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Nick Wright doesn’t talk politics nearly as much as he used to, but when he does, he says something worthwhile.
This week, Wright joined Andrew Marchand on The Main Event with Andrew Marchand, and toward the end, Marchand asked the First Things First star about his future ambitions.
“Once upon a time, my answer for that—for my whole twenties—was I want to make a big enough name for myself in sports that I can transition to politics,” Wright said. “That was always what I wanted to do. I either wanted to be the Mayor of Kansas City or do what [Keith] Olbermann did. That was always what I wanted.”
Wright added that Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas, one of his childhood best friends, stole his thunder before making a lighthearted joke at Stephen A. Smith’s expense.
“I will admit, ego big enough, that once I saw, around ten years ago, that celebrity could be high-level American politician, maybe I set my sights higher than mayor,” Wright said. “But now, one of my contemporaries might be beating me to that as well. So that, I feel like I would just be in reruns.”
Wright didn’t specifically name Smith, but common sense, Smith’s aggressive pivot into political punditry, and this recent poll led one to assume he must have been talking about Smith.
On Election Day, Smith had plenty to say about the midterms on his Straight Shooter podcast, and Wright called him out for his flimsy opinions.
“The problem with refusing to be honest with your audience (and potentially yourself!) about your politics while creating political content is you end up creating political content that appeals to… absolutely no one,” Wright wrote in response to one of Smith’s X clips.
With Marchand, Wright also admitted to feeling “somewhat beaten down” by the past decade of American politics morphing into “nonstop American culture war,” and as a result, he’s “lost that spark in my eye for that transition.”
Now, Wright said, his future ambitions are simple: continue doing First Things First with Chris Broussard and Kevin Wildes on FS1 and his What’s Wright? podcast with his son for as long as possible.
In August, after Aaron Rodgers spouted off about Dr. Fauci and various other nonsense on The Pat McAfee Show, Wright explained why he’s erred on the side of saving his political commentary for his eponymous podcast in instances when he’s particularly passionate about something, such as ICE fatally shooting Renee Good this January.
“It was my own reaction to tuning into a sports show that not only I like, but this was the moment of clarity,” Wright said. “I agreed with the host’s politics. That I thought he was on the right side of the major issues. That, on the topic he was discussing, I agreed with everything he was saying. And I was bummed out it’s what he was doing because it wasn’t where my brain was at the time. Not that my brain wasn’t agreeing with him; it was not what I was looking forward to.”
“In that moment, when I heard someone I like, who I agreed with what they were saying, I agreed with their politics, and yet I was disappointed they were doing it, I was like, ‘Oh, I should do it less,'” Wright added. “Because the people who hate everything I’m saying are gonna be pissed, and a decent portion of the people who agree with what I’m saying—they’re not gonna be pissed, but they’re gonna be a little disappointed.”
Wright is a skilled, thoughtful orator on complicated world events, so it’s a bummer that he doesn’t opine on those issues as much. But there are worse consolation prizes than his clever, smart sports commentary.
The post Nick Wright pokes fun at Stephen A. Smith while discussing past political ambitions appeared first on Awful Announcing.
https://sports.yahoo.com/articles/nick-wright-pokes-fun-stephen-024002498.html
