By A former ESPN personality claims that many of the interviews we have with President Joe Biden are staged and scripted. Sage Steele, who interviewed the president in 2021 now says that network executives wrote most of the questions to ensure that the White House would not be embarrassed by what the president might say on television.
ESPN is owned by Disney.
Every question she asked the president were looked over by editors and executives. She said she’s not certain, she’s confident that the network sent the president the softball questions beforehand to make sure Biden could handle them.
In an interview with Fox News Digital, Steele recalled the “structured” nature of the pre-taped interview, so much so that her ESPN bosses handed her a “script” to go off of.
“That was an interesting experience in its own right because it was so structured,” Steele said. “And I was told, ‘You will say every word that we write out, you will not deviate from the script and go.’”
Many of the questions Steele asked Biden in the March 2021 interview pertained to sports leagues attempting to restore normalcy during the COVID pandemic and vaccine hesitancy among athletes and fans. Her interview made headlines at the time when Biden supported the MLB’s All-Star game boycott of Atlanta following the passage of Georgia’s election reform law.
But everything Steele said to the president ultimately came from ESPN’s c-suite.
“To the word. Every single question was scripted, gone over dozens of times by many editors and executives. Absolutely. I was on script and was told not to deviate,” Steele told Fox News Digital. “It was very much ‘This is what you will ask. This is how you will say it. No follow-ups, no follow-ups. Next.’ … This went up to the fourth floor, as we said, where all the bosses, the top executives, the decision makers are, the president of our company, the CEO, where they all worked.”
The All Star was eventually moved to Denver that year over the election laws, which saw an increase in Black turnout during the midterms, proving that criticisms of the law came from Democrats deploying scare tactics rather than reality.
The New York Post wrote that “Steele, 51, sued ESPN and Disney after being yanked off the air, claiming she was retaliated against for her comments. The lawsuit was settled last year and the two parties “mutually agreed to part ways” — ending her 16-year tenure at the sports giant.
‘Life update. Having successfully settled my case with ESPN/Disney, I have decided to leave so I can exercise my first amendment rights more freely,’ she posted on X last year.
Steele, who last week launched her new podcast “The Sage Steele Show,” said her brief chat with Biden was ‘heartbreaking,’ a reference to the oldest-sitting president’s mental acuity — which has drawn even more scrutiny three years later as he readies for a rematch with Donald Trump in November.
‘I think it’s really heartbreaking that the people who love Joe Biden and say they truly care about him have allowed it to get to this point,’ Steele told Fox.”
Biden has been battling claims that he does not have the mental ability to remain president.
Earlier in the week, when asked why he signed an executive order declaring Easter Sunday to be “Transgender Day of Visibility” the president surprised reporters by claiming that he “didn’t do that,” leaving many to wonder who is actually running things in The White House.
"I didn’t do that," Biden said when asked about proclaiming Easter Sunday 'trans day of visibility." Asked about Speaker Johnson's claim otherwise, the president replied, "he’s thoroughly uninformed."
— Philip Melanchthon Wegmann (@PhilipWegmann) April 1, 2024
Despite his own Department of Justice claiming he has memory problems, President Joe Biden has so far refused to take the same cognition test that his predecessor took when challenged about his mental state during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Even liberals like comedian Jon Stewart have expressed concerns about the president’s fitness to remain in office.
Jon Stewart kicks off The Daily Show's election coverage with a wellness check on America's two chronologically challenged candidates: Joe Biden and Donald Trump. pic.twitter.com/RPmFodvVAy
— The Daily Show (@TheDailyShow) February 13, 2024
Steele is not the only sportscaster connected to ESPN who has criticized Democrats lately. Stephen A. Smith recently attacked liberals for their “lawfare” against Donald Trump, saying, ”
“Ladies and gentlemen, there’s so much to get into,” Smith said. “I’m not going to do it. I’m going to simply say this: Trump is kicking the Democrats… you know what. Ninety-one charges, four indictments, 91 counts against him. He’s been impeached twice. And he still ran away with the GOP nomination. It was a cakewalk.”
“You can’t touch him. And now he’s thrown in this salvo. He said, ‘Yo, why don’t you come beat me? Stop engaging in lawfare and using the legal system to push your political agenda. Come beat me.’ That’s what he did,” Smith continued. “I do sports most of the time. That’s the kind of language we want to hear, ain’t it?”
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