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Get up to $350 off with code DEEPSLEEP at eightsleep.com. Good morning. I'm Jane Pauley, and this is Sunday morning. It was an unimaginable crime that stunned France and sent shock waves around the world. In November of 2020, Giselle Pellico was told by French police that for years, her husband Dominique had been drugging her.
and bringing strangers into their home to sexually assault her. The case led to a landmark trial in which all fifty one defendants, including her husband, were found guilty. This morning Giselle Pelico was speaking out for the first time. with our Seth Doan. Oh no.
The world witnessed her quiet but defiant dignity as a survivor of incomprehensible crimes. This is your first interview, the first time you've sat down and gone through this. How are you doing? Jelement? I'm better.
I took stock of what happened and I am now reborn. Giselle Pelico on her darkest days and a life reclaimed. Ahead. this Sunday morning. The soothing voice of Paul Anke on songs like Puppy Love and Put Your Head on My Shoulder.
have captivated audiences for seventy years. This morning the legendary crooner is talking with Lee Cowan. I don't care just what they say. He's written so many songs, so many hits. But his first, at age 15, was a song about a girl named Diane.
I saw this girl in church, Diana, and she was just beautiful.
So there really was a Diana. Oh yeah, she was older than I was. You know, back then, older meant three years. Put your head on my shoulder. Come, put your head on his shoulder.
Night on Sunday morning. Bye. Speaking of voices, of the many voices in sports media these days, few cut through like Stephen A. Smith. The ESPN commentator's unique combination of eloquence and bombast.
has made him something of a household name. and given him license to take on topics well beyond sports, as he'll tell Robert Costa. Put that. Damn camera on me right now. In a world of hot takes, Stephen A.
Smith sizzles. There are organizations who stake. First take, a dominant presence in sports media, but it has some haters. We'll let him hate. They ain't winning, we winning.
And he may just bring that winning attitude. to the campaign trail. Could you run for president? It's possible. the unlimited ambition of Stephen A.
Smith. Coming up on Sunday morning. Two hundred fifty years after George Washington crossed the Delaware. David Schechter this morning revisits the river to explore the role climate played in the founding of these United States. Tracy Smith talks with Frankenstein's monster, Oscar-nominated actor J.K.
Belorty. Chris Livsay savours a delicious dispute over the origins of a beloved pasta dish, and more. on this Sunday morning for the fifteenth of february, twenty twenty six. We'll be back after this. Hmm.
We begin this morning with Seth Doan. and an unimaginable crime that made headlines around the world. Warning, this is not a story for younger viewers. I lived for 50 years with Mr. Pelico, who was a kind man, a devoted family member.
It was a beautiful love story until the day I found myself facing the horror of the facts. Those facts shattered Giselle Pellico's seemingly normal life. The trial shaking much of Europe. A trial that's gotten worldwide attention. A horrifying story of French survivor Giselle Pelico.
And it put her at the center of a mass rape trial, an unthinkable crime. It gripped France. But it was her response that would be defining. I understand this is your first ever interview. Yes, it's a first.
I'm not used to speaking in front of cameras. I used to be a very discreet woman. It all unraveled in 2020 inside this supermarket. When what seemed like a small crime uncovered a far greater one. Her husband, Dominique Pellico, was caught taking video up women's skirts.
His arrest led to the discovery of disturbing footage taken inside their home of Giselle Pellico unconscious. At a local police station, an investigator told her what they'd found. He said, Mrs. Pelicot, do you recognize yourself in these photos? And I said, No, it's not me.
Then he said, This is your bedroom. I see a woman I don't recognize at all, completely asleep, with a man beside her. I don't know this. And then he said, I'm going to tell you something shocking. You were raped by 53 individuals.
By 5 individuals. My world collapsed. You describe the woman. is looking like a rag doll. That woman was you.
Yeah. Yes, it was me, but this woman was lifeless. She looked dead. Do you remember crying, screaming, blocking everything out. I could not speak.
I was in such a state of shock. All I wanted was to go home to get my life back as it was before. But that life was gone. The man she knew was a loving father to their three children and a doting grandfather had been drugging her with sleeping pills and muscle relaxants, then inviting men he met online to abuse her. We talk about hundreds of rapes.
over a period of time. of at least ten years.
Well She and her lawyer, Stefan Bobineau, started to grasp the scale of the crimes as they prepared for trial. And how many videos? How many photos? Photos, we are in the range of hundreds, if not thousands, and for videos, definitely. Yeah.
