The Stephen A. Smith ShowStephen A's Take: Roland Martin says No to Trump, NABJ says Yes!
Stephen A. Smith is a New York Times Bestselling Author, Executive Producer, host of ESPN's First Take, and co-host of NBA Countdown.
You got to get started with today's conversation surrounding the National Association of Black Journalists convention, which has taking place in Chicago, Illinois as we speak. The organization made headlines yesterday after Donald Trump, the GOP nominee for the presidency of the United States of America, was invited to speak at the conference today at noon Central Time. And ABJ typically extends speaking invitations to both the Republican and Democratic nominees in a presidential election year, so this is nothing new here, ladies and gentlemen. Nevertheless, Kamala Harris was invited, but at least in the initially, we were told she couldn't attend in person due to scheduling conflicts.
Case of a lot of you don't know. She's expected to.
Attend the funeral of the late Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee in Houston. However, NABJ says they're working with the Harris campaign about providing a virtual option for the presumptive Democratic nominee.
To speak to the organization.
As for Donald Trump, the former President of the United States running for reelection now, he accepted the invitation, causing angst for many NABJ members. One of them is Roland Martin a friend who has appeared on this show on many occasions. Here's what Roland had to say about Trump speaking at the conference today.
Quote.
Donald Trump has been vicious in his attacks on journalist, on journalism and the Fourth Estate. He has pushed fake news. He has sat here and lied about the election results. He's going to lie about HBCUs, He's going to lie about black unemployment. What you're dealing with is a serial old liar. Ladies, gentlemen. Before I get on to the NABJ president and what he had to say, let me first address this whole Roland mart situation.
Roling Martin is a friend. He's somebody that I respect and admire.
He's highly knowledgeable, far more knowledgeable than I am on subjects of this matter, and especially since he's been a member for the NABJ for the last thirty five years, he is qualified to speak his mind and to express his opinion and his thoughts and what have you. But Roland Martin knows that we're not always inclined to agree with him, and this is one of those situations where, respectfully, I don't agree with Roland Martin at all. I really really don't and the reason why I don't agree with it is because if that was the impetus or the provocation to deny somebody showing their face at the NABJ convention, as far as I'm concerned, nobody belongs there. I don't give a damn who it is. There's been exaggerations, there's been embellishments, there's been flat out lives that have been told to black folks, the black community and certainly the NABJ throughout the years.
And I'm not castigating anybody.
I'm simply saying, if you're a politician, let's just say you don't exactly fit expect one transparency and truth. Now, Donald Trump, without question, is on a different level. That man lies to himself. I mean, and you look at Donald Trump. He'll tell you his hair is black. If you ask him long enough, you understand, He'll tell you there's nothing about him that's orange. Okay, He'll tell you all of this stuff. He'll tell you the sky is black when it's blue. We know this, Okay. He does embellish, he does lie, he has lied, he has exaggerated.
We get all of that.
But bottom line is that has nothing to do with him showing up at the National Association for Black Journalism convention. Nothing nothing at all, And so I get where Roland Martin is coming from, but that's not cause to pause his arrival at the NABJ. Roland Martin went on to say this, no black male journalists, four thousand members.
I'm down for the sisters, and if there were three black.
Men and no sisters, I would be joining the sisters asking where's the representation.
Okay, he's right about that, because there should be.
A male up there, not just three females interviewing the former president of the United States, who's the GOP nominee right now.
So Roland Martin makes that case.
There's nothing to argue about there. But that's not about Donald Trump. That's about the NABJ. Why are three women interviewing him instead of two women and a guy. I mean, that is a legitimate question that Roland Martin presents.
And I have no problem with it. But he also goes on.
To say this, I'm also angry at the NABJ for turning down Vice President Kamala Harris's request to appear virtually and take questions. Why couldn't NABJ accommodate her that's a valid point, which is why nabj in all likelihood corrected themselves by making sure to let everybody know they're trying to work so out with her to come on. Virtually, they probably reacted to what Roland Martin said because they know he's right about that. Okay, But in the end, getting back to Roland Martin, I want to say this, no matter how truthful or lack thereof a presidential candidate is, he's a presidential candidate. There's only two of them.
Really.
I know y'all want me to bring up Kennedy, it it doesn't count. It's coming down to Kamala Harris and Donald Trump. What you want to do not hear from him, not let him speak, push him aside, don't let him talk to black journalist.
We don't want that.
The man is the GOP nominee for the presidency of the United States.
There's a fifty to fifty.
Shot, if not better, that he's gonna be the forty seventh president of the United States. He's the number forty five, night's gonna be forty seven. Potentially, what you're gonna do, She's gonna ignore him and not speak to him.
If he wants to lie. Let him lie.
It's our job as journalists to ask the tough questions. It's our job to make sure that the facts are articulated.
But with Roland, Martin has to understand.
