will never be a manufacturing country again.”
So last week it came out that exporting—the exporting is the number one we’ve ever had. Number one month we’ve ever had. That’s manufacturing. Obama said that. Biden didn’t say anything because I don’t think Biden knew too much about what was happening if you want to know the truth. But Obama said it and we were losing our country under Biden. We were losing our country. If we had to go through another year, I don’t think we would have had a country. And we’re thriving.
Just so you understand, we’re building hundreds and hundreds of factories, plants. You know, the entire medical industry is coming back. You know, during COVID we learned something that we don’t make medicine anymore. Do you know that Pfizer, Merck, Eli Lilly—do you know they’re building hundreds of billions of dollars worth of plants now? You know why? Because of tariffs. I said, “You’ve got two years to build your plant. After that, we’re going to charge you 300% tariff.” First year, no tariff. Second, you can keep bringing it in from China, Ireland, England. First year, no tariff.Second year, 10%, very small. Third year, 300%. You have two years to build your factory.
They’re building like crazy. And what’s going to happen? We’re going to make all of our own medicine. We’re going to make all of our own steel. We’re going to make all of our own aluminum. These are commitments. We’re going to use our own—that’s coming to the United States. You know for a fact this is going to come. This is not just people giving you your money. It’s already built and building it. I’m asking you.
No. No. These are factories that are under construction right now. They’re spending hundreds of billions of dollars building factories that are under construction. And if you look at the job numbers last week, the job numbers are incredible. The job numbers are—people have never seen the construction numbers. You know why? Because we’re building, we’re leading in AI by a lot. And data centers are very important by the way, but people are going to stay.
This is a Guest Post from our friends over at WLTReport. View the original article here.
