President Joe Biden will engage in the traditional pregame Super Bowl interview this year, though with an obscure network and amid confusion, again raising questions about his availability and transparency.
This year’s big game will air on Fox, which is well known for its conservative Fox News wing, and there were conflicting reports with the network and the White House saying the other had not agreed to an interview. Finally, news emerged that Biden would in fact be doing an interview with the black audience-focused Fox Soul.
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“After the White House reached out to Fox Soul Thursday evening, there was some initial confusion,” Fox Corp. said in a statement shared with press Friday afternoon. “Fox Soul looks forward to interviewing the President for Super Bowl Sunday.”
Fox Soul is a digital network and streaming service that launched only three years ago. It was not immediately clear who would conduct the interview or why it was placed on the nascent network.
Nonetheless, because Biden does few interviews and tends to spit out gaffes when he does, the news has critics throwing flags.
“Every time Biden opens his mouth, he puts his foot in it,” Republican National Committee spokesman Tommy Pigott said. “He has done the fewest interviews of any president in modern history. He thinks he can avoid accountability by hiding from the press, avoiding hard questions, and going on vacation. He can’t.”
The president did sit-down interviews with NBC and CBS before the last two Super Bowls, both times with members of the networks’ primary news teams. Former President Barack Obama previously conducted two Super Bowl interviews with Fox News, while Donald Trump notably skipped one ahead of the big game on NBC in 2018.
Before things were worked out, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre lashed out at Fox late Friday morning.
“The President was looking forward to an interview with Fox Soul to discuss the Super Bowl, the State of the Union, and critical issues impacting the everyday lives of Black Americans,” she tweeted. “We’ve been informed that Fox Corp has asked for the interview to be cancelled.”
Fox News anchor Bret Baier did his own hand-wringing over the situation on Thursday night.
“Every year, traditionally, the network covering the Super Bowl gets an interview with the president of the United States,” he said. “We have formally asked for that interview, but we have not received an answer yet, whether they are going to officially do it or not. … We’re running out of days.”
Despite the hubbub, the tradition of presidential Super Bowl interviews dates back less than 20 years. George W. Bush did the first in 2004, and Obama, a noted sports fan, made it an annual tradition beginning in 2009.
The latest controversy over the Super Bowl Sunday interview is evidence the tradition should end, according to media critic Jack Shafer.
“Not only should the networks stop interviewing presidents before the Super Bowl, the NFL should also ban presidents viewing the game from the owners’ skyboxes, from premium seats on the 50-yard line, and the distant bleachers,” Shafer told the Washington Examiner. “Let them watch the game on TV and give fans a day off from their palavering.”
Biden has drawn criticism for the sparsity of his engagements with the press, at one point going well over 100 days between sit-down interviews with a major news outlet. According to the RNC, Biden has conducted just 33 interviews since taking office, whereas Obama did 187 in just the first 15 months of his presidency.
However, there is some dispute over exactly what counts as an interview. The RNC, for example, does not count interviews with what it considers to be “far-left activists.”
Despite Biden’s low interview count, he often generates headlines when he speaks off the cuff — and not always in a favorable way.
Biden’s staff has had to walk back many of his unscripted statements, including when he said the pandemic is over last September, when he claimed Vladimir Putin should not remain president of Russia, and when he’s said repeatedly that the United States will defend Taiwan, among other examples.
That has led to controversy over who is in charge of Biden’s schedule and who is really running his administration, at least among conservatives.
After conducting no sit-down news interviews in January, Biden has been on something of a streak lately, with the Fox Soul appearance becoming his third of the week following interviews with PBS and Telemundo.
It remains to be seen whether Biden will generate headlines, or headaches, with his latest interview, but Democratic strategist Tom Cochran argues viewers are more concerned about the football game.
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“I can say with confidence that no regular American outside the political vortex of Washington is thinking about this,” said Cochran, a partner at 720 Strategies. “It sounds like a manufactured controversy.”
