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.
The decision was made ahead of last week’s right-wing media explosion about Taylor Swift and her boyfriend, tight end Travis Kelce, after he and the Kansas City Chiefs made it to the Super Bowl, where they’ll face the San Francisco 49ers. MAGA media personalities have been circulating conspiracy theories about the pop superstar, promoting the notion that she is part of a sprawling psychological operations plot staged by the NFL and Democratic Party to deliver the 2024 presidential election to Biden.
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 been complaining in public and in conversations with top advisers that messaging touting his achievements isn’t breaking through to the public, the decision means skipping out on an audience of millions — including many who might not otherwise be paying attention to presidential politics.
It’s also the latest instance of Biden opting against a high-profile interview with a large audience. That has become a constant source of irritation for the White House press corps, but has also fed questions of whether he is up to doing them. In…
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