UPDATE: Feb. 11 — Contrary to what Fox Corp. said earlier, President Joe Biden will not sit down for an interview before the Super Bowl with Fox, the White House confirmed to several news outlets.
“FOX has since put out a statement indicating the interview was rescheduled, which is inaccurate,” a White House spokesperson said Friday evening.
The White House did not immediately return HuffPost’s request for more information.
In a statement released on Saturday, the White House said that Fox Soul told them on Friday that Fox Corp. would not let them interview the president unless he agreed to do a second interview, which the White House had already declined.
“Fox made the decision to cancel their interview with the President, not us,” the White House said in the statement.
PREVIOUS UPDATE:
It appears that President Joe Biden will sit down with Fox for a pre-Super Bowl interview after all.
The White House said Friday that Fox had asked to cancel the interview, which is a pregame tradition between the president and whichever network is hosting the game. But a few hours later, Fox Corp. announced that the interview will go forward with Fox Soul, the company’s streaming service aimed at a Black audience.
“After the White House reached out to FOX Soul Thursday evening, there was some initial confusion. FOX Soul looks forward to interviewing the President for Super Bowl Sunday,” a Fox Corp. spokesperson said in a statement.
PREVIOUSLY:
President Joe Biden apparently won’t sit down for the traditional pre-Super Bowl interview with Fox, which is airing the game on Sunday and whose parent company has an icy relationship with the administration.
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Friday, when the pre-Super Bowl interview is usually taped, that plans had been in place but Fox had bowed out.
“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,“ Jean-Pierre said in a statement. “We’ve been informed that Fox Corp has asked for the interview to be cancelled.”
Fox Soul is the corporation’s livestream platform aimed at Black audiences. It launched in 2020, with one Fox executive describing it as a place for shows about “what African American people talk about around the kitchen table.”
A spokesperson for Fox did not immediately return HuffPost’s request for information about the interview falling through.
Each year, the president typically gives an interview to the network broadcasting the Super Bowl that can air before the game; Biden sat down with Lester Holt of NBC News in 2022, and with CBS’ Norah O’Donnell in 2021 for those pregame interviews. But his relationship with Fox, whose conservative Fox News network has been highly critical of his presidency, is more strained.
Two years into his term, Biden has not given an interview to the network. Its prime time hosts, including Sean Hannity, frequently allege on air that Biden is “senile” and “plagued by his own cognitive decline.”
Former President Donald Trump also declined to give interviews to networks he sparred with, and rebuffed a 2018 pre-Super Bowl interview with NBC.