Former ESPN host Sage Steele has claimed that her 2021 interview with President Joe Biden was entirely “scripted.”
Speaking with Fox News this week, she said her ESPN bosses had handed her a script and told her to basically read from it verbatim.
“That was an interesting experience in its own right because it was so structured,” she said. “And I was told, ‘You will say every word that we write out. You will not deviate from the script and go.’”
And they meant it too.
“To the word, every single question was scripted, gone over dozens of times by many editors and executives,” she said. “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 it. No follow-ups, no follow-ups. Next.’ … This went up to the fourth floor, as we said, where all the bosses, the top executives, the decision makers are, the president of our company, the CEO, where they all worked,” she added.
Watch the interview below:
Did the White House also have a copy of the script? Steele doesn’t know for certain, but she’s fairly confident that’s indeed “what happened.”
As for Sage’s interaction with the president, she described it as “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,” she said. “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 them out there in the first place when they knew there were issues?”
“Of course, they had to know. So it’s a humanity thing with me where I don’t care where anyone stands and what they vote for or who they believe in. Do you really care about that person? As a father, as a husband, as an everything,” she added.
Speaking with liberal comedian Bill Maher on his podcast last fall, she pinpointed one of the moments during the 2021 interview that made the president’s declining mental faculties clear as day.
“It was satellite, it wasn’t in person. We’re having a technical issue. And so I had to, like, BS. I had to chitchat waiting for us to start rolling,” she said.
“Well, what he started to do, of course, he has someone next to him and they keep a black, like, curtain over the lens of the camera, so you can’t see him until the last second, but you can hear and we’re chitchatting… So I can hear him and he goes, ‘What is this for?’… And he’s, like, ‘Who am I talking to? Wait—what’s her name?’” she added.
Steele was taken completely aback.
“I was going, ‘Oh, my God!’” she recalled. “And then [the person advising the president] said, ‘SportsCenter. ESPN.’ And [the president] goes, ‘Oh, ok.’ And so I said, you know, what do you say? ‘Hi, Mr. President. Nice to meet you.’”
“And so I’m trying just to fill time. And he said, ‘You know, I used to play football’… And so he started to tell football stories of his greatness. And again, I can’t see him. You can see the curtain… He goes, ‘And I have the best hands.’ What do you say to that?” she continued.
Fmr. ESPN host reveals it’s even worse than we thought, babbling, incoherent Biden struggled to finish sentences in interview https://t.co/GTktmUSe9b via @BIZPACReview
— BPR based (@DumpstrFireNews) October 5, 2023
It took her a few seconds, but she finally came up with an answer.
“And then I said, ‘Oh, so you were a receiver.’ And he started to explain it. And here’s the saddest thing — his voice just trailed off. He said, ‘I was good,’ and then he went silent, and he goes, ‘Uhh… never mind,’” she recalled, prompting laughter from Maher.
“I thought it was so sad because I realized that’s why he was in his basement during the whole election cycle. Because even then, he couldn’t finish his sentences. He struggled. So forget about politics, I don’t care, I didn’t vote for him. However, that made me sad,” she added.
During that same interview, she also revealed that personally, she doesn’t care for the president.
“Honestly, I don’t like him. I think he’s a terrible president,” she bluntly said.
Writers and editors can be contacted at [email protected] with feedback, tips, or corrections.
V. Saxena is a staff writer with a decade of experience as a professional writer, and a lifetime of experience as an avid news junkie. He holds a degree in computer technology from Purdue University. Saxena also contributes to BizPac Review.
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