Will Leitch, writing for New York Magazine, has a piece with a title that was precisely what I thought immediately after seeing the original story. I love how Leitch explains Trump’s and Smith’s style of discourse in easy-to-understand paragraphs. He then links to where this preposterous story gained traction: When Smith told CNBC’s Alex Sherman that he “wouldn’t mind being in office” and then going on Pod Save America and saying whatever he was doing there.

Leitch then explains everything in a way that even people who don’t know Stephen A. Smith can understand.

He has a shtick, and I do think this shtick has been corrosive to any sort of intelligent sports discourse, but I do not believe Smith is malevolent and, in the end, I do suspect his heart is generally in the right place, if it hasn’t been entirely consumed by his persona at this point. In an age of Barstool and Pat McAfee, Smith is hardly the worst guy on the lot. He does seem to have an occasional sense of humor about himself — you can sense an earnest, even kinda likably dopey guy in there somewhere, as evidenced by his ever-amusing appearances on General Hospital.

But in a world where expertise, rationality, and complexity are under constant assault by cartoonishly vile people foundationally motivated by willful and aggressive ignorance, the Stephen A. Smith political boomlet represents a deeply flawed kind of counterattack. The reasoning here is nothing more than “Hey, they have a bunch of people who don’t know anything, maybe we should get our own person who doesn’t know anything.” Stephen A. Smith for president — my God, I do not think I have ever written a more ridiculous phrase — is the result of giving up, of ceding everything that actually matters. If he is any sort of answer, then quite frankly we are not serious people.

Can we please get some serious people back in charge?