ESPN broadcaster Stephen A. Smith has no time for James Carville’s dated trash talk about his political prospects.
“Sir, do you have to be so rude?” Smith said on his podcast Friday, after the Bill Clinton strategist went on a long-winded rant about the sportscaster on his own podcast. “Dropping F-bombs and going off like that. I know that’s your nature…But let’s just say two can do that. I mean, if you really wanted to get raw, ain’t nobody hiding from that.
“I could be that way, but my mom told me to respect my elders,” Smith continued. “And you are 80 years of age if I remember correctly.”
The brash octagenarian Democratic Party lifer – who lately can be found trashing Kamala Harris’s campaign ad nauseam – took to his “Politics War Room” podcast earlier this week to claim that, “when it comes to politics, he [Smith] doesn’t know his ass from a hole in the ground.”
“He’s on there running his damn mouth about how he may have to run as a Democrat because there’s nothing left of the Democratic Party, there’s no talent,” Carville said. “Before you start running f**king your mouth off about politics, a topic of which you really don’t know anything about, you ought to sit back and think about it. Call some people and run it by them.”
Back on his own podcast, Smith went on to question the true source of Carville’s fury, suggesting that his loss of a podium was more to blame.
“You sound like one of those old curmudgeons that want things to stay the or be the way that they used to be. You’re resentful, harboring an abundance of animosity because you’re not being heard,” Smith said. “That’s not Stephen A. Smith’s fault.”
The sportscaster asked Carville to consider the “havoc [he’d] wreak” if he made a move into politics, though he clarified there was no run for the White House in his sights.
“Are y’all sure you want that smoke?” Smith said. “Because it’s like you’re daring me to, Mr. James Carville, like you’re daring me to. You sure? Are you sure? You might want to think about that.”
Smith’s potential run earned a write-up from the New Yorker last weekend, weeks after a poll showed the “First Take” commentator capturing a shocking slice of Democratic voters in a hypothetical 2028 race. He gained attention for his criticisms of the Democratic party and its lack of substantive promises, ironically issues that Carville also raised after Harris’s loss.
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