By EFE
Two local radio hosts who interviewed U.S. President Joe Biden this week said aides to the president provided them with a list of questions before the scheduled interview, though there was no intention of prejudicing it.
Earl Ingram, a prominent CivicMedia host in Wisconsin, told ABC News on Saturday that Biden aides gave him a list of five questions before his interview, of which he asked the president four.
Ingram is the second interviewer to say Biden’s advisers gave him a list of questions to ask the president this week. Earlier today, another host who interviewed Biden told CNN the same thing.
“We do not condition interviews on acceptance of these questions. Hosts are always free to ask the questions they believe will best inform their listeners,” Biden’s campaign told ABC News on Saturday.
These events come after Biden’s questionable performance in the face-to-face meeting on June 28, in which he appeared hesitant and did not string together sentences in a coherent manner.
Iram told ABC that he did not see anything necessarily wrong with the practice, however. “I think to think that I was going to have the opportunity to ask the president of the United States any question is a little bit more than anyone should expect,” he said.
On CNN, Andrea Lawful-Sanders, host of WURD Radio’s The Source, said Biden officials gave her a list of eight questions before her interview with the president and she approved them.
Responding to Lawful-Sanders, Biden campaign spokeswoman Lauren Hitt said in a statement that it is “not uncommon” for interviewees to share their preferred topics.
He stressed that Lawful-Sanders was “free” to ask any questions she saw fit. He also noted that it was the campaign that sent the questions and not the White House, as some have suggested.
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