The new revelation that Biden’s campaign was handing out questionnaires to journalists ahead of interviews with the president is just the latest example of accusations that Biden and the media have conspired to boost his performance throughout his presidency.
At several points during Biden’s first term, his entourage appeared to preselect which reporters he would answer at press conferences. Biden also was interviewed following questions that were reportedly preselected by media executives, with no room for prominent reporters to improvise or follow up on “scripted” questions.
“That’s my word. Every question was scripted and reviewed dozens of times by numerous editors and executives. That’s right. I was told to answer according to the script and not to deviate,” former ESPN host Sage Steele previously told Fox News Digital about his 2021 interview with President Biden.
Second local radio host acknowledges receiving questions from Biden campaign ahead of Presidential interview
President Biden noted that during his first press conference as president, he was given a list of reporters to call. (screenshot)
Following his disastrous defeat in the presidential debate in June, intense scrutiny of Biden’s intellectual acuity and cognitive abilities intensified after two local radio hosts revealed that the president’s team had sent him questions ahead of their interview.
Philadelphia radio host Andrea Lawfull Sanders told CNN host Victor Blackwell on Saturday that she was asked “several questions — eight, and the four that were chosen were the ones I approved” before her July 3 interview with Biden.
Also on Wednesday, Milwaukee radio host Earl Ingram told ABC News that Biden had asked him a few questions ahead of a meeting with the president just days after the presidential debate.
The fact that Biden’s team pre-arranged the interview in this way, as the CNN host told both hosts in their interview on Saturday, is contributing to growing concerns that Biden may not be able to handle reelection and the presidency.
“If the White House is trying to demonstrate the president’s vitality, energy and acumen right now, I don’t see how they’re doing that by sending out questions in advance of the interview and letting the president know what’s going to happen,” Blackwell said.
But this wouldn’t be the first time Biden has participated in an interview or press conference during his presidency where the terms were seemingly approved in advance. There have been multiple instances like this before.
Some of these instances included Biden being told which reporters to call on during press conferences. In one high-profile instance in August 2021, the president declared midway through a press conference that he had been given a list of which reporters to call on and was “instructed” to use it.
“Folks, they gave me a list, and the first person I was instructed to call was Kelly O’Donnell at NBC,” Biden said at the time, sparking a firestorm of criticism on social media.
At the time, New York Rep. Claudia Tenney asked, “Biden simply said, ‘I was instructed to call this reporter’! Who told him to call this reporter? Who is really in charge? Are you kidding me?”
Biden made the same headline-grabbing admission just two months earlier at a summit news conference in Geneva.
“I’ll take your questions. As always, they’ve given me a list of the people they’re going to be visiting,” Biden told reporters after meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
The moment once again went viral, with Rep. Greg Stube (R-Fla.) questioning “how can this be allowed?” after seeing the video online.
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In March 2021, Fox News White House correspondent Peter Doocy confronted then-White House press secretary Jen Psaki about a “list” that Biden reportedly used during his first press conference as president.
At a press conference in March 2021 The Hill reported: At the time, Doocy asked Psaki, “I’m just curious about this list that was given to him,” noting that Fox News “is the only network out of the five that has never been on this list since we resumed in-person events in Wilmington during the campaign.”
“I’m curious if that’s official government policy,” Doocy added.
Psaki responded, “We’re having a conversation here, right? Every time you come into the briefing room, is he taking questions from you? Has the president been taking questions from you since he took office? Yes or no?”
Biden was also arrested. They held note cards with the reporters’ names and photos on them during a joint press conference with Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese in October 2023. Every name on the list was called during the event.
Biden’s interview procedures have come under increased scrutiny after former ESPN reporter Sage Steele alleged in 2021 that network executives forced him to conduct a scripted interview with the president.
“They told me, ‘Say everything we wrote. Don’t go off script,'” Steele said in an interview with Fox News Digital earlier this year.
“It was like, ‘Here’s what you ask, here’s how you say it, there’s no follow-up whatsoever,'” she said, adding that she believed ESPN had sent questions to the White House in advance.
ESPN did not respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment about Steele’s allegations at the time.
A provision in Biden’s SAVE plan has forgiven student loan payments for 153,000 borrowers. (Screenshot/Biden speech)
Asked this week about the Biden campaign sending pre-prepared questions to radio hosts ahead of interviews, Biden’s campaign countered that the practice is not unusual.
“It is not unusual for interviewees to share their favorite topics. These questions were related to the news of the day, and the President was asked not only about his performance in the debate, but also what he has done for Black Americans,” Biden campaign spokesperson Lauren Hitt told Fox News Digital in a statement.
She added, “We are not conditional on accepting these questions for an interview. Hosts are always free to ask whatever questions they feel will be most helpful to listeners.”
Fox News Digital’s Hannah Panrec contributed to this report.
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