Reading from prepared notes, the president cited college funding and criminal justice reform. Smith answered with a midterm result: about 9 in 10 Black voters backed Democrats.
By EEW Magazine Online Editors
President Donald Trump reads from a list of his administration’s accomplishments for Black Americans during an interview with Stephen A. Smith in the White House Roosevelt Room for “Straight Shooter,” released Nov. 12, 2026. (Stephen A. Smith/YouTube)
When Stephen A. Smith asked President Donald Trump what his administration has done for Black Americans, the president came ready with an answer on paper. Seated across from Smith at the White House for an interview released Thursday on Smith's YouTube channel, Trump pulled out several pages of notes and read through a list.
It ran from funding for historically Black colleges and universities to criminal justice reform, Trump Accounts for newborns and Medicaid coverage for sickle cell gene therapies. "The Black community is the biggest beneficiary of what I've done," Trump told him.
Smith, the ESPN commentator who hosts the SiriusXM show "Straight Shooter," pushed back. He pressed the president on job losses among Black women, reminded him that former Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden also invested heavily in HBCUs, and asked why Black voters who moved toward Trump in 2024 turned away from Republicans in the Nov. 3 midterms.
The interview aired just over a week after an election that handed Democrats control of both chambers of Congress. About 9 in 10 Black voters backed Democratic House candidates, according to the AP Voter Poll, up from roughly 8 in 10 who supported Kamala Harris two years ago. Only about 1 in 10 Black men supported the Republican in their House race, erasing much of the ground Trump gained with them in 2024.
President Donald Trump and Stephen A. Smith pose together at the White House. (Stephen A. Smith/Instagram)
The interview grew out of an October White House dinner Smith attended as the guest of comedian Bill Maher, where Smith said he first raised his concerns about Black women's jobs. It offered an extended look at the case the president is making to Black Americans with two years left in his term.
Trump opened with the First Step Act, the bipartisan criminal justice law he signed in 2018, and Alice Marie Johnson, who served more than two decades in prison for a nonviolent drug offense. Trump commuted her sentence, later pardoned her and in 2025 named her the administration's "pardon czar." Smith credited him for the First Step Act. Trump also ran through economic measures, among them permanent Opportunity Zones and an end to federal taxes on qualifying overtime pay.
On HBCUs, Trump claimed credit for rescuing the schools. The Education Department has directed more than $612 million in one-time funding to HBCUs above congressionally approved levels across fiscal 2025 and 2026, including $174 million announced in September. Much of that money was redirected from grant programs for Hispanic-serving and other minority-serving institutions, which the department canceled in 2025, calling their enrollment requirements unconstitutional.
Smith countered with figures of his own, citing roughly $2.4 billion in HBCU support under Obama and more than $17 billion under Biden. Those totals measure something broader. They count federal support across several years, including regular appropriations, pandemic relief and debt relief, while the $612 million covers only one-time money added above what Congress approved.
Trump argued that Democrats forced college presidents to keep returning for money, while he secured longer-term financing.
Students from historically Black colleges and universities gathered for the HBCU Environmental Justice Climate Corps in Houston on July 2, 2025. (Ashleigh Lucas/Houston Chronicle via Getty Images)
Trump also said 100% of Black newborns now have exposure to the stock market through Trump Accounts. Treasury completed automatic enrollment on Oct. 1, giving every eligible child under 18 with a valid Social Security number an account. The $1,000 federal deposit goes only to children born from 2025 through 2028, and only after a parent or guardian claims the account through the Trump Accounts app.
The sickle cell program Trump cited, a federal Medicaid model whose participating states are home to about 84% of Medicaid patients with the disease, was first announced under the Biden administration and launched under Trump.
Smith then turned to jobs. He told Trump that more than 300,000 Black women had lost federal jobs and questioned the president's claim that displaced workers were landing better opportunities in the private sector. Trump defended the cuts, saying agencies had become overstaffed and that many former employees had moved into higher-paying private jobs.
Smith's number tracks a broader measure. Black women lost about 319,000 jobs across the U.S. labor market, public and private, between February and July 2025, Ms. magazine reported. The federal government cut about 300,000 jobs in all during 2025, according to the director of the Office of Personnel Management. Black women held about 12% of federal jobs and made up roughly a third of those cuts, according to economist Katica Roy.
The toll shows up in the unemployment rate. Black women's unemployment climbed from 5.4% at the start of 2025 to 7.3% by year's end, according to Nonprofit Quarterly. Landy Watley is one of the women behind that number. She lost her job at the National Endowment for the Humanities in 2025 and was still looking for full-time work when the Houston Defender profiled her.
Smith also recalled Trump's 2016 appeal to Black voters, "What have you got to lose?" and asked him to account for the midterm results. Trump answered that he was not on the ballot. Smith countered that the president had campaigned actively for Republican candidates. Trump said he does not understand how any Black person votes for a Democrat.
Smith noted that Mississippi had just elected its first Black U.S. senator since Reconstruction. Democrat Scott Colom unseated Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith after Trump rallied for her in Corinth on Oct. 26. From that stage, Trump called Colom a "fake, shameless phony who pretends to be a moderate," the Mississippi Free Press reported. Colom went to Corinth that day and met voters waiting outside the arena. "More unites us than divides us here in Mississippi," he wrote on X.
In the interview, Trump said he had heard that Colom worked those long lines. "I don't know the gentleman, but I give him credit," Trump told Smith.
