MONDAY: Is Stephen A. Smith prepared for the White House?

MONDAY, MAY 5, 2025

CNN wants to find out: Is anything dumber than conducting interviews—in early May 2025, no less—about who might run for president as part of Campaign 2028?

As it turns out, something is dumber! It's even dumber to conduct such discussions with ESPN's ebullient Stephen A. Smith:

Tapper Presses Stephen A. Smith About Whether He’s Qualified to Run for the White House

CNN’s Jake Tapper pressed ESPN’s Stephen A. Smith—who has been flirting with a run for president in 2028—about whether he’s truly qualified.

In an interview on CNN’s State of the Union Sunday (notably, Smith’s second recent appearance on the Sunday morning political talk shows), Tapper confronted the First Take host about whether he’s actually up for the job.

Sad! That's the way the report begins at Mediaite. At a complex, challenging time like this, it's hard to believe that a major news org like CNN would waste its time on a waste-of-time discussion like that—on its major Sunday interview showcase, no less.

Astonishing but true: Back in April, Jonathan Karl grilled Smith about the same topic on ABC's Sunday talk show, This Week.

Something similar seems to be happening on the daily Morning Joe program. For reasons which make no obvious sense. the program seems to be in the process of adopting sports talker Pablo Torre as its regular puppy / mascot.

This morning, the pattern unfolded again. For whatever reason, Torre was asked to sit all through the 6 o'clock hour. He was asked to speak by the host exactly once, at 6:17 a.m. 

For the rest of the hour, he was condemned to sit in silence and listen as vastly more experienced people conducted serious discussions about serious international issues.

Skillfully, let's be fair. Torre is a Harvard grad. Also, he's plainly quite bright. That said, the leading authority on such matters thumbnails him as shown:

Pablo S. Torre 

Pablo Sison Torre (born September 27, 1985) is an American sportswriter, podcaster, and television host. He hosts Pablo Torre Finds Out with Meadowlark Media. He previously hosted and contributed to various programs at ESPN, including the television program High Noon with Bomani Jones and the podcast ESPN Daily.

[..]

In March 2023, Torre joined Meadowlark Media, a new company founded by former colleague Dan Le Batard. It was reported that Torre was expected to continue contributions to the ESPN programs Around the Horn and Pardon the Interruption.

In September 2023, Torre launched a new podcast and webseries called Pablo Torre Finds Out.

Not that there's anything wrong with it! To our eye and ear, Torre tends to be a bit kitschy and shticky, even as a sports talker, possibly with a bit too much focus on brand promotion. 

That said, he's also plenty smart, and he seems like the world's nicest person. But why is he sitting around the Morning Joe table, not being asked to speak or opine, while highly experienced people talk about Gaza and Ukraine? 

Given the way he's forced to sit in silence, it looks like someone behind the scenes wants his presence on the show, while the host of the show maybe on balance doesn't. That of course is an unfounded guess.

This morning, Pablo sat there for the hour. He was asked to speak exactly once. Finally, at 7{02, he was asked to kill some time discussing the weekend's sports. 

This isn't the first time this pattern has played out in recent weeks. Torre has also been featured as a full-blown, hour-long guest on The Eleventh Hour with Stephanie Ruhle, with nothing but actual news events actually being discussed.

We like to pretend that these are fraught times. The suits at some of the major news orgs may have different ideas. They're cadging personalities from the world of cable sports and from the sports talk web.

We've mentioned CNN and MSNBC. At Fox, it does get worse. 

They're now using Smith as a guest on their primetime shows. For lowlife programs like Gutfeld!, they drag in "analysts" from such sports sites as Outkick:

Outkick

OutKick is an American sports and political commentary website owned by Fox Corporation. Founded by Clay Travis, the site features news, opinion pieces, and podcasts surrounding sports and popular culture, presented from a conservative perspective. Travis sold the company to Fox Corporation in 2021, with the site integrated into the Fox Sports division. The site also synergizes with Fox News.

Clueless guests are imported from Outkick, especially if they're conventionally attractive young women. In fairness, they do know how to recite script in this most intelligent and most sincere of all possible corporate worlds.

Is Stephen A Smith prepared for the White House? For reasons which come from the far side of Pluto, CNN wants to find out!