Among the evidence messages Dominique Pellico posted online, I'm looking for a pervert accomplice to abuse my sleeping wife. And text messages. I'm about to dose her. We have to wait at least one hour to abuse. It's been a real journey into the darkness.
what were on those videos. Scene of um Torture. There is no other word for that. You say it's a journey. through darkness.
Well on this video we see a human being being treated as an object. We see men who are in the middle of the middle. Mm. disecrate. a human body.
who desecrates someone, Giselle, who is in profound distress. Because her life was at risk. At every moment Where she was trucked and abused. Victims of sexual abuse can remain anonymous in France.
So up until the trial in 2024, Giselle Pelico's name was not known. But then she made a bold decision to demand an open trial, allowing the public and the press into the courtroom. How difficult was it to reveal your identity, to face the world? It was very hard. I didn't want anybody to discover and know about this woman who had experienced all this violence.
Because in truth, victims always feel shame about what happened to them. I told myself that if I opened the closed-door proceedings, the shame would change sides. The words Shame Has to Change Sides are on the cover of her book, An Intimate Account of the Ordeal. We were very worried when we heard that she wanted to have an open trial. Why worried?
Because we knew that there would be a tremendous pressure on her. Yeah. At trial, the accused hid their faces as they filed into court. They ranged in age from 26 to 74. among them a firefighter, a soldier, a nurse.
In court many claimed Giselle Pelicoe must have known, must have been complicit. But Dominique Pellico admitted everything, testifying it was always against her knowledge, adding he drugged her two to three times a week. I had an addiction, he said. What were the warning signs looking back? I only knew I had blackouts and I had health problems.
you were forgetting things. There were entire periods of days that you didn't remember. I couldn't remember that I'd been to the hairdresser. It was only the next day that I realized I had. And when I called my children, it was the same.
I didn't remember our conversations. I thought I was seriously ill. I consulted neurologists, I had a CT scan, nothing was found. How do you sit? And recount all of this with such poise.
And almost A softness but a distance. I've always been this way. Anger and hatred build nothing, they destroy. And I didn't want to go down that path. The trial made headlines worldwide.
Then drew huge crowds of supporters who praised Giselle Pelico for her bravery. holding her up as a feminist hero. What are you Seeing, thinking, feeling, going through that crowd of cameras. You know that I wasn't alone. It was an incredible source of strength for me.
All of the fifty one men on trial were convicted. Dominique Pellico was sentenced to the maximum of twenty years. Dominique asked you to forgive him, do you forgive him? No, pardones is extremely difficult. But I don't want to live in hatred.
I do need to speak French, and it will also be to say goodbye. But you want to see him again. Yes, I need answers. I may never get them, but that's also part of my journey. During our interview, just off-camera was her new partner, Jean-Lou.
who was also by her side during the trial, along with her children. I was excited to get to the point in the book when you meet Jean-Luc. And I think Finally, something good is happening to this woman. I never thought I'd fall in love or even want to tell you. It's a beautiful story.
As for the rest, it belongs to us and I keep that to myself. But you're in love. Indeed, you can fall in love at any age. Everything is possible. That too is a message of hope.
To tell yourself that nothing is lost in life. I have all of these notes, as you can see in the book. on the very last page. I made a note for myself, which is somehow it's uplifting in the end. I was always wondering what my mission on earth was, why I had been born.
Some are painters, some are poets, others are writers. I think my mission was to give others hope. that even after hardship you can rise again and choose happiness. I think that was my mission. 250 years ago, George Washington made his daring crossing of the icy Delaware River.
turning the tide of the Revolutionary War, But all these years later would Washington even recognize the river he crossed. On this President's Day weekend, environmental correspondent David Schechter. as a tale of these United States, then and now. Yes, I'm sorry. Yeah.
Spend some time staring at the famous painting of Washington crossing the Delaware. and you can't miss the ice. It's everywhere. How did cold weather become part of the strategy of that night. It does a lot to impede the crossing and endangers the whole operation, but it actually becomes our shield.
Alex Robb is an educator at Washington Crossing Historic Park outside Philadelphia, which marks the anniversary each year. Robb says At the end of seventeen seventy six, after a string of losses, Washington's army was on the verge of collapse. But on Christmas, with ice forming in the Delaware River, the enemy assumed it was too dangerous for the Americans to cross. They were wrong. and the cold weather handed Washington the element of surprise.
