President Biden is sitting out the Super Bowl for the second one yr in a row.
CBS stated on Saturday that the White House had grew to become down a request for Mr. Biden to take part in a televised interview with its news department, which might have aired within the extremely rated hours forward of the massive recreation on Feb. 11.
In a practice courting to 2009, presidents have recorded an interview with the community that announces the Super Bowl, even though there were exceptions. Donald J. Trump didn’t seem on NBC in 2018. Last yr, Mr. Biden declined to seem on Fox, house of cable hosts like Sean Hannity who’re sharply adversarial towards him.
But the White House has been receptive to CBS News previously. The president was once interviewed by means of the “CBS Evening News” anchor Norah O’Donnell forward of the 2021 Super Bowl, and he participated in two long “60 Minutes” items, in 2022 and 2023, with the correspondent Scott Pelley.
“We hope viewers enjoy watching what they tuned in for — the game,” Ben LaBolt, the White House communications director, stated in a remark on Saturday.
The Super Bowl, usually the most-watched telecast of the yr, gives an surprisingly massive target audience for a sitting president to cope with present occasions and advance his time table to the general public.
And there’s quite a lot of news for Mr. Biden to touch upon. Starting on Friday, the United States performed army moves in Iraq, Syria, and Yemen. Three American squaddies had been killed ultimate Sunday in Jordan. The govt simply launched a favorable jobs record. And Mr. Biden is ramping up his re-election marketing campaign as Mr. Trump has moved nearer to clinching the Republican nomination.
In 2021, Mr. Biden’s pregame interview with Ms. O’Donnell was once observed are living by means of about 10.2 million audience; hundreds of thousands extra considered clips that aired on different CBS systems within the days surrounding the sport.
For this yr’s tournament, CBS presented the White House about quarter-hour for an interview with Mr. Biden, with 3 to 4 mins airing are living all over the pregame protection at the community, in accordance to an individual accustomed to the discussions.
Mr. Biden has performed fewer media interviews than his most up-to-date predecessors. The president’s ultimate main community interview happened in October, with Mr. Pelley of CBS. His State of the Union cope with is scheduled for March 7.
Katie Rogers contributed reporting from Washington.