Stephen A. Smith distances self from Jimmy Kimmel after Kimmel cries over Trump win: 'Wouldn't have been me'
ESPN host Stephen A. Smith addressed the recent controversial monologue by late-night host Jimmy Kimmel, who cried on stage Wednesday night over Trump's election win. Kimmel said the election results would be bad for people who voted against Trump, but also bad for people who voted for Trump "but they just don't know it yet."
Smith, who is under the same corporate umbrella as Kimmel by The Walt Disney Corporation, clarified that Kimmel's reaction is not reflective of his own.
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"That would not have been me," Smith said when asked about it during an appearance on "The Will Cain Show" on Thursday. "It would not been a postmortem, it certainly would not have been me crying. I’m not crying over the fact that Donald Trump is the president."
Smith went on to clarify a stark contrast between his own reaction to the news and Kimmel's. Smith praised Trump's previous handling of the economy during his first term, before COVID-19.
"The American people have spoken. You can say what you want, but this country has said we went too far left. Enough’s enough. We got to stop this nonsense. It’s about our pocketbooks, and it’s about safety. Period. And if you don’t like it, get over it," Smith said. "The bottom line is the economy was doing well before COVID."
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Smith even suggested that the scale of Trump's victory and the margin by which he won is a good thing for the country. Trump won the popular vote and at least five of the seven key swing states, as vote counting progresses in Arizona and Nevada.
"But in the end, it is always good when the American people stand up they’re as unified as they came across this past election… That’s the American people speaking ‘We don’t like what we have, we want this.’ And when you have that you have to listen," Smith said. "He didn’t win, he annihilated her. I mean this was a romp."
Smith said that if he were in Kimmel's position, he would have simply tried to make the audience laugh, as a late-night talk show host is often expected to.
"So for me, I would have tried, because obviously it’s late night, I would have tried to be a bit funny and humorous with it and let everybody know it’s not gloom and doom. We’ve dealt with a lot in our society and we are going to deal with a lot more in years to come long after Donald Trump is gone, no matter what you think."
Smith earlier spoke out against Oprah Winfrey and Michelle Obama for "alienating" voters ahead of Tuesday's election, during his own monologue on "The Stephen A. Smith Show."
Smith also claims he did not vote for Trump.
Meanwhile, Kimmel is one of the few mainstream entertainment figures who has conveyed hysteria in the wake of Trump's resounding victory. He joins female hip-hop artist Cardi-B, actress Jamie Lee Curtis, singer Billie Eilish and Whoopi Goldberg.
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