Welcome to POLITICO’s West Wing Playbook, your guide to the people and power centers in the Biden administration. With help from Allie Bice. Send tips | Subscribe here| Email Eli | Email Lauren Few storylines are more navel-gazing than those centered on a politician’s handling of a press request. But there is something fundamentally notable to President JOE BIDEN not doing the traditional Super Bowl Sunday interview with Fox, regardless of who was at fault for the missed connection. The saga (if we can call it that) gave us a window into how the administration generally perceives the merits of engagement with the country’s largest cable network. It offered a benchmark by which to judge that network’s place in the surrounding political ecosystem. And, most importantly, it provided insight into how Biden world views the path forward politically. At a granular level, the story is about a standoff between a president and a powerful media network. Both sides agree that Biden was set to do an interview with Fox Sports host MIKE HALL and actress VIVICA A. FOX that would air on Fox Soul but could be cross-promoted. The disagreement was over whether conditions were attached. A White House official said Fox Corp. “would not allow them to interview the President unless the President agreed to do a second interview, which we had already declined.” But a representative for the network said that when Fox Corp. became aware of the Soul interview, it gave the go ahead to Soul and made clear it wasn’t contingent on a second interview. Who killed the interview, however, is ultimately less interesting than how each side ended up at a place where it was easy to see it being killed off. Biden once was on a different plane with Fox. Back in 2007, when Democratic candidates for president were bowing out of a presidential primary debate hosted by Fox News, he and Rep. DENNIS KUCINICH (D-Ohio) were the two candidates who said they intended to debate (until, ultimately, it was canceled). That might have been a byproduct of how desperate Biden was for some sort of boost at that stage of the race. But during the 2020 campaign, his advisers saw Fox News as a valuable component of their messaging strategy. And, to this day, his White House routinely calls on Fox News reporters during the briefings and puts its top officials on the network, though not during its more opinionated evening hours. Aides inside the administration have privately expressed philosophical solidarity with the idea that shunning Fox is a mistake; that the best way to reach and persuade the network’s conservative audience is by appearing on it. It also is worth noting that data shows the network enjoys large Democratic audiences too. Picking up on those points, JEFF GREENFIELD made the case today in POLITICO that Biden missed an opportunity by not doing Fox on Sunday. But this argument is not universally shared. DAN PFEIFFER, who helped arrange Super Bowl interviews on Fox for his old boss, BARACK OBAMA, argued that Biden was right to skip the interview. It defied logic, Pfeiffer wrote, that the president would sit down with a network “that employs people who smear him and his family on a nightly basis.” For a certain group of progressives, however, this past weekend was seminal. Disengagement with Fox has been a longstanding priority for them. And, often, they’ve found it difficult to gain traction within the broader Democratic Party, save for those moments where the political circumstances align — like the 2008 primary colliding with a Fox News hosted debate. Biden’s non-interview, to a degree, represented a mainlining of their long-held worldview. “Yes, I was,” said ROBERT GREENWALD, director of the anti-Fox News documentary, “Outfoxed,” when asked if Biden’s move surprised him. “And I was pleased. Whoever was making those decisions was a practical realist not getting caught up in some of the magical thinking and fantasy, ‘Oh, we’re gonna go on and say smart things and we’re going to convince all these people.’” When he made his film all the way back in 2004, Greenwald recalled that the popular reaction among elected Democrats was “to get as far away from me as possible.” The film, he said, “felt controversial back then.” But, more specifically, Democrats “wanted to keep going on Fox News.” That is still true to a degree. While Biden didn’t appear on the Fox airwaves this weekend, Gov. KATIE HOBBS (D-Ariz.) and Sen. TIM KAINE (D-Va.) both did. But Greenwald sees movement in his direction. As for whether that’s a smart move by the party, he has no equivocations. “Years ago I stopped believing in Santa Claus and years ago I gave up magical thinking,” said Greenwald. “There is zero evidence of any kind that going into the lion’s den, being surrounded by the tribalism that exists today, is in any shape or form going to do anything other than to appeal to the ego of the official that goes on.” Full disclosure: The author of this piece is an MSNBC contributor. MESSAGE US — Are you AN ALIEN WHO CAME TO EARTH IN RECENT DAYS IN A CYLINDRICAL OBJECT FLOATING AROUND THE CANADIAN BORDER? We want to hear from you. And we’ll keep you anonymous! Email us at westwingtips@politico.com. Did someone forward this email to you? Subscribe here!
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