Stephen A. Smith slammed Donald Trump’s hypocrisy after his calls for calmer rhetoric following the shooting outside the White House Correspondents’ Dinner earlier this week, asking the president, “When are you going to practice what you preach?”
The media personality appeared on “Cuomo” on Tuesday and spoke with host Chris Cuomo, who asked Smith if he was surprised by the lack of any difference in reaction. Smith said he wasn’t and accused both Democrats and Republicans of the same empty “song and dance” denouncing violent rhetoric, adding that “neither side means it.”
“I hear people older than me telling me this is worse than it was pre-Civil Rights. This is worse than it was when John F. Kennedy got assassinated in 1963,” he said. “This is worse than the climate and the environment of the ’60s in terms of the rhetoric that’s going back and forth, the divisiveness, the manner in which people are willing to talk about one another — not just on television, but to their face. Just hostility that exists on both sides.”
Smith continued, saying that when he saw Trump talking about toning down the violent rhetoric that can encourage and incite violence, the president needed to “practice what you preach, right?”
“Because you certainly aren’t — you know how to exacerbate situations,” he said. “As the president of the United States, you instigate. I’m not blaming him for somebody trying to perpetrate an act of violence against somebody. To me, they would do it, got their own issues, and they need to be held accountable. But nevertheless, when we talk about calming the waters and dialing down the rhetoric, both sides give us that same song and dance. Neither side means it.”
One politician Smith praised for his reaction, however, was House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, who called on Republicans to “Clean up your own house before you have anything to say to us about the language that we use.”
“I’m not saying it is to be applauded, but what I’m saying is that he was very honest in his assessment of where he stood on the issue, as opposed to a lot of people that were just singing the same old song and dance about dialing back the rhetoric,” Smith said of Jeffries’ comments.
Cole Tomas Allen, a 31-year-old teacher from Torrance, California, was taken into custody following the shooting Saturday night and charged in federal court in Washington on Monday morning.
Allen faces three criminal charges, including an attempt to assassinate President Trump, which is punishable with life in prison. He did not enter a plea for the attempted assassination or corresponding firearm charges.
You can watch the full “Cuomo” segment in the video above.
