Fresh off the mishandled Chinese spy balloon crisis, Joe Biden once again proved that he is not the fearless leader he’s long claimed to be. The latest example is the announcement that Biden will not give the traditional presidential pre-Super Bowl interview.
Since 2009, the network broadcasting the Super Bowl has interviewed the sitting U.S. president. But this year it won’t happen, because Fox is broadcasting the Super Bowl, and Joe Biden, who’s become accustomed to softball interviews from the mainstream, can’t possibly entertain the idea of sitting down with a Fox News anchor who might ask him deeper questions than what his favorite flavor of ice cream is.
With Biden too scared to face a Fox News journalist, the White House negotiated an interview on Fox Soul, a Fox streaming service that targets black Americans and that I’m sure no one has ever heard of.
Biden sat down for interviews with CBS in 2021 and NBC in 2022, when those networks broadcasted the Super Bowl. But this year, the White House apparently tried to negotiate a deal with Fox Soul without Fox Corp. being aware, and then the interview was effectively canceled.
“The President was looking forward to an interview with Fox Soul to discuss the Super Bowl, the State of the Union, and critical issues impacting the everyday lives of Black Americans,” White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre tweeted Friday. “We’ve been informed that Fox Corp has asked for the interview to be cancelled.”
Related: Why Isn’t Biden Doing a Super Bowl Interview With Fox?
What really happened? Who knows? Who cares, really? Whether or not Joe Biden is interviewed on Fox Soul really isn’t the point; the point is that the White House is clearly afraid of putting Joe Biden in front of a Fox News journalist.
This is the same Joe Biden who claimed during the 2020 campaign that Putin didn’t want him to be president because he was the only candidate who’d ever “gone toe-to-toe with him.” Then Russia invaded Ukraine, in spite of all of Biden’s tough talk that Putin better not — or else. And despite Biden’s insistence that Putin was afraid of him, he’s failed to bring the Russian invasion of Ukraine to an end nearly a year later, even after all the money he’s thrown at the problem.
Biden’s tough talk is always presented in the form of a talking point but fails to amount to anything when it actually matters. While running for president in 2020, Biden pledged to make the Saudi kingdom a “pariah” over the killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi. But as soon as he required an alternate (foreign) supply of oil after he crippled domestic production and gas prices skyrocketed, Biden went crawling over to Saudi Arabia, fist-bumped Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, and begged him for his oil.
And then there’s China, whose spy balloon was allowed to fly over the United States for days before Biden decided to shoot it down, and then only because of bad press coverage.
So, where is the strong leader that candidate Joe Biden claimed we’d get? If he can’t even stand up to Fox News, does anyone really believe the likes of Vladimir Putin, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, or Xi Jinping see him as anything but a weak and feeble old man they can just walk all over?