His victory at Trenton was a sign that the war could still be won. Looking back, had the weather proven more mild, they most definitely would have encountered resistance outside Trenton. A few minutes can really make the difference between winning and losing a battle. And a few degrees too, probably. A few degrees, absolutely.
At the time Americans were used to colder winters. We know that from things like Thomas Jefferson's meticulous handwritten weather records. But since then, winter has gotten warmer. Ever since Washington was here, there has been a steady increase. Jen Brady is a data analyst at the science nonprofit Climate Central.
Their research shows that average winter temperatures in the Philadelphia area have gone up and down over the years, but overall they are now five and a half degrees warmer than they were in nineteen seventy. Today is cold and it's snowy, right? It's cold, yeah. How can we say that things are changing when it looks like winter? It will continue to snow.
There will continue to be cold in cold places, but there will be less of it. The best evidence of our changing climate comes from ice cores. Long tubes of ice extracted out of glaciers in Greenland and Antarctica. Eric Steig is a glaciologist at the University of Washington in Seattle. This piece contains 1776 and probably a little bit of 1775.
Really?
So this ice goes back to basically when Washington was around. Amazing. Inside ice cores are perfectly preserved air bubbles. The deeper you drill, the older the bubbles. It's this sort of magical way at going back in time.
It's a time machine. The white dots are air bubbles. Yeah, so like you're breathing a little bit of the air that George Washington breathes. Those bubbles contain carbon dioxide, a gas that helps regulate Earth's temperature. And for 800,000 years, the carbon levels found in ice cores have gone up and down.
But never above this line. not until around eighteen hundred when they started to take off. What changed at that point to make that spike? We began burning fossil fuels and we're doing it really fast. Since the Industrial Revolution, which began around the time of the American Revolution, Our cars, factories, and power plants have been burning oil and gas and emitting massive amounts of carbon dioxide.
That has led to warmer temperatures, which can intensify extreme floods. Drought. and fires. Seems to me it's good for people to understand. Things have changed.
and will continue to change and have an understanding of what to expect going forward.
So it turns out around the time Washington looked out on the icy Delaware. there were two important pictures coming into focus. One. The Story of America. the other, the beginnings of climate change.
and both continue to shape our world. I kind of like to think about George Washington showing back up in 2026 and saying, What have you done? This is pretty different. Oh, yeah. He would.
You pluck somebody from that time period, they would see things having changed quite dramatically. The Academy Awards are a month away, and among the first-time nominees is Australian actor Jacob Elarty. who's making his mark as the creature in Frankenstein. He's talking with Tracy Smith. Yeah.
It seems they really don't make them like they used to. A hundred years ago, a group including Charlie Chaplin, Mary Pickford, and Douglas Fairbanks built the United Artists Theater in downtown Los Angeles. A Spanish Gothic masterpiece. It's all still here. Look at this place.
It's so beautiful, huh? And for the true movie fan, like actor Jacob Alordi, it's kind of a church. You love going to the movies, yeah? Yeah, I love going to the movies. I love going to the movies.
And he also makes movies people love. In Piero del Toro's Frankenstein, Jacob Alordi is the creature. I remember. Pieces. Yeah.
It's a role that's brought him critical acclaim and, at age 28, an Oscar nomination.
Now. Run. I know it's probably hard to narrow it down, but has there been a... Pinch me moment. I think getting nominated for an Academy Award was.
I definitely love K Lap and I was like, he just sat there. No. I mean the whole the whole I'll probably die and never quite believe that I was in the pictures, you know. That's how it feels still. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah, and I like it that way. In Frankenstein, his humanity shines through. Even after the makeup folks took hours turning him into a monster. Let's talk about the prosthetics a little bit.
How long were you in Makeup for the Full prosthetics? It would depend. When he was. Freshly minted and newborn, you know, head-to-toe sort of sculpture. It was 10 or 11 hours, depending on.
You know, how much we were moving or whatnot. Another monster. Yes. We can be monsters together. The monster makeup job and the physicality of the role might all seem a bit brutal, but Jacob Alordi's not the kind of guy to let a little adversity get in his way.
I cannot die. Were there times when you thought maybe this career isn't for me? Never. No, never, never. I've been on this on a single track.
