Nick Wright teased Stephen A. Smith over his Solitaire playing during Game 4 of the NBA Finals on Monday’s episode of First Things First, but the FS1 host took a more serious tact Tuesday morning on his podcast, What’s Wright.
In a lengthy segment intended to hold Smith “accountable,” the FS1 host took issue with two comments from Smith. One was a personal response to a fan at Gainbridge Fieldhouse who caught him playing Solitaire during the game. The other was Smith’s disconcerting response to U.S. Sen. Alex Padilla storming a press conference over the Trump administration’s deportation raid.
Wright accused Smith of latching onto false right-wing talking points on Padilla’s arrest while arguing that in the case of his silly Solitaire controversy, Smith outright lied. Taken in total, Wright said, they reveal a troubling trend for Smith, just as he is gaining influence outside the sports world.
On the topic of Padilla, the FS1 host detailed the “blatant lying” from the administration and conservative media, who accused Padilla of not identifying himself and “lunged” at Homeland Security Sec. Kristi Noem. Video of the confrontation told a far more peaceful story, but Smith went along with the administration’s version. Wright believes Smith and his pals on the right “knew none of that was true, but they said it anyway.”
“It was fiction that felt they could get away with because either people are numb to it or, in an effort to both-sides everything, folks will justify it,” Wright said on his podcast Tuesday. “So when I then saw a guy who I have always really respected, a guy who I’ve always liked, a guy who I’ve always had a good relationship with … Stephen A., use his massive platform to essentially kiss the a** of people who were lying about what happened to Sen. Padilla, didn’t care that they were lying about it, and abandon any obligation, in my eyes, to truth or fairness in just a relentless pursuit of a bigger and bigger tent and larger and larger audience and more eyeballs, I found it just awful.”
The Department of Homeland Security account on X, which has been used by the administration to turn Trump’s aggressive deportation policy into memes, endorsed a part of Smith’s take over the weekend. Smith also criticized Donald Trump in his segment on the confrontation, but the DHS account conveniently left that out, which is something Smith allows when he insists on taking both sides on a topic.
Wright saw the proceedings as an example of Smith taking up the right wing’s habit of shameless lying.
“They know they’re going to be called liars. They don’t care because there is no damage right now to being a liar,” Wright said. “And they just want to muddy the waters enough that people can then claim there’s a disagreement or a debate or confusion about what happened.”
Such confusion is exactly what happened when Smith was caught playing Solitaire during a game he is paid millions to cover for ESPN. Wright acknowledged the Solitaire situation was silly — as evidenced by Wright trolling Smith over it on Monday’s FTF — but highlighted Smith’s increasing urge to lie to get people off his back.
“My issue is with the response,” Wright said. “Because the response was instantaneous and easily disprovable as a lie. ‘It was during a timeout.’ Knowing, he’s a very smart guy … that if someone took a picture, someone might have a video. If they have a video, the court might be in it or sound might be on. Or in the picture, everyone in front of me is standing … so the response (is) just lie. Who cares? And then even when the video comes out and it’s clear you lied, turn it into your own joke and meme and move on.”
Wright added that he chose to call out Smith’s lying about the Padilla incident and the Solitaire meme as a continuation of his criticism during Smith’s feud with LeBron James earlier this year. At that time, Wright believes Smith was being intentionally dense about the root cause of James’ frustration, which stemmed from Smith calling out his performance as a father.
And now that Smith is putting himself forward as a political commentator in regular cable news appearances as well as on his podcast and a forthcoming show on SiriusXM, Wright is ready to spar with the First Take host even more aggressively.
“Now that Stephen A. has decided to, at this moment, in this country, in our history, to swim in real political waters and he wants to have a real political voice … I do think he will have real impacts,” Wright said. “I think it’s important that those people are held accountable.”
To close, Wright acknowledged that Smith is usually on the right side of history on major news stories and understands how to convey his point truthfully, given his background as a longtime former newspaper reporter. As a result, Wright wants Smith to be held to a higher standard.
At a time when, according to Wright, politicians and mainstream media are increasingly distractible, the FS1 star said effective and popular commentators like Smith must fight the urge to grift on falsities.