Former conservative ESPN host Sage Steele recently spoke about a former interview with President Biden while she was on the network, which she claims was entirely scripted. According to Steele, she was not permitted to deviate at all from a “script” she was handed prior to the interview.
Most of the questions Steele asked Joe Biden during the March 2021 interview revolved around the pandemic protocols and their impact on sports. For example, a hot topic at the time was the implications of vaccine hesitancy among athletes and fans.
“This was about two months after he took office. That was an interesting experience in its own right because it was so structured and I was told, you will say every word that we write out you will not deviate from the script and go,” she said.
The former ESPN anchor described the painstaking instruction to not break from the script or ask follow up questions. “To the word, like every single question was scripted, gone over dozens of times by many executives, editors and executives. Absolutely. I was on script and was told not to deviate. It was very much this is what you will ask. This is how you will say, no follow ups, no follow ups next,” according to Sage.
Steele continued discussing the importance ESPN placed on the interview, noting that the decision-making around the interview went all the way up to the top brass at the network. “I knew that this was a lot bigger than just the wonderful editors that I worked with. Just went up to the fourth floor as we said that we’re all the bosses, the top executives that decision makers are the president of our company, the CEO, where were they all worked,” she added.
Steele then addressed Joe Biden’s increasingly apparent cognitive decline which is becoming a major concern of the American public ahead of the election. She suggested that it is wrong for Biden to be put in this demanding position, while he is “struggling.”
“The big picture to me is that I think it’s heartbreaking. 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. So I’m not even looking at this from a political angle, or my beliefs in anything. This is the human side of it. And when someone is struggling, we allow them to continue to be in the spotlight and put it out there in the first place when they knew there were issues of course they had to know so it’s it’s a it’s a humanity thing with me where I don’t care what stands in what they voted for what they believe in,” she said. Watch Steele describe the Biden interview below: