Sage Steele: Interviewing Biden Was ‘The Saddest Thing’
In a recent interview with Fox News, former ESPN sportscaster Sage Steele recounted her experience interviewing President Joe Biden in March 2021. She described the interview as “the saddest thing” she had ever done.
Steele, who left ESPN this summer after alleged repeated discrimination for her conservative views, told podcast host Bill Maher that she felt bad for Biden on a “human” level, though she thinks he’s a “terrible president.”
The interview was via satellite, and due to technical issues, Steele had to “chit chat” with the president before it could begin.
Biden’s team kept the president’s camera off until the last moment, Steele said, but the pair could still hear one another. “So I can hear him and he goes, ‘What is this for? Wait — what’s her name?’” she said.
“I was going, ‘Oh my God!’ And then an aide said, ‘SportsCenter, ESPN.’ And he goes, ‘Oh, okay,’” Steele explained.
Steele said that Biden was clearly struggling to answer her questions. He often went off on tangents and seemed to be confused about what she was asking him.
Biden apparently went on about his high school and college football career. “And so he started to tell football stories of his greatness,” Steele said. “He goes, ‘I have the best hands.’”
“What do you say to that?” Steele said.
“And here’s the saddest thing — his voice just trailed off,” the anchor recalled. “He said, ‘I was good,’ and then he went silent, and he goes … ‘Uh, never mind.’”
“The human aspect of what we’re witnessing right now, to me, is heartbreaking,” Steele added.
The interview between Steele and Biden, which aired in April 2021, focused on the COVID pandemic. Biden chided people who “think they’re being tough guys” for “not wearing masks” and pushed the vaccine on all MLB players.
“I’d say, look, I’m President of the United States and I got the vaccine,” Biden told Steele when the anchor asked what he’d say to athletes who are “vaccine-hesitant.”
“Ya know, I don’t have an unimportant job,” Biden continued. “Would I take the vaccination if I thought it was gonna hurt me or affect my capacity? Look, we’ve got incredible scientific research on the three vaccines that we’re using now … and they work!”
Steele was taken off ESPN airwaves and pulled from high-profile assignments after she criticized ESPN and The Walt Disney Co.’s COVID vaccine mandate during an appearance on Jay Cutler’s podcast, “Uncut.” Steele later sued ESPN.
“Despite fully complying with ESPN’s policy, Sage Steele was punished for speaking her truth in violation of freedom of speech protections under Connecticut law and the U.S. constitution,” her attorney Bryan Freedman said last year. “ESPN violated her free speech rights, retaliated against her, reprimanded her, scapegoated her, allowed the media and her peers to excoriate her and forced her to apologize simply because her personal opinions did not align with Disney’s corporate philosophy of the moment. Sage is standing up to corporate America to ensure employees don’t get their rights trampled on or their opinions silenced.”
