President Biden will miss the Super Bowl for the second year in a row.
CBS announced Saturday that the White House had rejected Biden’s request to participate in a television interview with news outlets that was supposed to air during a high-ratings time slot ahead of the big game on Feb. 11. .
Although there are exceptions, presidents have taped interviews for the networks broadcasting the Super Bowl as a tradition since 2009. Donald J. Trump did not appear on NBC in 2018. Last year, Biden refused to appear on Fox, home to Sean Hannity and other cable hosts who are fiercely hostile to Biden.
But the White House has been friendly to CBS News in the past. The president was interviewed by CBS Evening News anchor Norah O’Donnell ahead of the 2021 Super Bowl and will appear in two feature-length 60 Minutes episodes with correspondent Scott Pelley in 2022 and 2023. appeared in.
“We hope our viewers enjoyed the game they were looking forward to watching,” White House communications director Ben LaBolt said in a statement Saturday.
The Super Bowl is typically the most-watched television broadcast of the year, giving a sitting president an unusually large audience to address current events and communicate his agenda to the nation.
And there’s plenty of news for Biden to comment on. Starting Friday, the United States carried out military strikes in Iraq, Syria, and Yemen. Last Sunday, three American soldiers were killed in Jordan. The government has just recently released positive employment figures. And as Trump moves closer to winning the Republican nomination, Biden is ramping up his re-election campaign.
In 2021, Biden and O’Donnell’s pregame interview was broadcast live to approximately 10.2 million viewers. Clips aired on his other CBS shows in the days before and after the game received millions more views.
At this year’s event, CBS provided the White House with about 15 minutes of interview time with Biden, with three to four minutes of that time being played live during the network’s pregame broadcast, according to people familiar with the discussions. It is said that it will be broadcast live.
Biden has given fewer media interviews than his recent predecessor. The president’s last major network interview was with CBS’s Perry in October. His State of the Union address is scheduled for March 7th.
katie rogers He contributed reporting from Washington.