Stephen A. Smith Says This Is What He Found ‘Shocking’ About Dinner With Trump

Stephen A. Smith spilled the tea on his dinner with President Donald Trump — confiding in CNN’s Laura Coates about thing he found most shocking about the meal he shared with the commander in chief, Kid Rock and comedian Bill Maher.

Speaking Friday night on Laura Coates Live, Smith said he advocated for HBCUs, or Historically Black Colleges and Universities, and pushed the president to get them more funding.

He described Trump’s responses in detail, including the president’s defense of the economy — and said Trump appears to realize his party could at least lose control of the House of Representatives in the upcoming midterm elections.

“He’s hearing all the noise about how the Dems are going to win back the House, how they’re probably, the Republicans will probably hold on to the Senate,” he said.

“I got the impression that he somewhat believes that’s going to be a reality, but he’s working hard to debunk it, or rather, to fend it off and to make that it’s something he can do for the GOP.”

Trump then recounted to Smith polling figures showing “that 99% of Republicans actually approve” of him, Smith said.

” ‘So the people out there that are conservatives, that are Republicans, they love me, I love them. They will vote the way that I want them to vote.’ That’s how he feels. That’s the level of confidence that he has,” Smith said.

Coates then touched on the thing that Smith found most surprising about the evening.

“Well, talk to me. I mean, this is I understand you didn’t anticipate this being more than 20 minutes, maybe 30 minutes. It was about four hours of the evening. And you got four hours and 20 minutes,” she said.

“I got to tell you, I was taken aback by that because this is the President of the United States. And while I do love speaking with you and Bill Maher, I don’t know Kid Rock at all, but the idea of the president of United States having four hours to do all this conversation, did that surprise you that he was so generous with his time, given all the things that were going?” Coates asked.

Smith was quick to respond:

On, shocking. It was shocking. I didn’t I certainly didn’t expect that amount of time. I knew that we were expecting to have dinner. I knew that we were going to have an opportunity to talk. I give him all the credit in the world because he didn’t run from any questions.

Anything we asked him, he kept coming back at us with the things that he had to say. His belief in terms of what he had to say.

But he also took us for a tour of the White House, took us to the West Wing, took us to the Rose Garden, took us to the colonnade where you got pictures of every single president, but Joe Biden.

And instead of Joe Biden’s picture being there, it was a picture of the autopen. You know, I said, come on, man, that’s cruel. He said, actually, it’s very funny.

And he laughed about it and just kept moving on, he said, but he was a terrible president. He’s hurt this country, and I don’t feel any regrets about it whatsoever. That was his position.

He was immovable in that regard.

He definitely took us to see, you know, the ballroom that they’re trying to build right now.

Of course, the heliport outside where the UFC event was. And he’s very proud of what’s transpiring right now because he felt that the White House was in desperate need of upgrades. It’s the White House. It’s the hub of power in this country. And he believes it was absolutely shameful that it hadn’t been renovated in over 100 years.

He thought it was an utter disgrace. And he says, ‘I’m here to fix it. Like I have to fix everything because I am the greatest president in the history of the United States of America. You do know that, right? You do know that?’ That’s what he was saying.

“And that was with a straight face?” Coates asked.

“He just kept going. No matter what, no matter what we threw at him, that’s what he was saying,” Smith said.

Watch above via CNN.

New: The Mediaite One-Sheet "Newsletter of Newsletters"
Your daily summary and analysis of what the many, many media newsletters are saying and reporting. Subscribe now!