ESPN host Stephen A. Smith says a Black author “should be ashamed of herself” after writing a Newsweek opinion piece criticizing Georgia district attorney Fani Willis’ demeanor while responding during her testimony last week, referring to the Fulton County prosecutor as “defiant” and “childish” in the op-ed.
Author and conservative podcast host Kira Davis penned the opinion piece for Newsweek titled, “Fani Willis Is an Embarrassment to Black People. She’s the Proof That DEI Only Hurts Us.”
Willis last week took to the stand to answer questions and defend herself against misconduct allegations regarding her personal relationship with special prosecutor Nathan Wade during an evidentiary hearing as lawyers attempted to get Willis disqualified from the racketeering case accusing Donald Trump and some of his allies of interfering in Georgia’s 2020 presidential election results.
In the opinion piece, Davis writes that Willis’ prominent position and the historic nature of the Trump case “put her in an elite class most Black people will never even dream of reaching.”
She writes, “One would expect such a person to be polished and classy, and able to remain so even while responding to an uncomfortable barrage of questions on the witness stand.
“Instead, what we got was a defiant, childish, sour woman who spoke with the sophistication of [a] teenage girl at her first college party,” Davis said.
“It wasn’t simply that she sounded angry—she also sounded stupid,” she continued.
The Newsweek op-ed then shows a video clip posted to X from a part of Willis’ testimony in which she states, “When I took out a large amount of money on my first campaign, I kept some of the cash of that … I just have cash in my house. I don’t have as much today.”
During tense moments of Willis’ testimony, which included her asserting that she’s “not on trial,” the district attorney fended off accusations made by prosecutors, including while defense attorney Ashleigh Merchant questioned her about the shared costs associated with her trips with Wade, Atlanta Black Star reported previously.
“While we’re talking about professionalism, [Merchant] filed three different documents that he lived with me,” Willis yelled while holding documents.
“Let’s be clear because you’ve lied,” yelled Willis. “It is a lie! It is a lie!”
Davis, a frequent contributor to Fox News, Newsmax, and other far-right media outlets, starts off the piece identifying herself as “a Black woman and working professional,” also suggests that Willis, a career trial lawyer who took office after being elected as Fulton County’s first Black woman district attorney in January 2021, was a diversity hire.
The author wrote that while she and her husband viewed Willis’ testimony, they felt they “were watching [the] result of a diversity-first system that ends up elevating the weak while simultaneously besmirching the strong.”
Smith, who hosts “The Stephen A. Smith Show” in between his regular morning slots on the sports talk show “First Take,” took to X to share his thoughts on Davis’ piece, saying that whatever Willis may have done wrong, diversity, equity, and inclusion was an unrelated issue.
“The office that she has – no one is disputing that she’s qualified for it,” Smith said in response to the op-ed. “You may not like her and her personal choices, having a relationship with a contemporary, I get that part, but to sit up there and to say … it’s a DEI issue just because she’s in her position is utterly ridiculous.”
Smith also blasted Davis for commenting on Willis’ “attitude” while responding to questions on the stand.
“That attitude came out in her, and because of that, that compromises the qualifications?” Smith says heatedly. “It makes no sense, Ms. Davis.”
Davis’ op-ed goes on to comment on what the writer perceived as Willis’ “foul demeanor and childish expressions,” which Davis said “only serve to magnify the grotesque consequences diversity hiring has for Black America in general.”
To that, Smith responded, asking whether Davis had never had an attitude or cursed anyone out.
“You never did anything, nothing at all? Stop,” Smith said calmly. “Not only are you embarrassing yourself, you’re disrespecting our community by implying such things based on such frivolous evidence.”
He comments that while there are “plenty of white people” who have displayed attitudes in sometimes “very demonstrative and bombastic ways,” he noticed that Davis’ opinion piece failed to call them out.
Davis reposted an X user’s sharing of Smith’s video, in which the user encouraged Smith to bring Davis on the show to hear more of her perspective.
