ESPN’s Stephen A. Smith on Tuesday said that former President Donald Trump’s criminal trial is an effort to prevent him from winning the upcoming election.
Trump is on trial as he faces 34 felony counts related to a $130,000 payment to porn star Stormy Daniels to keep her silent about an alleged affair during the former president’s successful 2016 campaign for the White House. Smith on the “Stephen A. Smith Show” on YouTube criticized the merits of the case while also asserting fear of a Trump victory is the impetus for it. (RELATED: ‘Morning Joe’ Panelists Dismayed By Trump’s ‘Terrifyingly Competent’ Campaign)
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“It’s much ado about nothing,” Smith said. “To my liberal friends out there, all you’re doing is showing that you’re scared you can’t beat him on the issues and the merits. That’s why he keeps saying it’s a political campaign against me. That’s why he keeps saying they can’t beat me at the election, at the polls. This is the only way they can do it. And if you don’t put him in jail and he still goes from being the presumptive GOP nominee to the official GOP nominee and he goes to the polls, even though he was going to whine about winning and being rigged again, you have given more fodder to that argument; which means we’ll never have peace in this country because tens of millions of people see what extent the other side is willing to go through just to keep him out of office because they can’t beat him on their own merits.”
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg in a Monday filing asked the judge overseeing Trump’s trial, which started on Monday, to threaten him with jail time and hold him in contempt for gag order violations. Bragg urged Judge Juan Merchan to warn Trump he could face up to 30 days in jail if he breaches the gag order, according to the court filing.
Smith in March said he may cast ballots for Republicans for all candidates except for president while praising conservative voices during an interview on the “PBD Podcast.” He also criticized the cases against Trump, referring to them as “lawfare.”
“We’ll have no peace when all you got to do is figure out a way to beat him on the issues, but you haven’t been able to do it,” Smith continued. “What a damn shame … Everything you do shows me you can’t beat him. It’s a damn shame. It really, really is. It’s embarrassing. In jail because of a porn star, in court rather because of a porn star. Five hundred people being screened and questioned to see if they could become members of a jury because a former president tried to keep quiet about the fact that he was getting loose with a porn star.”
Democratic California Rep. Ro Khanna called out his party’s cases against Trump as a “distraction” Monday on NewsNation and said the Manhattan case is the “weakest” of the charges being brought against the former president.
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