President Joe Biden tried to recover from a disastrous first debate performance and reassure American voters that he’s not too old or cognitively impaired to run the country by sitting down for a primetime interview with ABC’s George Stephenopolous on Friday. Yet it’s his interviews with local radio hosts that are now drawing scrutiny because of the seemingly outsized level of planning on the president’s behalf.
Andrew Lawful-Sanders, host of “The Source” on WURD in Philadelphia, said during an appearance on CNN that Biden’s team gave her a list of eight questions before an interview on Wednesday. “I got several questions—eight of them,” she said. “And the four that were chosen were the ones that I approved.” CNN reporter Victor Blackwell noted that the questions Lawful-Sanders asked were “essentially the same,” as those asked by Earl Ingram during an interview on WMCS in Milwaukee, who also appeared on CNN and did not appear to disagree with Lawful-Sanders’ description of receiving questions.
It’s not unusual to go back and forth with an elected official’s team before an interview, but it’s certainly not a good look that Biden, a president who has spent the better part of five decades in public service, needed what amounts to a level of hand-holding for a local radio interviews. His team , of course, pushed back, saying that it was his campaign, not the White House, that sent the questions, and that the interview wasn’t contingent on the questions that were chosen.
“Hosts are always free to ask the questions they think will best inform their listeners,” Lauren Hitt, a spokesperson for the Biden campaign, told the New York Times.
Biden’s ability to meaningfully engage with the public in an unscripted format has become a central campaign issue after a terrible performance against Donald Trump in their first televised debate of 2024. Sure, Biden has long been known for his gaffes and has talked openly about living with a speech impediment when he was younger. But during the debate he seemed confused and, at times, incoherent.
His poor performance bolstered Trump’s claims that he’s too old and feeble to lead the country. The New York Times editorial board called for Biden to drop out of the race, and so too have a slew of democrats, including in swing states.
Angie Craig, a representative from Minnesota’s second congressional district, released a statement on Saturday morning that Biden “should step aside for the next generation of leadership.”
Amid all the chatter, a group of anonymous democratic operatives sent out an 11-page memo that outlines the case for Biden’s vice president, Kamala Harris, to run in his place. Harris is “not the best option,” the authors write, “but she’s the only realistic option to win.”