ESPN personality Stephen A. Smith is blasting President Joe Biden for engaging in “racial tropes” by having a fried chicken dinner with a black family in North Carolina while on the campaign trail.
Smith is referencing a YouTube video posted weeks ago by the Biden campaign in which he and North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper (D) picked up fried chicken from a chain restaurant called Cook Out. After getting the food, Biden traveled to the home of Eric Fitts and his two sons. where the four share a fried chicken dinner.
Stephen A. Smith was troubled by the video.
“First of all, we all know about racial tropes, do we not?” Smith said Wednesday on The Stephen A. Smith Show. “Racist tropes. Have you ever heard of that? Where people sit up there and try to use things to intimate something else of a racially insensitive nature? So Black folks with the president and fried chicken ain’t the greatest look.”
Smith also criticized the meal selection from the vantage point of Biden’s advanced age, believing that a fried chicken dinner is not what an 81-year-old man should eat.
“What the hell are you doing eating fried chicken?” Smith continued. “You’re 81! What 81 you know is munching on fried chicken? You ain’t been in the greatest health in a lot of people’s eyes, you know, so eating some fried chicken ain’t the greatest look.”
And he did not stop there. Smith next ripped the person whose idea it was to have the president engaging in “racist tropes,” which former President Trump will so easily use against him.
“I wanna know who the hell came out with that idea!” he said. “Because you [Trump] and the GOP are gonna use that to their advantage, right? And they’ll be right to do so because, ladies and gentlemen, if we’re being fair, if we saw Donald Trump sitting down in a Black household eating fried chicken with a father and a son, what would we say? You know, folks out there would be calling it racist! Well, if it’s racist for him — and I’m not saying it would be — but if it’s racist for him, why wouldn’t it be racist for Biden?”
Stephen A. Smith is best known for his hot takes on sports during ESPN’s First Take, which runs Monday through Friday. However, on the Stephen A. Smith show, he broadens his horizons to deal with current events and politics.