Stephen A. Smith claims Trump's Redskins demand is a distraction from Epstein scandal

President Donald Trump's latest attempt to use his influence in the world of sports has seen him try and strong-arm the owners of the Washington Commanders to bring back their controversial former nickname.

In recent days, Trump has decided to push back on 'woke culture' in sports by demanding two professional sports franchises revert back to names involving Indigenous people.

The president has demanded that baseball's Cleveland Guardians and football's Washington Commanders return to their old monikers: the Cleveland Indians and Washington Redskins, respectively.

If either of those things came to fruition, it would be a prickly situation. But Trump went further on Monday by saying that he'd withhold funds to the Commanders' planned re-development of RFK Stadium in the city limits of Washington, DC.

The team announced they'd be putting multiple billions of dollars of their own money into the development, but is also requesting that the federal government - which owns the property on which the stadium stands - chips in $1billion from the city budget.

'I may put a restriction on them that if they don't change the name back to the original "Washington Redskins" and get rid of the ridiculous moniker, "Washington Commanders, I won't make a deal for them to build a Stadium in Washington,' Trump posted on Truth Social on Sunday.

Speaking about the issue on ESPN's 'First Take', host Stephen A. Smith offered his opinion that Trump was using this to distract his base of support from other issues - most notably, the President's attempts to discredit or ignore the existence of files related to Trump's former friend, financier, and convicted child sex offender Jeffery Epstein.

'Well, I think it's the President being petty,' Smith said on the show. 'I think it's him being evasive because the reality is that no matter how good he wants people to believe things are with the Big, Beautiful Bill and other things that have been transpiring, tariff wars, the border issues or whatever.

'If you're on the right, obviously, you're happy with a lot of things that are going on, and there's nothing to take credit away from that. I'll leave the political evaluations to other people. But nevertheless, there are millions upon millions of people in the United States of America that are not necessarily happy some of the things that he's doing. 

'So what does he do? He caters to his base. Because when you look at the Redskins' name, obviously, it's something that needed to be changed. And by him bringing that issue up, we all know from a political landscape, it's much ado about nothing. 

'It's just him catering to his base to make sure that he serves to appease them in some way, to distract them from other issues, including the Epstein files, by the way, because a lot of people associated with the MAGA Right want those files released. 

'And you even have Republican representatives on the Hill wanting those files released, wanting to see for themselves because they're not buying what the administration is saying when they say that there's absolutely nothing there.'

In another clip, Smith noted that Trump's executive orders to cut down on the size of the federal government has mean he's 'proceeded to let go [of] nearly 300,000 federal employees since he's taken office' and that because of that, his actions could result in Commanders owners - led by Josh Harris - could feel a 'pinch' from the government.

But while the stadium sits on federal land, former President Biden signed a 99 year lease for the District of Columbia to take over ownership of the site on which the team plans to build the stadium.

Of course, Trump could cancel that lease - or put up any number of roadblocks to delay the team building up the stadium.

But at the end of the day, there's nothing legally that the president could do to force the Washington football team or the Cleveland baseball team - both of which are private businesses - to change their name.

Moreover, if Trump puts up road blocks to slow or halt altogether the building of a stadium at the RFK site, Harris and the Commanders could simply back out of the project and find a new location to build a new stadium. 

Harris previously pledged not to change the name of the team, despite calls from some former fans and at least one Native American group to bring it back. Plenty of other Native American groups and indigenous people continue to see the 'Redskins' moniker as offensive.

But there's one other person who might take issue with Donald Trump using the power of the Presidency to interfere with something like this: Donald Trump. 

After the situation unfolded over the weekend, internet sleuths uncovered a tweet that Trump posted back in 2013: 'President should not be telling the Washington Redskins to change their name-our country has far bigger problems! FOCUS on them, not nonsense.'

Since that tweet was uncovered, some have called out Trump for his 'hypocrisy' on the matter.