In the days that followed the Republican Party’s sweeping midterm defeat, Donald Trump has insisted that the result wasn’t really about him.
So, when one of his fiercest critics sat him down for a rare one-on-one, the conversation kept returning to Trump’s favorite subject: his own wins.
Stephen A. Smith arrived prepared with pointed questions about the party’s losses, the confrontation with Iran, and Black voters. Yet it was a single hypothetical prompt—pitting Trump against a very familiar foe—that quickly stole the show.
Trump didn’t hesitate long to decide. His reply left Smith exclaiming, “Oh my lord.”
And the “receipts” Trump pulled out to bolster his case tell only part of the story.
Smith’s interview, captured in the White House’s Roosevelt Room, was released on November 12 on his “Straight Shooter” channel on YouTube.
He had been openly pressing for the interview since last year, and Trump didn’t make it easy. He also didn’t hold back during a White House dinner attended by Smith and comedian Bill Maher.
Tensions rose even before the central question. When Smith pressed him about Black voters, Trump asserted that he had “saved” historically Black colleges and universities, then proceeded to recite a roster of his achievements.
“Read the list,” Smith urged him. “I’ve got nothing but time.” About five minutes later, Smith interjected again. “I want to reach a point, though,” he said.
“Oh, no. But I have three pages of this,” Trump protested, before goading him, “You wish you hadn’t asked me to.”
Smith countered with his own figures, showing that the Democrats who preceded and followed Trump’s first term allocated more money to HBCUs than he did.
Trump waved it away, claiming that “the money they gave was stolen” and insisting that both men “did nothing” for the schools. He offered no proof.
From there, Smith turned to the midterms, and Trump slipped back into his familiar excuse for the electoral setback.
“I wasn’t on the ballot,” he said. “It’s a big difference when I’m on the ballot. All three times that I’ve been on the ballot, I won big.”
That assertion isn’t accurate. Trump has run for president three times and lost once, falling to Joe Biden in 2020 by roughly seven million votes and 306 to 232 in the Electoral College.
Smith spotted an opening. “You say you weren’t on the ballot. Let me ask you a question, Mr. President,” he said, clarifying any notion of Trump dodging the 22nd Amendment’s two-term limit.
“If you could run for president again, so could Barack Obama,” Smith prompted. He then asked, “What would Donald Trump do if he had to square off against Barack Obama for the presidency of the United States?”
Trump went straight to his numbers, claiming, “I got many more votes than he got.” He added that he holds “the all-time record” in both Texas and Florida.
“Are you saying you would beat Obama?” Smith pressed. “Yeah, I think I’d beat him easily,” Trump replied. “I think he’s highly overrated.”
“Oh my lord,” Smith retorted. “How is Barack Obama overrated?”
“I didn’t think he was a good president. I thought he was a divider,” Trump explained, as CNN noted. When asked to describe himself, Trump answered, “As a person who brings people together.”
Here’s what he left out. Trump’s tallies in Texas and Florida are real, and his roughly 77.3 million votes in 2024 do top Obama’s 69.5 million in 2008, according to 270toWin. But turnout has grown with the population since then.
Obama won 52.9 percent of the vote and 365 electoral votes that year, beating John McCain by about 9.5 million votes. Trump won with just under 50 percent and 312 electoral votes, edging Kamala Harris by about 2.3 million. Obama won the popular vote in both of his presidential campaigns; Trump has lost it twice.
Viewers weren’t convinced. “Boy you’ve got those records because of who you were running against,” one person wrote. Another commented that Trump “wouldn’t even debate Obama, he’d be too scared.”
“Trump lives in such a fantasy world,” another post read, while someone else wrote, “Talk about Obama Derangement Syndrome.”
The HBCU funding claim didn’t land either. “Bro he didn’t even know he had the HBCU advisory board until he read that paper,” one viewer joked.
It isn’t the first time Trump has stretched his election record.
Maher recently disclosed that Trump claimed he’d won the popular vote three times. “You won it once,” Maher says he told him.
Obama keeps creeping into Trump’s answers, too. On “60 Minutes,” he made a false Netflix claim about his predecessor, and he hasn’t yet dropped Obama’s Cheesecake Factory joke.
For a man who says he’d win “easily,” Trump certainly spends a lot of time arguing against someone who isn’t on the ballot.
