Democratic strategist James Carville said President Biden not sitting for an interview before the Super Bowl is a “sign” of his administration having little confidence in him.
“It’s the biggest television audience, not even close, and you get a chance to do a 20, 25-minute interview on that day, and you don’t do it, that’s a kind of sign that the staff or yourself doesn’t have much confidence in you. There’s no other way to read this,” Carville said in a recent interview on CNN’s “Smerconish.”
This will be the second year in a row that the president has not sat for an interview before the big game. Biden’s decision not to participate comes as he’s been facing bad press in the wake of the release of a special counsel report on his handling of classified documents.
The report from special counsel Robert Hur, released Thursday, concluded no charges should be brought against the president, but it noted Biden had problems with memory and recall.
“We have also considered that, at trial, Mr. Biden would likely present himself to a jury, as he did during our interview of him, as a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory,” Hur wrote.
“Based on our direct interactions with and observations of him, he is someone for whom many jurors will want to identify reasonable doubt. It would be difficult to convince a jury that they should convict him — by then a former president well into his eighties — of a serious felony that requires a mental state of willfulness.”
Biden hit back at the report in a fiery press conference Thursday night, defending his memory and mental capability.
“My memory’s fine … Take a look at what I’ve done since I became president … How did that happen? I guess I just forgot what was going on,” he said.
In the same press conference, however, the president confused the president of Egypt with the president of Mexico.