Seriously, since Fifteen years old. And it hasn't wined yet, which I'm really, really happy about. Born and raised in Brisbane, Australia, Jacob Alordi discovered a love for acting at a young age. I think it's A lead role in the 2018 film The Kissing Booth put him on the map. Come on, relax, Shelly.
It was just a kiss. Hello? and the HBO Max series Euphoria. Put him in the young adult stratosphere. I think these clothes are too sophisticated for me.
It was sophisticated. But you can go around in a feather and it'll be sophisticated. But he says director Sophia Coppola brought him to the next level. I hate Brown. It reminds me of the Army.
Would she cast him as the king? Black hair and more melka. We'll make your ass stand out more. In Priscilla you played Elvis. I forgot about that.
You forgot about that.
Sorry. Was there something that was super difficult to master that you felt like you had to work on? I think Oh. Playing over as Presley was the hardest thing I've ever had to do. On screen.
I felt like I was knocking on the door of Hollywood, like, please take me seriously. And Then they finally They answered and gave it to me and I was like, oh no. No, no, Sophia Cobala. And she wants me to play Elvis Presley.
Okay, goodness gracious. It couldn't just be like. A guy. You know, that the heroine loves, or something. Like, I would have loved to just play the guy.
But no, it had to be Elvis Presley. That was nice, but it was really, it was a big sort of departure for myself, I think. And now, with the biggest role of his career so far under his belt, Jacob Alorti has an Oscar nod and one proud mama.
So you were with your mom when you heard that you got nominated for an Oscar. How'd that go? I mean, it was particularly beautiful because this is very dramatic, but I remember. And any actor that says that you haven't done this is a liar. But you would practice.
Your Academy Awards speech when you were young, formulating the dream. And I remember being. Fifteen or sixteen. doing it. And I remember I would tear up because I thought, you know, mum's not gonna get to see this.
And the day that I got nominated, I... mum was with me and I realized, you know, mum's going to get to see All of this. She's going to get to see all the spoils of her work, all the time and love that she invested. She gets to. we get to share it now.
I can't really believe I'm in Los Angeles. Talking to you, making movies. It still seems unreal. Yeah, absolutely. Very much so.
It probably always will too. Because it's also a fantasy job. this is the job that nobody gets to do and I feel a bit spoiled and honestly a little bit embarrassed sometimes being one of the people that get to get to do it. You've earned it. But for now.
For now. And do what all rich men do. And for now, he's making the most of it. Live in a big house? Alordie's new film, Wuthering Heights, opposite fellow Australian Margot Robbie, opened Friday.
Take a wife. to lots of social media buzz. Wife? What wife? But like this old theater, Jacob Alordi wants to build something for the ages.
It seems to me that you've made a conscious decision to kind of not let that part of the industry, the fame machine, affect you. Like with your relationship with social media, you're not really on there a lot. I have no relationship with social media. My dream was to be an actor. My dream was to play in the movies and I've been given exactly what What I wanted, and I see it exactly how I dreamed it, and I live it how I dreamed it.
Um So for me, that's about all I can handle. As culinary rivalries go, this one might be the creamiest. Chris Livesay serves up a delectable postcard from Rome. Alfredo El Escrofa isn't just a restaurant. Is that John Wayne right there?
Yeah! It's a time machine. So these were the years, I mean the Dolce Vita, when Kirk Douglas was making Spartacus, Audrey Hepburn and Gregory Peck are making Roman Holiday. This was the Dolce Vita. This was the Dolce Vita.
Okay. Uh And when the movie stars weren't on set, they were eating Fettuccine Alfredo, born right here more than a century ago. Today, Mario Mozzetti is the owner. And a third generation of mantegatore, or creamer, the one who whips up the noodles inside the dish. It all started, he says, when the wife of the original owner, Alfredo the Lalio, had a baby, then got sick and lost her appetite.
Alfredo found the cure in this kitchen. Fresh egg pasta.
Okay. So thin it takes longer to cut it than to cook it. There is one detail, Chris. It's a secret. Cooking time more or less of 30 seconds instead 3, 4, 5 minutes.
Which is the normal cooking time of an egg past. It's then placed in a dish along with some pasta water. Mm-hmm. Just a touch of butter. and grated parmesan.
Just a little bit of cheese. A little bit of cheese. Parmigiano, 24 months. And this It's the process. It's almost like you're weaving.
