Radio host who interviewed Biden says aides provided him with questions in advance

CNN
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Joe Biden’s team provided a list of questions to a radio host who interviewed the president this week following his debate performance, the host told CNN.

“The questions were sent to me for approval. I approved them,” Andrea Lawful-Sanders, host of “The Source” in Philadelphia, said during an interview Saturday with CNN’s Victor Blackwell on “First of All.”

When Blackwell asked Lawful-Sanders if the White House had sent her questions for approval, she said yes. “I received several questions, eight of them, and the four that were chosen were the ones that I approved,” she added.

CNN later clarified that it was the Biden campaign that conducted the interview.

Blackwell noted that both Lawful-Sanders and Earl Ingram, host of “The Earl Ingram Show” in Milwaukee, who also interviewed the president this week, asked Biden “essentially the same questions.”

A Biden campaign spokesman did not deny Saturday that the campaign provided questions but said “we do not condition interviews on acceptance of those questions.”

“It is not uncommon for interviewees to share topics they prefer. These questions were relevant to the news of the day — the president was asked about his performance in this debate, as well as what he had done for Black Americans,” spokeswoman Lauren Hitt said in a statement.

The Biden campaign said later Saturday that it would no longer suggest questions to interviewers.

“While talk hosts have always been free to ask whatever questions they want, going forward we will refrain from offering suggested questions,” a source familiar with Biden’s booking operation told CNN.

The radio interviews came at a critical moment for Biden’s political future, as a growing number of elected officials, Democratic donors and supporters express deep concerns about his age and ability to serve a second term as president.

Biden also took questions from reporters in the pool on Friday and sat down with ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos for a 22-minute interview focused entirely on his age and suitability for office. He will take questions from reporters again during the NATO summit in Washington next week.

Biden, who has faced enormous scrutiny this week, stumbled a few times during his conversation with Lawful-Sanders.

“I’m proud to be, as I said, the first vice president — the first Black woman — to serve with a Black president, proud to have engaged with the first Black woman on the Supreme Court,” he said during the interview, which was taped Wednesday and aired Thursday.

Reached for comment Thursday night, a Biden campaign spokesman sharply criticized the “absurdity” of criticism of the president’s misdeeds. “It was clear what President Biden meant when he talked about his record, including a record number of federal court appointments,” spokesman Ammar Moussa said.

Lawful-Sanders’ comments came after a Biden campaign social media account on Monday shared a video of a local news anchor in Virginia saying that Donald Trump’s campaign backed out of an interview after asking for questions in advance. The interview was scheduled to take place near the former president’s rally in Chesapeake, Virginia, the day after the debate.

“We wanted to hear more from Trump tonight. Our Mike Gooding was scheduled to interview the former president after the rally,” said WVEC anchor Dan Kennedy. “But just 15 minutes ago, Trump’s team canceled the interview with Mike Gooding after asking us what our questions for the former president would be, telling Mike there was no more time and that the former president only wanted to talk about last night’s debate.”

In a social media post sharing the video, the Biden campaign mocked Trump for pulling out of the interview, writing: “A paranoid and overwhelmed Trump cancels his TV interview after asking the reporter what questions they planned to ask.”

When asked by CNN on Saturday whether Trump had backed out of the interview, the former president’s campaign ignored the claim and instead criticized Biden for allegedly providing questions to interviewers in advance.

“President Trump held a rally in Virginia and then participated in local interviews that covered a variety of topics, not just debate-related,” campaign spokesman Steven Cheung said. “Meanwhile, Joe Biden and his campaign are bullying the media into asking pre-screened, approved questions and trying to make this out to be normal behavior. It is not.”

This story has been updated with additional information.

CNN’s Aaron Pellish and Kate Sullivan contributed to this report.