ESPN’s Stephen A. Smith was repeatedly confronted over why he said he regretted voting for former Vice President Kamala Harris during a podcast released Wednesday, as hosts Cari Champion and Jemele Hill suggested he was targeting Black women.
“Flagrant and Funny” hosts Champion and Hill questioned Smith about his comments that he regretted supporting Harris in 2024 after he said it was the Democrats’ plan all along to install her as the replacement for former President Joe Biden in the presidential race.
Smith referenced the widely criticized moment from ABC’s “The View” on Oct. 8, 2024, when Harris appeared and said she couldn’t think of anything she’d do differently than Joe Biden.
“Because when she went on ‘The View’ and she sat up there and said she couldn’t think of anything that she would do differently, something that Sunny Hostin threw up intentionally as a softball for her to knock out the park. I’m like, when she passed up on that opportunity, this is not a dumb woman. This is a former state attorney general. This is a former senator. This is a former vice president of the United States. She is not dumb. There’s only one reason she said that, because her loyalty to Joe Biden usurped everything else,” Smith said.
He added, “And I’m like, ‘You trying to win a damn presidency? This is embarrassing. Do you want the presidency or don’t you?'”
Hill suggested Harris was trying to lean into Biden’s accomplishments, and said, “He accomplished a lot.”
“But I understand when Sunny gave her that easy layup,” Champion pressed. “But still, why was it necessary to say that you regretted voting for Kamala Harris when you knew that would take all of the hard work in which she tried to put together away from what she did?”
Smith said he supported Harris throughout the election and that he made the comments afterward.
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“I get where you’re coming from, Cari, I really do. I think that it should have been far more upsetting if it was something that I said before the election. I did not. I supported her leading up to the election. I voted for her. I was on the airwaves talking about what it’s going to take to win, win, win. And when it was over, I was honest about how I felt in the moment that that transpired,” he said.
Champion accused Smith of targeting Black women specifically and said he could have made his point about his criticisms without saying he regretted voting for Harris.
Smith countered, “Can you concede that it’s a disagreement as opposed to a disparagement?”
She said she couldn’t concede the point before the three turned to Smith’s dispute with Rep. Jasmine Crockett, D-Texas.
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Harris’s office did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment.
Curtis Houck, the managing editor of the Media Research Center’s NewsBusters.org, told Fox News Digital, “This level of refreshing honesty from Stephen A. Smith has sadly been in short supply for far too long. Along with ideological diversity, more commentators and journalists should be willing to admit when they’re wrong or express regret. The national media demand the utmost transparency and rigorous reflection from the people they cover, so why not have it go both ways?”
Houck continued, “There’s a reason why Smith is succeeding by moving outside his normal ideological bubbles. We need more of that from the ruling class, not less.”
During an April interview with Sage Steele, Smith was asked about his comments prior to the 2024 election on Dave Rubin’s show about voting for Harris.
“You went on his show, and you said that you voted for Kamala Harris?” Steele asked.
“Yes,” Smith responded.
Steele then added, “And that you regretted it,” to which Smith answered, “Yeah.”
Smith went on to explain that he cast that vote because he believed Harris was capable of compromise, but said he later concluded Democrats still did not understand why they lost.
“I also believed that she was the kind of person that… could work across the aisle,” Smith said. “And then when I saw how things were unfolding and how out in the clouds the Democratic Party was even after they lost the election, I just said, ‘There’s no hope.’”
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In January 2025, Smith said during an interview with Bill Maher, “Yes, I voted for her, a lot of people voted for her, but in the end, we end up feeling like d— fools, because we supported it. We fell for the okiedoke, as they say. If you had a primary, the likelihood is she would not have been the Democratic nominee.”
Fox News’ CJ Womack contributed to this report.