This is the dance, Chris. This is the vulture that Alfredo dedicated to his wife. Simple, but very it's extremely simple and complicated at the same time. That complicated simplicity eventually caught the taste buds of Hollywood's original power couple. Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford.
The year was 1920 and the world's most famous bombshell had just married the world's most famous heartthrob, a global sensation covered breathlessly by the press. After falling in love with each other, they fell in love with Fettuccini Alfredo in Rome. Alfredo the Great, yesterday, today, tomorrow and for always. Alfredo, your friend, Mary Pickford, she was in love with this plate. These are the golden spoon and fork that.
In a sign of gratitude, Fairbanks and Pickford gave Alfredo a golden fork and spoon. Are these the originals? No, they are not, because in the 40s and during the Second War, unfortunately, the Nazis took the original ones. The Nazis took them. Yeah, yeah.
For more than a century, Anyone who was anyone in show business just had to make the pilgrimage. Arthur Mille was a shock. Arthur Mille, let me touch you. Let me touch you. Why?
Because you were the husband of Marilyn Morrow. Come on. I can't resist. With that kind of folklore, it's no wonder how this pasta made its way into cookbooks and restaurants across America. And like the Hollywood scripts that made these faces famous, this tale has more twists and turns than well, you get it.
Just a short walk away, there's another restaurant with a rival claim. It's called Il Vero Alfredo. Translation: The Real Alfredo. With its own fettuccine. Grazie.
Even more celebrities to count than the competition. Eva Gardner, Walt Disney, Sylvester Stallone. Ronald Reagan. and its own golden fork and spoon. Wow.
Thank you.
So, is this the original Fork and Spoon? Yes. Okay, because I had read that. The Nazis stole them or something like that. That's not true.
They're fake. Meet Tiara Cuomo, the great-granddaughter of the Alfredo DeLelio. Today, she runs this restaurant with her mother, Ines DeLelio, Alfredo's granddaughter. Here's where things get complicated. During World War II, the dish's creator, Alfredo DeLalio, sold the first restaurant to one of his waiters.
That was Mario Mazzetti's grandfather. Then, after the war, Alfredo decided to open this one. Ever since, the two have coexisted. begrudgingly. Concordance.
Competitors. Competitors. Each a mecca for royalty from Hollywood to Washington. How many famous mouths has this four? Oh, many, many.
All the pictures on the wall.
So Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, Richard Burton, Kennedy, the Senate. The Kennedys. They will bring luck. Despite their differences, both restaurants can agree on at least one thing. In America, we're often doing fettuccine Alfredo wrong.
With shrimps, with green, I don't like it. Blasphemy. Yeah. But you don't use any of the stuff. No, no, never, never.
My God. By his count, there are more than 50 brands of Alfredo sauce for sale on the U.S. market. Like it or not, people are getting rich off of... Of course they're getting rich.
So? How does that feel? It's very painful. And nobody knows, at least they don't know about this place. This location.
Or rather, Both locations. Two pillars, either in spite of or thanks to a rivalry that created and maintained an Italian-American classic. Just making it up as I go for your CBS TV show Yes, folks, this is me. I'm with my new buddy Lee He's recorded dozens of hits, written some of our most memorable songs, and seven decades on is still thrilling audiences. He is Paul Anka, a true music legend.
and with Lee Cowan, our Sunday profile. There was a feeling of fall in the air when fans arrived here. for an opportunity to fall back in time. I'm just a lonely boy. Lovely.
Paul Anka was the soundtrack of an age when drive-ins and back seats were the currency of teen romance. We knew what teams liked. Because he was one. And they called it poppy love Oh, I guess. They'll never know.
I've been in show business since I was about ten years old. Did they? Paul Enke is a remarkably young 84. And when the lights go down, Hit it. The room lights up.
I'm so young and you're so old. This my darling of the told. I don't care just what they say. When you start out as I did as a kid with a squeaky little voice, not knowing what's going to happen when it changes. I couldn't envision me being around for all these decades, you know.
Do you remember the times of your love? The nostalgia is real. It's palpable. But so is his staying power. Paul Anca has remained on Billboard's Hot 100 chart For seven straight decades.
You're having my baby. He's reinvented, reimagined, and rewritten himself. over and over again. Put your head. I'll do the singing when you relax.
Yeah. Oh baby. He was one of the few who made the lyric leap from 50s teeny bopping to classic crooner. Steadily performing with Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, and Sammy Davis Jr. by the 1960s.
