Pablo Torre Finds Out
We Fact-Checked Stephen A.'s LeBron and Kobe Story — and Polled 1,000+ Voters on His Presidential Campaign
Fri, 04 Apr 2025
Did LeBron attend Kobe's memorial in 2020? Pablo reports on claims renewed by Stephen A. Smith. And should Stephen A. actually run in 2028? We commissioned Rasmussen Reports to conduct a legitimate political survey, then presented the results to Wyatt Cenac and Tim Miller. • See the full results of the exclusive PTFO/Rasmussen poll https://www.rasmussenreports.com/ • Subscribe to Wyatt Cenac's newsletter https://wyattcenac.substack.com/ • Subscribe to The Bulwark Podcast with Tim Miller https://www.thebulwark.com/s/bulwarkpodcast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Chapter 1: Did LeBron attend Kobe's memorial in 2020?
You know, Pablo, I don't know if you know this, when Trump won the first time, and I went to a place of dark depression where I was like, I should quit politics, Through a friend, I interviewed with the Lakers to be their flack.
Is that right?
And yeah, and I had an interview with them and with Jeannie and them. It was very pleasant. It just wasn't really a fit for a variety of reasons. But like I'm hearing this whole story and like imagining that alternate life for me. I'm like trying to spin this. I'm like, who am I spinning for right now? Genie or LeBron or Kobe's legacy and Pablo's calling me?
I'm happy to be on this side of the mic, I guess, and to not be a Lakers flack trying to navigate the Kremlinology of the Kobe funeral.
It is. It's genuine. It is Kremlinology. It is. What are people not saying but clearly feeling? What are the power dynamics and incentives at play? And why won't Tim Miller f***ing return my calls?
Why would you just answer this? Was he there?
All of which is to say that when I'm trying to get the answer to that question, we were also conducting a legitimate political poll about whether one of the people involved in this would be a legitimate candidate for president of the United States.
Hey, I mean, I'm not looking forward to where this is going.
With the Galaxy Watch 7 or the Galaxy Ring and the Samsung Health app.
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Chapter 2: What were Stephen A. Smith's claims about LeBron?
The one thing that is missing from the Stephen A, he is trying to do this like, I'm a common sense independent guy. And he's not like doing that. I'm really going to take the fight to the bad guys. Like if Stephen A wanted to do this, like we need first take Stephen A owning JD the way he owns Skip. You know, and that's not what he's giving us.
No, he is actively trying to be the guy who is the reasonable person and is actually not political. Like, he's sort of angling for that lane right down the middle, is what I can tell.
Your boy Kang wrote about this?
Yeah, Jay Caspian Kang was the person, by the way, that Wyatt should really be mad at.
I am mad at Jay, but I also know this is what Jay does. Jay just loves to f***ing drop cherry bombs in the toilet.
The New Yorker, yes. I wrote down what he wrote because I thought it was really smart. He was like, he thinks the Democrats need a hostile takeover and new candidates who stand far outside the establishment's tepid choices.
The policy positions of these candidates, I believe, do not matter as long as they're within reason, which means that everything from full-bore leftist economic populism to staunch performative centrism is on the table as long as they fight the Trump campaign. Like that's what the people are demanding out there. Somebody who is not tepid and limp and has been in Washington forever.
People are tired of being dunked on 50 times in a row and are like, can we get someone else to do that to them?
Yeah, so Jay's point's like, give me an AOC that'll take him down. Give me somebody that's in the middle that'll take him down. Like, what we need is somebody that can actually compete against them and out-meme them and own them. And that might say something really horrible about our society.
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Chapter 6: What does the term 'exploratory committee' mean in politics?
I thought you were with me! I'm spiritually with you, but I don't know. My shadow self is tingling. Don't let the shadow emerge! My shadow self is tingling.
I find it hard to disagree with Wyatt's fundamental point, but I also deeply value him as an important part of the exploratory committee.
Yeah, same.
Which is like the guy who's going to actually... The hostage in the exploratory committee? The hostage slash opposition opinionist who's going to establish that the research that we are presenting should be viewed with a healthy dose of what Wyatt, I believe, expressed as bullsh**t.
It's kind of like running the Red Team. We have a Red Team project. You pretend like you're on the other side. And so we'll have you on the Exploratory Committee pretending like you're hostile, but really you're just kind of testing out the ways for Stephen A to, you know, defeat his haters.
Sure. To help me do this, is there any way we could get like some rope to tie me to this chair so that to anyone watching on YouTube, they can see I want to know part of this. I'm clearly a hostage in this conversation.
All we have are two bottles of Remy Martin and a hat. Yeah, I'll take some of this. We might need to dip into the reserves early.
But the thing that kickstarted this whole enterprise truly is that there was this single throwaway question in a McLaughlin poll in January that went viral immediately because it gave Stephen A. Smith, why it's an act's favorite person, a 2% chance as a wild card against the field of 15 other potential candidates for the 2028 Democratic primary.
And Stephen A. goes on Hannity and he says he had no business being on that list. He did not. And so we wanted to actually fact check this. Like, okay, that's one throwaway line in a poll. What if we committed... Actual time to try and do an exclusive Pablo Torre finds out first of its kind political poll.
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