‘Very Pleasant Interview Up Til Now’: CNN’s Chris Wallace Confronts Stephen A. Smith About Epic On-Air Fail

CNN anchor Chris Wallace braced himself as he confronted superstar commentator Stephen A. Smith about a notorious on-air fail that earned Smith a lot of flak.

Wallace interviewed Smith for this week’s edition of his Max series Who’s Talking to Chris Wallace on various topics, including the race for the presidency and Smith’s future as his contract is set to expire.

Things could have gotten tense when Wallace brought up a botched “hot take” — but Smith owned the mistake and defended his “batting average”:

WALLACE: This has been a very pleasant interview up till now, even a star has some bad days. This summer, yeah, you went on one of your hot takes about why New York Yankee slugger Aaron Judge,

SMITH: Yes, sir.

WALLACE: Was having such a great year.

SMITH: Yeah. Sure.

[CLIP]

WALLACE: The problem is and fans roasted you for this. Is that Soto bats ahead of Judge in the Yankees lineup, not behind him.

SMITH: Exactly.

WALLACE: So that was all wrong.

SMITH: That was a mistake on my part. It’s not, it wasn’t the first mistake I made. Won’t be the last period. I’ve watched enough Yankee games. I’m a diehard Yankee fan. I misspoke because I was reading my notes and focusing on something else, and I misspoke plain and simple, no excuses. I’m not, an excuse-making business.

WALLACE: Would you because of the fact that you speak with such certainty? Okay? Do people kind of like it when you, and its rare make them?

SMITH: They occasionally, they enjoy it. They get at me, and they should, but they don’t realize, for the true haters, like some people just want to troll you, to mess with you, and they want to rib at you because they want to get at you. And that’s for that’s fine. But for the true haters, I’m their worst nightmare. And the reason why I’m their worst nightmare is I won’t give them the ammunition. You can say it, and if I’m wrong, I’ll just admit where I’m that I’m wrong. Where you going? I do 15 takes a day, minimum, 75 a week, minimum, over 3000 takes annually. I have done over 45,000 takes over the last 12 to 13 years of my career. And you got to search to find out how many mistakes I’ve made.

WALLACE: I was going to say, what do you think your batting average is?

SMITH: I think my batting average, well, you when you say a batting average, I tell you I’m batting over 400, something like that. I’m not the kind of guy to rest on my laurels. Yeah, that’s it today. That means they coming for me tomorrow. That means I have to be ready. And what they don’t understand is that when they sleep, I’m awake. When they’re resting, I’m working. When they’re tired, I’m in the (?). They can come all they want to. Nothing is going to stop me. That’s how my attitude is

WALLACE: How does this stuff come out of your mouth like this?

SMITH: I mean this who I am. It’s who I am. Because I’ve been to hell and back. I know what it’s like, and I know what it’s like to be deprived and to do without. What you’re going to get is 100% me, meaning me committed to excellence, and I’m going to I’m never going to achieve it continuously. There’s always going to be imperfections. There’s always going to be time when I’m less than excellence, but you’re going to know I’m not laying down and just being laissez faire about it. Oh, you know what? That’s how it goes. Oh, no, I’m striving to be the best every day, every day.

Watch above via Max’s Who’s Talking to Chris Wallace.