Two radio talk show hosts said Saturday that President Joe Biden’s reelection campaign sent them questions for their interviews with him last week in the wake of his debate debacle.
“The questions were sent to me for approval. I approved them,” Andrea Lawful-Sanders, host of “The Source” in Philadelphia, told CNN’s Victor Blackwell Saturday. “I got several questions, eight of them, and the four that were chosen were the ones that I approved.”
CNN later clarified the campaign, not the White House, had sent the show the questions.
Blackwell noted that Lawful-Sanders and Earl Ingram in Milwaukee asked Biden “essentially the same questions.”
Ingram also said Saturday that the campaign provided his show with four questions.
A campaign spokesperson Saturday didn’t deny providing the questions but also said that the shows weren’t required to use them.
“It’s not at all an uncommon practice for interviewees to share topics they would prefer,” spokesperson Lauren Hitt said. “The president was asked about this debate performance as well as what he’d delivered for Black Americans.”
Later Saturday, the campaign said it would no longer send along questions for interviews involving the president.
The interviews come as Biden tries to recover from the debate and calls are coming from Democrat donors, officials, and supporters for him to drop out of the race.
“They gave me the exact questions to ask,” Ingram, the host of “The Earl Ingram Show” which is broadcast statewide in Wisconsin, told The Associated Press. “There was no back and forth.”
The interviews, while intended as damage control, caused even more questions about Biden’s ability to speak in unscripted ways, particularly after the revelations that the campaign provided questions ot the radio shows.
Hitt also claimed that Trump’s campaign called off an interview with a Virginia television station after the reporter would not agree to conditions about the questions.
She also pointed to a Virginia TV station saying Trump’s campaign called off an interview after the debate after the station’s reporter refused to agree to conditions on his questions.
“President Trump held a rally in Virginia and afterward participated in local interviews that spanned numerous topics, not just related to the debate,” campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung told CNN. “Meanwhile, Joe Biden and his campaign are bullying the media into asking pre-screened and approved questions and trying to pass it off like it’s normal behavior. It’s not.”
Information from The Associated Press was used in this report.
Tags: biden | interviews | andrea lawful | sanders | earl ingram