And I know he knows this because the brother is smart, he is gifted, he is knowledgeable, and he's experienced in this business. You don't always get to check somebody about every single thing that they say in the moment when you have a limited amount of time with them. See Rowland gives the impression that you want it. You got to check them on the spot with everything. Well, what if every word out of their mouth is embellishment or lies, You're gonna stop the conversation to correct them on every single point. Where there are multitude of points that you want to get to, but only a limited amount of time that you have to get to those points.
We gotta be smarter than that. We gotta be smarter than that. And to talk and listen.
I'm I'm no defender of Donald Trump. I know about the impeachments, I know about the civil suits, I know about the criminal trials. I know about the thirty four felony convictions. We know all of this and everybody's been talking, talking, talking, They're gonna get him, They're gona get it.
He wasn't supposed to be here, Just so you know, he wasn't supposed to be here. He was supposed to be in jail.
Right, he was supposed to be denied the opportunity to be the GOP nominee. Right, How that workout? How that workout? The left has been talking for years, how you.
Gonna get him? You've been talking since.
Twenty sixteen when Hillary Rodham Clinton was calling him a fraud.
Did you get him there? No, you won the.
Popular vote, you lost the electoral college vote. Twenty twenty rolls around, he denies. He's an election results denier, and.
We all know what happened.
That's why Biden's in the white House instead of him.
Okay, so he doesn't want to admit that he lost. He's denying, denying, denine to nine to nine behind. We know. That's why he's not in the White House. That's why he's trying to get back to the White House.
Why are we always tripping? He lies, he embellishes, et cetera, et cetera. He's not going to stop, but he's got a better than fifty percent chance of being back in the White House. If Donald Trump wins reelection and ends up back into the White House, what if as president of the United States, he was willing to say, I'll show up at the NABJ.
You're gonna sit up there and say.
No to the President of the United States if that happens, because he's gonna lie.
Last time I checked, I thought we anticipated lies.
I thought we recognized the fact that he wasn't gonna tell the truth about half the stuff coming out of his mouth, if not more, I thought we were gonna hear it. I thought I thought that was a given. Rachel Scott is moderating it. You have any idea what an outstanding your unless she is, she's outstanding.
I think she's a potential suit. I think she's a superstar in the making. I'm telling you that right now.
I've seen Barbara Walters, I've seen Diane Sawyer on the sports side. You're saying, I've seen Pam Oliver on the sports and news side. I've seen Robin Roberts for years. I think Rachel Scott is a superstar in the making. Nancy Pelosi just snapped it a few weeks ago for asking poignant questions.
She's gonna ask questions.
She can't help it if the man is addicted to lion or to embellishing and pushing forth his own record and his own agenda. Roland mar wants to talk about fake news, fake news, fake news. Here's my problem. I know what he did with April Ryan. I know Howard agreed just that was along with other African American journalists, when he will call them out in a very disrespectful manner. I get that part. I also saw him do it to an Asian woman. I also saw him do it to Don Lemon. I also saw him do it. I forgot the.
Other CNN reporter. I saw him call out Fox News.
Donald Trump complains about anything that's anti.
Trump in any way. It wasn't just black people. He was doing that too.
He's an equal opportunity insult her. He complains all the time, what are we talking about? When we sit up there and we compartmentalize, like there's something that he is doing to us, don't we understand that that gives the other communities a license to look at us and say they just blowing smoke into the wind, acting like his damn here we go again, or they're gonna bring up racism. He's done that to the Asian American community. He's done it to the Mexican community. He's done it to immigrants. He's done it to the gay community, the Don Lemons of the world, and others.
He's done it here.
They're gonna point out all of these things to highlight that it's not race, it's him. I saw the man complain one time about Sean Hannity, and I don't know of a bigger supporter of Donald Trump on the airwaves that Sean Hannity when Brett Bair was interviewing them and highlighted an epic moment where he.
Highlighted all of these hires.
Because Donald Trump saysn't gonna hire the best. I'm gonna hire the best. And you call somebody dumb as a bag of bricks, or ignorant or weak or all of this, you know, gener rules, administration officials. The list goes on and on and on and highlight it an abundance of people that Donald Trump was insulting who worked for him.
Did you know.
That ninety percent if not more, of those people he were insulting and disrespecting and diminishing were white. I'm not saying that race doesn't play a role. I'm not saying that some of the things that he has done certainly hasn't given you cause to pause and to look at him and say, Yo, that's some racially insensitive shit right there.
I'm not saying that.
What I'm saying is when we pointed out as an organization as the National Association of Black Journalist, if we were to sit there and not give him the platform to speak his mind and his thoughts, and to not take the opportunity to challenge him, how would we look. Ryan has been an outstanding reporter for years and I saw how Donald Trump went after her and it was egregious, very unpresidential.
And she wasn't the only reporter. He did it too.
We get all of that, We understand it. He's the GOP nominee, whether you like it or not. Over seventy four million people voted for him when he.
