This is getting old.
Just because someone asks President Trump a question, it doesn’t mean he has to answer it.
He has dodged plenty of questions in his lifetime, questions about his net worth, questions about Jeffrey Epstein, questions about hush money to a porn star.
But when the question in question is about former President Barack Obama, and who would win in a hypothetical Oval Office showdown, Trump just can’t resist.
Question: “Are you saying you would beat Obama?”
Answer: “Yeah, I think I’d beat him easily, yeah. I think he’s highly overrated.”
The interviewer, ESPN host and political podcaster Stephen A. Smith, was almost left speechless.
That doesn’t happen every day.
“I wasn’t shocked that he said that he’d think he’d beat him,” Smith said later in the day on “CNN’s’ “Laura Coates Live.”
“But I was shocked that he’d be so dismissive and disrespectful of Barack Obama. I certainly didn’t think that would happen, to be quite honest with you.”
Shocked? Really?
This is the same man who insisted for years that the president with the African name wasn’t really born in this country.
The same man who trolled Obama’s new presidential library in Chicago as a future pile of trash that would become “a ‘Mecca’ for those who hate America!”
The same man who posted a racist video portraying Obama and former First Lady Michelle Obama as apes.
“Look, you got to ask him what it is — the obsession,” Obama said during a podcast over the summer. “I obviously, you know, have a room in his head — a suite — in his head.”
Smith, in his Straight Shooter podcast, asked Trump about historically Black colleges and universities, unemployment among Black women, immigration enforcement and Trump’s insistence that he has done more for African Americans than any other president.
Smith also managed to keep a straight face.
But Smith admitted he almost lost it right there in the Roosevelt Room when, after asking Trump point-blank what he bad done for Black Americans, the president pulled out a list.
A real list.
“The Black community is the biggest beneficiary of what I’ve done,” Trump told Smith. “I did things. I saved the historically Black colleges and universities. They were out of business. I have a list of things that I wrote here.”
Smith, meanwhile, has received backlash of his own from segments of the Black community.
Smith scored the 40-minute one-on-one during a White House dinner last month with Trump, comedian Bill Maher and Kid Rock.
That was after he received the Thumbs Down award from the National Association of Black Journalists for “a recurring public pattern of disparaging commentary directed at prominent Black women across politics, sports and media.”
Even Smith’s interview ruffled some feathers with Black people.
“I’m not begrudging Stephen A. Smith an interview,” April Ryan, the longest-serving Black White House correspondent, told Journal-isms columnist Richard Prince. “A lot of presidents have done that, bringing people from outside for an exclusive interview. That is the president’s preference. OK.
“However, it’s outrageous because Trump has overly qualified Black journalists at the White House who cover him daily and he mocks us, but brings in somebody else to do an interview. That’s crazy.”
Trump and Smith even talked about Smith’s own presidential ambitions. The broadcaster has teased a run for the White House in 2028.
“I would keep your life the way it is,” Trump told him. “You know what? You’ll find it very nasty if you do.”
