Former ESPN anchor Sage Steele opened up about an interview she conducted with President Joe Biden while working for the network in 2021, telling Fox News that her bosses made sure she would follow “every word” of the script during her exchange with the commander-in-chief.
In an interview with Fox News Digital, Steele recalled the “structured” nature of the pre-taped interview, so much so that her ESPN bosses handed her a “script” to go off of.
Steele, who left ESPN after criticizing its COVID vaccine mandate, said her headline-making interview with Biden in March 2021 was carefully planned out by the network’s executives, and she was told “not to deviate” from the written questions.
“That was an interesting experience in its own right because it was so structured,” Steele said. “And I was told, ‘You will say every word that we write out, you will not deviate from the script and go.’”
“Every single question was scripted, gone over dozens of times by many editors and executives. Absolutely. I was on script and was told not to deviate,” Steele added. “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.”
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Many of the questions Steele asked Biden in the March 2021 interview pertained to sports leagues attempting to restore normalcy during the COVID pandemic and vaccine hesitancy among athletes and fans. Her interview made headlines at the time when Biden supported the MLB’s All-Star game boycott of Atlanta following the passage of Georgia’s election reform law.
