President Biden is Absolutely Right to Blow Off Fox News Super Bowl Interview Despite Tradition — Here’s Why

Should President Joe Biden sit down for an interview with Fox News this weekend, as has become a Super Bowl tradition?

This is almost certainly the question currently being bandied about in the White House communications offices this week, and there are compelling arguments on both sides of the equation.

It’s been reported that Fox News executives are not hopeful that Biden will agree to an interview with the network, which news anchor Bret Baier would conduct. It would certainly make for compelling television, but I think the White House is more than justified in taking a pass, which I will explain shortly.

There is nearly a twenty-year tradition for the sitting president to sit down for an interview with the news division of whatever network has paid the NFL for broadcast rights. It started in 2004 with President George W. Bush and has happened every year since, save 2018 when former President Donald Trump refused an interview with NBC.

There are good reasons for any sitting president to do the Super Bowl interview, reasons which still hold today. The game is one of America’s few remaining events that unify the nation. Given the seemingly infinite outlets for news and information, there are scant events that command the same degree of millions enjoying a shared experience of watching the same thing and discussing it the next day.

I’ve long believed that Democratic leaders should appear on Fox News. I even argued that the smartest thing former President Barack Obama could do in his first year in office would be to appear on The O’Reilly Factor. He did not take my advice in his first term. Bill O’Reilly did end up interviewing Obama before the 2011 Super Bowl and notably asked him about the people that “hate him,”  which carried a bit of controversy but allowed Obama to take the high road.

And there are compelling reasons for this particular White House to agree to this particular interview. The message of unity and promotion of bipartisan progress made in Biden’s State of the Union speech would indicate that sitting down with a Fox News anchor would be a no-brainer.

But is not like this interview would solely reach a different audience of dedicated Fox News viewers. Presuming it follows tradition, the interview would air on Fox Broadcasting and not Fox News; it would just be conducted by a Fox News personality, who would ostensibly ask questions from a Fox News perspective.

This brings us to the reasons why Biden should NOT agree to the interview, which can be neatly summed up with the question, “Have you WATCHED Fox News over the first two years of the Biden administration?”

The cable news outlet, which spent years propping up Trump, is a 24-hour machine that churns out minute-by-minute attacks on Biden. Every move from the president is a scandal; every speech is an embarrassment; every victory is an illusion.

I would gladly cite outliers to the previous assertion if any existed, but it is damn near impossible to find any examples of Biden getting any sort of credit on Fox News. In many ways, that is obvious and shouldn’t surprise, but it reveals that Fox is far less dedicated to a fair portrayal of current and political events than it is to score political points.

And scoring political points is what Fox News does exceptionally well. On his first day in office, Hannity featured a chyron that read, “Joe Biden has been president for nine hours and 400,000 people are dead.” Satire? Kind of.

During a national address marking the one-year anniversary of the pandemic, a chyron read “Biden Should Be Finished, Tucker on Any Minute,” while a weird inset of Tucker Carlson listening to Biden’s speech was on screen for viewers. Carlson regularly says that Biden is actively working to weaken America and suggests he’s in the tank for China. Is he serious? Eh. What matters more is that so many people take him seriously, which leads to a sickly body politic.

And yes, there is occasional non-biased news reporting that exists on the network in increasingly infrequent spots. For the most part, the network appears to follow its primary mission of dividing the country by undermining the Biden administration and portraying the United States in the absolute worst light possible, all the while draping itself in the false patriotism of Lee Greenwood songs and the American flag.

There is an argument to be made that Biden is not interested in getting into a rhetorical debate with an opposing point of view, but he has shown in backs and forth with Fox News White House correspondent Peter Doocy that he can mostly hold his own. His confident handling of heckling from House Republicans, I think, surprised a lot of people across the spectrum.

Michael Jordan is often wrongly credited for a famous Wayne Gretzky quote that says you miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.  And perhaps Biden and his handlers believe there is a corollary to that; you avoid making 100% of the gaffes in interviews you don’t agree to. That certainly seemed a tactic going back to his 2020 campaign that featured limited appearances, or “hiding in his basement,” as has been the insult repeated numerous times on Fox News.

But the biggest reason why Biden should ignore Fox News? Because as any parent of a petulant toddler knows, nothing good comes from rewarding immature and unwanted behavior. Primetime Fox News opinion hosts spend almost the entirety of their shows portraying Biden in the worst possible light. Sean Hannity thinks it funny to mock the 78-year-old president with the nickname “Sippy Cup.” Classy.

Fox News hosts consistently aim to bully Biden and his political allies. But anyone with a fundamental understanding of the human condition knows that bullies are, at their heart, deeply insecure and unhappy people. They only treat others like dogshit because they hate themselves.

There is an apt online analogy here regarding the treatment of commenters dedicated to only talking shit. Engaging them only rewards and validates their trolling efforts. In short, Biden should avoid going on Fox News because he shouldn’t feed the trolls.

This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.