Did you feel like a kid? I mean, did you struggle to be taken seriously because you were so young? All of that. It was very difficult to go from a modest background, a small town, to where everybody's all over you and you're famous and you're a celebrity. Frankly, I kept saying, how do I not become an asshole, excuse me?
He was living the life. but also learning about life. Hanging around with the Rat Pack and the mob in Las Vegas. They drank and smoked, and I'm I was fascinated. But I noticed they'd come off and be coughing and spitting and then I'd be introduced to their doctors.
So I never became a smoker. I never became a big drinker. What he did become is a voracious reader of medical literature. If it's healthy, he's likely given it a shot. In a shot glass.
Like so.
Okay, including his daily shot of olive oil with lemon. And you just shoot it right down like this. It actually wasn't bad. See what the lemon does? Whatever he's done, it's worked.
So, why not? Why not? Why not? His voice is strong, he stretches the stage, and he still has a disarming sense of humor. We're here for a while, folks.
If you got to take pills or go to the bathroom, just go whenever you want. I'm not going anywhere. Just this past week, Anchor released his latest out. one of more than 130 that he's recorded. Any time you need me, pay.
Uh Call and I'll be there. Uh Call and see what a friend can be. When you need someone to care It's a collection of songs about love and life, he says. Both are his stock and trade. on the wall at his home outside Los Angeles.
There are more gold records than you can count. Not just for his own souls. but the ones he wrote for others. But I guess it doesn't matter anymore. Buddy Hollies, it doesn't matter anymore.
That was anchored. She's a lady? Tom Jones owes Anka for that one too. He even wrote with Michael Jackson. And I doubt that it ever could, not like you hold me.
A long-forgotten demo they recorded together way back in the 80s surfaced after Jackson died in 2009. They found these songs in a drawer. Maybe let them fill so cold. Yeah. It became one of the last hits of the King of Pop.
In 2020, Anka surfaced again when Grammy-winning rapper and singer Doja Cat sampled his music. Put your head on my shoulder. Imitating that video went on. to become a TikTok trend. Put your head on my shoulder What?
What? What? What? Tick tock talk? Tick tock.
And with it all. When there was doubt, But of all the songs he's known for, It's the one he wrote for Old Blue Eyes. It still gets people a little misty. Control. Through it all and did it.
Mm. As the story goes, Frank Sinatra told Anka that he was thinking about retiring. And Anka, only 25 at the time? says the lyrics just came. I travelled each and every highway.
And more, much more than I did it. Why? And it started to write itself. How long did it take? Five hours.
And it was such a hit, he stayed 10 more years. And then after that came, let me try again. Yep. He wrote that one. Here, Bear, you take yours.
Okay, okay, here you go. These days, it's more about family than fans. He's got nine grandkids, including two from his daughter Amanda, and her husband. Actor Jason Bateman. Having my baby Paulenka knows he'll have to tap the brakes at some point, but Just like the song goes, he has traveled each and every highway, and when he does leave, he'll do it.
His way. When it's time for my body to say enough, Oh no. I'm playing with the house's money now. I'm one lucky guy. Life long With all the talking heads in our media universe, it takes someone truly unique to cut through the noise.
Someone like Stephen A. Smith. He's in conversation with Robert Costa. Put that Damn camera on me right now. These days, Stephen A.
Smith is everywhere. Stephen A. Smith. On the sidelines at the games and And of course, all over TV. His swaggering sports talk has made him a superstar at ESPN.
Of modern day Howard Cosell.
Something is wrong with you with a multi-million dollar. Media Empire. Smith begins each weekday morning with his popular cable show, First Take. The set is his court. We do want to one-up one another along the way.
And when you want to one-up somebody, that's competition. And that's what makes it go. Ben Simmons might also be the weakest, most pathetic excuse for a professional athlete we have ever seen. The key for us is to be authentic. Don't fake it.
And not boring. Never boring. Nah, that ain't good enough. There are organizations who stake. I'm talking about making sure that it's not choreographed.
You're not just saying something just to be saying it. Holla too, boy. Sports fans like to keep the conversation going. Remember, the typical stars, people want your picture, they want your autograph. Me, they want a debate.
They want the pictures too, but they want to debate. There's no such thing as love you. Man, can I get a picture with you? And that's it. It's, man, did you really mean that about the Knicks?
