The questions two radio interviewers asked President Biden this week were provided to the hosts in advance by members of Biden's team, one of the hosts told CNN on Saturday morning.
Andrea Lawfull Sanders, host of “The Source” on WURD in Philadelphia, said Biden's associates gave her a list of eight questions ahead of Wednesday's interview.
“The questions were sent to me for approval and I approved them,” she told CNN's “First of All” host Victor Blackwell, when asked if the White House sent the questions to her in advance, saying yes.
“I was asked a few questions — eight,” she said, “and the four that were chosen were the ones I approved.”
Biden campaign spokeswoman Lauren Hitt said the list of questions was actually sent by campaign staff, not White House officials, and that it's “not unusual” for campaigns to share preferred topics, but added that campaign officials “are not making it a condition of the interview that the interviewer accepts these questions.”
“Hosts are always free to ask the questions they think will be most helpful to listeners,” she said.
Late Saturday, a person familiar with the campaign's booking operations, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal matters, said the policy had changed and that while interview hosts had previously been free to ask any question they wanted, the campaign would no longer provide suggested questions for hosts.
“I was never pressured by the campaign to ask any specific questions,” Lawful Sanders said Saturday.
“I chose the questions that mattered most to the Black and brown communities that we serve in Philadelphia,” she said, “and those questions proved to be exactly what Black and brown communities wanted.”
The campaign had scheduled the interviews with the hosts of two radio shows with large black audiences as part of a broader effort to reassure the public about Trump's mental health after many Democrats expressed deep concerns about his chances of winning in November during last month's debate.
Biden's campaign maintained its defiant stance on Saturday, insisting that the campaign would continue as Biden waited at his Delaware home ahead of two events in Pennsylvania on Sunday.
Following the departure of several Democrats from the party this week, two Democrats, Rep. Angie Craig of Minnesota and Rep. Scott Peters of California, expressed doubts about whether Biden should be the nominee.
But some prominent Democrats appear ready to side with the president. California Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom, who has been the subject of speculation as a possible successor to Biden, campaigned for the president in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, on Saturday.
The president made no public appearances on Saturday, but Biden's campaign released an online video featuring footage from a rally in Wisconsin on Friday.
“So I want to ask you, what do you think?” Biden asks the crowd in the video. “Do you think I'm too old to reinstate Roe v. Wade as the law of the land? Do you think I'm too old to ban assault weapons again? Do you think I'm too old to defeat Donald Trump?”
The enthusiastic crowd yells “No!”
In an interview with ABC News on Friday, the president appeared to point to his exchange with the Black radio host as evidence he could handle the rigors of a campaign, saying he'd attended “10 big events in a row” since the debate.
No one from the president's reelection campaign or the White House would disclose that the questions had been told to the black moderator — a practice widely criticized as inappropriate for journalists, especially when interviewing politicians — but Biden stumbled on some of the questions despite knowing them in advance.
Biden was at a loss for words during her interview with Lawful Sanders, saying she was proud to be “the first Black woman to work with a Black president.”
Appearing on “The Earl Ingraham Show” on WAUK in Waukesha, Wisconsin, Biden gave hesitant and at times confused answers when asked why voting is important.
“We've always given Donald Trump executive power, we've given him the power to game the system, but our founding fathers never thought of that because of the people he appointed to the Supreme Court,” he said, appearing to stutter at times with a condition he's suffered from since childhood. “This is presidential immunity. He can say, I did this as an executive officer, I may have been wrong, but I did it. But it's valid, because I'm the same person who's saying I want revenge.”
Blackwell gave an interview to two radio hosts on Saturday morning and seemed surprised by the answers to his pre-approved questions.
He asked about Lawful Sanders' four questions because he noticed they were nearly identical to the four questions Ingraham asked Biden in his interview with him that same day.
Ingram, who appeared with Sanders on Blackwell's show, did not dispute Sanders' explanation of how the questions were selected.
“My reason for asking the question is not to criticize either of you,” Blackwell told the two hosts, “but if the White House is trying to demonstrate the president's vitality, energy and acumen right now, I don't see how they're doing that by sending the questions first before the interview so the president knows what's coming.”
Aides said the two smaller events on Sunday in suburban Philadelphia and Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, were part of an effort to show the president can project energy and enthusiasm following his lethargic and disjointed performance at the debate.
