ESPN host Stephen A. Smith publicly disowned action taken by members of the #BlackLivesMatter movement with the following tweets on Tuesday.
Where is all the noise about #BlackLivesMatter when black folks are killing black folks?
— Stephen A Smith (@stephenasmith) July 21, 2015
There's nothing wrong when a presidential candidate says "All lives Matter"!
— Stephen A Smith (@stephenasmith) July 21, 2015
I'm a black man. Of course I know #BlackLivesMatter. You can't boo a presidential candidate just b/c he says "all lives matter".
— Stephen A Smith (@stephenasmith) July 21, 2015
While he does not specify, Smith’s tweets likely refer to the protesters that booed 2016 Democratic presidential candidate Martin O’Malley off the stage at the Netroots Nation Conference on Saturday, after he said the phrase, “black lives matter, white lives matter, all lives matter.”
In addition to being one of the hosts of ESPN’s “First Take,” Smith has made a name for himself as an extremely vocal supporter of the black community, but he has not been afraid of making controversial statements about resisting group think within the civil rights movement. Back in 2014, he received tremendous backlash for defending comments made by Mark Cuban in reference to the Trayvon Martin case, and just this past April he was openly critical of the Baltimore rioters. (RELATED: Stephen A. Smith Slams Baltimore Rioters: ‘Our Ancestors Would Be Ashamed’ [VIDEO])