An accident? ESPN host Stephen A. Smith isn’t buying it, and he has a stern message for President Donald Trump: “I think that there’s a few things, not many, not all, but there’s a few things this present administration is not being honest about. And we have to call it like we see it.”
Amid the Trump administration’s purge of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI), the Department of Defense temporarily deleted baseball legend Jackie Robinson’s Army service from its website on Wednesday before saying it was “mistakenly removed” and bringing it back.
On Thursday’s “First Take,” Smith spoke for nearly eight minutes, uninterrupted, about Robinson and DEI, its genesis and importance, even across sports. He then shifted to one of Trump’s hires, the former Fox News host.
“Pete Hegseth is the head of the Defense Department. He has served our country with honor,” Smith said. “I am not trying to knock him or denigrate him in any way. We gotta root for our elected politicians or the people that they assigned to departments and wish them nothing but the best in America’s best interest.
“But the fact of the matter is, how is he not DEI? He was a soldier, and then he was a co-host on Fox News on the weekends. And he goes from that to being the head of a Defense Department that oversees more than 3 1/2 million people. How in the hell do you go from being a weekend host to being the head of over 3 1/2 million people for the Defense Department of the United States? He happens to be white, and we don’t, but we don’t mention DEI when it comes to him. Why not?”
(Smith didn’t even get into the allegations against Hegseth over excessive drinking, abuse of his second wife or a 2017 sexual assault after which he paid the woman who accused him $50,000, per the Associated Press. Yet, Hegseth was still confirmed.)
According to the Army, Hegseth served in the Guard from 2002 to 2021 as an infantry officer. He deployed to Iraq in 2005, Afghanistan in 2011 and to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in 2004. He has two Bronze Stars.
Robinson served during World War II before he broke baseball’s color barrier in 1947. According to the Internet Archive, the article detailed how Robinson refused to move to the back of an Army bus in 1944. He was later court-martialed and acquitted.
The removal from the website triggered widespread backlash.
“Jackie Robinson is an American hero. In the face of severe negativity and upheaval, he responded with dignity, restraint and poise. Calling on @DeptofDefense to restore Mr. Robinson’s deserved place in our nation’s history,” Fetterman wrote on social media platform X.
ESPN MLB reporter Jeff Passan also demanded that the webpage be fixed earlier on Wednesday.
“This used to be the URL for a story on the @DeptofDefense website about Jackie Robinson’s time in the Army. The story has been removed. The ghouls who did this should be ashamed. Jackie Robinson was the embodiment of an American hero. Fix this now,” he wrote on X.
