President Joe Biden will skip a pre-Super Bowl interview for the second year in a row — and his aides argue that it’s part of their larger plan, not a move to avoid having the president answer questions in front of the whole country.
Biden advisers tell CNN they see skipping the interview, which would have aired as a segment of the pregame show and not during peak viewing hours, as a strategic decision to give Americans a break from the politics of the 2024 campaign. Advisers say they’re seeing people already expressing fatigue with election news and want to avoid piling on.
“We hope viewers enjoy watching what they tuned in for — the game,” White House communications director Ben LaBolt told CNN.
Some context: The pregame presidential interview is a relatively young tradition, stretching back only to Barack Obama’s first year in office, and one that Donald Trump skipped once himself.
But for Biden — who for months has complained in public and to top advisers that messaging touting his achievements isn’t breaking through to Americans — the decision means skipping out on an audience of millions.
In past years, the Super Bowl presidential interviews often drove news coverage for days. But the Biden White House has always been skeptical of the value of doing so, in part due to anxiety that a flub could become an unwanted distraction.
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