Lost the last election. He smoked through all.
The Conservatives that were competing against them in the primaries, DeSantis, Nikki Harley, for Freck Ramaswami.
Chris Christy. He took him all out. The people on the conservative side have spoken.
They want him, and there are tens of millions of them across America.
When are we gonna grow to hell up? They're not going away. They're not.
They work with you, They work in different networks.
Some of them are your bosses.
They're advertising and sponsors you want to do business with. They're everywhere. Just like you have liberals progressives everywhere, you also have conservatives Republicans everywhere.
Some are willing to admit it, some are not. They're everywhere.
They're not going away, and they don't care about his embellishments. They care about our governments. I was on with Megan Kelly's show, I was on Making Kelly Show yesterday, and she's bringing up how he has governed. You remember how he talked about her in twenty sixteen, how insulting and denigrating and one would say misogynistic he was towards her.
And what does she say, Hey, I didn't like it.
I didn't like him, but I saw how he governed and I'm good with a lot of his policies.
That's what she said. Why am I quoting her?
Because she mimics what seventy four million people did. And oh, by the way, he was ahead in six of the seven polls against Biden. Why is Biden going to Kamala Harris's here because him twice impeached four hundred and fifty four million civil.
Stude against them thirty four.
Felony convictions, didn't do one second of jail time, and cake walked to the GOP nominee and patted his campaign coffers along the way.
He's not going away.
I understand somebody is passionate, as knowledgeable, and who I consider to be a very good dude. In Rolling mart I got a lot of love for Roling mart He's on the show a lot for a reason.
I respect the hell out of him.
But I genuinely like him, And I'm not saying that he's wrong specifically about anything he said about Donald Trump. But at the end of the day, if you are the National Association for Black Journalist, you have to give him that stage. You have to give him that stage, and in doing so, you have to make sure that there are people up there that's gonna grilla. Now, I agree with Roland Martin. Missus Faulkner for Fox News. She has no business up there. And I'm not trying to denegrate her in any way. I'm simply saying because of Fox News and a role that they play with Trump, she's not the person that should be up there. Rachel Scott, I have no problem with, along with the other political analyst and reporter for Semophore, if I remember correctly, I have no problem. But Roland's right in terms of her not needing to be up there, and also for a male to be up.
There as well gender inclusion.
I agree with him there, but Trump should be there no matter what he says, because whatever it is that he does say, there's tens of millions of people that are flowing with it, whether we like it or not. By the way, getting back to the president, Ken Lemon spoke up about out the outrage yesterday. I want you to hear what he had to say about the concerns of the NABJ members over the Trump invitation. In his own words, listen to this.
Absolutely not an endorsement. The first thing that you read when we put out that release says it's not an endorsement. Every year, every presidential election cycle, we invite the presidential candidates to come. We extend that to anyone who is a nominee, and in this case, we have two presumptive nominees. We invited both of them. We got a yes from one of them. We'd love to get a yes from Commrad as well. But in this case, this is an important hour. We have people whose lives are depending on what happens in November for us as journalists, people who go into and have very uncomfortable conversations.
For the sake of our members, this is.
An important time.
This is a great opportunity for us to vet the.
Candidate right here on our ground, and that's what we did.
We were careful about.
Making sure that certain people were involved, just because we know they have.
A reputation of getting answers to questions. In addition to that, we are now working and.
Part of the reason why I'm getting there to breakfast and trying to rush to get in is because we're working on trying to make sure that as he speaks, we fact.
Check it.
Well. I respect mister Lemon's explanation there and I thank him for it, but can we get something out of the way. And this is something that again Roland Martin and I touched on this a couple of weeks ago when he was a guest on this show, and I'll touch on it again.
Fact checking in the moment. Stop. There's not enough.
There's not enough time to fact check everything that Donald Trump says.
This is not ladies and gentlemen.
I'm a sports God's true. I love watching Meet the Press. I love watching This Week supposedly hosted by George Stephanopolis, but there's usually a different host on this some Sundays. I love watching Face the Nation. I love watching State of the Union CNN. I love watching Fox News and MSIMCU.
I watch all of this.
You know how many times I see people other stuff out of their mouth that isn't fact checked on the spot, and we learned later that what they said wasn't entirely accurate or entirely true.
Can we grow up? You're not going to do that if you want to have a conversation.
The goal is not always Certainly, on some facts you can do that, but not everything they utter out of their mouth.
It's impossible. The goal is to.
Have them in a public platform, on camera, on the record, stating what they state.
So when you do fact check, if they.
Are alive, you can put up their comments and put the facts up to show where they were telling the truth and where they weren't, and it doesn't always happen in real time. You can't do television that way, you can't do radio that way. You can't even do a town hall conversation that way.
You just can't. You just can't.
So let's just stop that, please, I mean, come on, we just gotta grow up, We really really do