How could you say that about the Cowboys? Smith grew up in the working-class neighborhood of Hollis Queens in New York City. His mother, a nurse who works 16-hour shifts, encouraged him as he struggled with dyslexia. and with his father.
Well, my father said that I was a lost cause. My father was the one who told my mother. He's just not smart. That still hurt?
Well It hurt for a very, very long time. But it subsided significantly once I proved him wrong, and even he had to concede that I was a different beast. My issue was. He didn't take care of the family.
So my mother had to. He left New York after he won a basketball scholarship to Winston-Salem State University in North Carolina. But an injury cut short that dream So he turned to newspapers. Eventually, his columns caught the attention of ESPN executives, who gave him a show. Anybody with sense should know Kobe's the man right now.
His first stop after signing the contract. His mother's office. I walked up in there and I said, let's go. And I looked at the person running the center. I said, my mother will not be working here any longer.
I said, it's over. And my mother never worked again. And to this day, I've achieved a lot of things. But that is the proudest moment of my life. That's me.
His combative commentary has its critics. And he has generated controversy, sometimes to the point of ESPN. Taking action. First take, a dominant presence in sports media, but it has some haters. Let them hate.
They ain't winning. We winning. Do you really, really think a show would be number one for 13 consecutive years if it was unpleasant and uncomfortable for people to watch? The critics that say that want you to think that because you ain't watching their show. I'm not apologizing.
You're okay. I let you talk. Until you walk to the A word. But some of your critics call you screaming A Smith. that you've made journalism and sports all about shouting.
Well, those are people that want you and others to ignore my resume. I was a college beat writer. I was a pro-B writer. I became an NBA columnist. White men are all over the place screaming all the time.
They don't call them screaming whatever. Matter of fact, they call them passionate. and they never associate the word anger. But somehow they do that with me, despite the fact that I smile a lot. A lot of reasons to be happy.
happy and busy. Just recently, at age 58, he became a big name at Sirius XM with a daily sports show and now a weekly political show, too. My guest has served as the 56th Speaker of the United States House of Representatives. The registered independent interviews leaders from both parties. Please welcome back to the show.
House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries. And sometimes a Sunday morning correspondent. The one and only Robin Costa's with me. Pleasure to meet you, my man. How's it going?
Thank you.
Thank you so much for having me. But his move toward politics has raised eyebrows in press boxes. First of all, I don't give a damn what Pete Hecksmith has to say because I will tell you right now, he was never qualified for the job. And in Washington. Stephen A.
Smith may run for president, as you know. Do you have any advice for Stephen A? And even President Trump is keeping an eye on Smith. Stephen A. He's a good guy.
He's a smart guy. I love watching him. He's got great entertainment skills. I'd love to see him run.
So, when somebody talks about me being a president or whatever, I have no desire to be a politician. Zero. I have no desire to run for office. But you're not ruling it out. I'm not ruling it out because I'd love to be on the debate stages against some of these individuals that think they're better suited to run the country.
Because I think that the American people deserve to listen to and hear from somebody who genuinely cares about making life better for them. Instead of yourself, do you realize the way they've been acting on Capitol Hill, all you have to do is disagree with the other side? You don't even have to look at a bill. Would you run as a Democrat? Yeah, because I couldn't see myself.
running as a member of the GOP. I'm a fiscal conservative. I can't stand high taxes, but I'm a social liberal. In the same breath, because I believe in living and let live. I pay attention to the desolate and the disenfranchised.
Yes, I like strong borders. That's absolutely true. We never needed open borders, but we don't need it to be completely closed either. We're a gorgeous mosaic.
Sounds like you're getting a stump speech ready, Stephen. No, there's no stump speech. I can give a speech without a note in front of me. When you deserve the compliment, I'll give it to you. When you don't, I won't.
Whether he jumps into politics or not, one thing is clear. Stephen A. Smith is always Uh for a debate. I will confess to you I'm giving strong consideration. to being on that debate stage.
for 2027. I've got this year coming up, 2026. to think about it. to study. To know the issues, etc., because I don't know everything, but I am going to spend this year.
Thinking about that before I make a decision as to what I want to do. You've only had a few thousand. Debate practices over the last few years. Right. Every morning.
I'm not worried about a debate one bit. Not even a little bit. Thank you for listening. Please join us when our trumpet sounds again next Sunday morning. At Pluto TV, we're celebrating Black History Month with award-winning films like Dream Girls and Selma.
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