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ESPN host Stephen A. Smith defended Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan Sunday, telling “This Week” guest host Jonathan Karl she was working for her state.

President Donald Trump praised Whitmer, a potential candidate for the Democratic nomination for the 2028 presidential election, during a Wednesday meeting in the Oval Office, saying she did an “an excellent job” and describing her as “a great person,” Fox News reported. Smith said Whitmer’s critics were “ridiculous” during a wide-ranging interview on “This Week.”

“She’s the governor of Michigan. She has no choice but to do that, and anybody that thinks otherwise is just being foolish and immature and childish,” Smith said. “The fact is she’s the governor of a state in the United States of America. You need to do business with the federal government. He’s the president of the United States, you don’t get to circumvent him. So, as a result, you have to be an adult in the room and be prepared to do business and anybody who would encourage her to do otherwise is just being utterly ridiculous.”

Smith also tore into Democrats as well, saying Trump won the 2024 elections due to the “rudderless” party having “no muscle whatsoever.”

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“He seems very convincing in letting people know what he feels in getting them to see his way of thinking, but I think it’s a product, a by-product, rather, of the Democratic Party and the fact they don’t seem to have any mission, any vision, any kind of leadership,” Smith told Karl. “They seem rudderless, to say the least, and now it’s at a point where they’re getting mocked religiously.”

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“And so, as a result of that, you’re going to look at him and, regardless of the troubles you think he might bring forth, unless things become disastrous economically, the fact of the matter is the American people have already said during the last election he’s a bit more normal or closer to normal than the Democratic Party and that’s where the real problem lies,” Smith continued. “It might be a two-party system but there’s only one party running this country right now, because the Democrats have no muscle whatsoever.”

The Trump campaign ran ads in 2024 featuring Vice President Kamala Harris discussing how she pushed “behind the scenes” for transgender prisoners to receive sex changes, while Trump said he supported banning biological men from competing in women’s sports during an Oct. 16 town hall moderated by Fox News host Harris Faulkner. Smith said Democrats were talking about issues that have nothing to do with Americans’ concerns.

“You’re going to have a multitude of Democratic representatives on with you. They talk and they talk and they talk, but what can they do?” Smith asked Karl. “They position themselves to do absolutely nothing.”

“I didn’t hear anything about tariffs from the Democrats before the election. Trump had been preaching about this for the longest time,” Smith continued. “The way people decry his strategy, he’s been bloviating about that. They said nothing about it. Instead, they talked about everything from woke culture to cancel culture to abortion rights and all of this other stuff, but that wasn’t going to win the election and that’s what we have to look at. What is it going to take to get the job done? That’s why somebody who is a sports analyst, for cryin’ out loud, is in the daggone polls. It’s not somebody bigger than me, it’s an indictment against the Democratic Party that doesn’t have leadership and doesn’t have a vision, and it’s sad.”

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