ESPN host and podcaster Stephen A. Smith conceded that he would run for president as a Democrat but said the party needs to be “purged.”
“I would say, if I had to run, it would be as a Democrat, but I’m not happy with the Democratic Party,” Smith said on CNN’s State of the Union.
“So the Democratic Party, as currently constructed, it would pretty much need to be purged in order for me to assume that I would want to be associated with them.”
Stephen A. Smith concedes he would run as a Democrat but says the party needs to be ‘purged’
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Smith considers himself a “moderate.”
“I’m a registered Independent who leans left,” he said. “I’m fiscally conservative when it comes to my money … I’m liberal when it comes to social issues, pretty much across the board. I believe in livin’ and let livin.’”
Smith is no stranger to criticizing the extreme left of the Democratic Party, and reiterated this sentiment Sunday.
“Certainly with identity politics, woke culture, cancel culture, I thought that that was something that ravaged our nation psychologically because you had people literally scared they were going to lose their jobs if they pronounced the wrong pronoun for crying out loud,” he said.
“It got that bad, and I think that that’s one of the reasons that [President] Donald Trump is in office today.”
Rather than their policies, it is what Democrats have preached that has turned the public away from them, according to Smith.
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“The kind of messages that they were disseminating was incredibly uncomfortable to listen to and to hear, and I thought it wasn’t emblematic of what most Americans are thinking about,” he said.
“They’re trying to pay their mortgages, rent, buy food and groceries, pay gas, and deal with the cost of living, and they want safety in the streets. That’s primarily what most American citizens are about.”