White House Declines Request for Joe Biden Super Bowl Interview

President Joe Biden will not be sitting down for an interview with CBS News prior to the Super Bowl on Feb. 11.

The network said that the White House declined CBS News’ request for an interview with the President.

This marks the second consecutive year that Biden will not sit down for a conversation with the network hosting the big game.

Last year, the Biden administration declined Fox News’ request for an interview and instead issued a statement explaining that the president would chat with Fox Soul ahead of the game. That interview fell through when, according to the White House, parent company Fox Corp. asked that it be canceled.

President Biden did sit down for an interview in the first two years of his term, speaking with CBS News’ Norah O’Donnell in 2021 and NBC News’ Lester Holt in 2022. It is not clear who CBS News had in mind for this year’s game.

The decision to skip the interview is all the more surprising given that it is an election year.

In recent years, an interview with the president ahead of the Super Bowl has become a tradition due to its ability to reach tens of millions of people (the game itself averages over 100 million viewers), but that tradition may be fizzling out. Prior to President Biden foregoing the interview, Donald Trump also passed on speaking to NBC ahead of the 2018 Super Bowl.

The tradition of a formal sit-down conversation with the network hosting the Super Bowl began with then-President Barack Obama in 2009. More casually, George W. Bush engaged in a 2002 Super Bowl coin toss and, in 2004, chatted with CBS Sports’ Jim Nantz before the network’s broadcast of the event that year.

The Kansas City Chiefs return to the Super Bowl this year and will play against the San Francisco 49ers.

Alex Weprin contributed to this report.