With his poll numbers slumping and Democrats ruling out his candidacy, Joseph R. Biden Jr. sat down with ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos in hopes that a major television interview might help revive a presidential campaign that seemed all but over.
The date was February 9, 2020. Biden would finish fifth in the New Hampshire primary two days later, but then stage a remarkable comeback, rallying to win South Carolina and eventually clawing his way to the presidency.
Four and a half years later, as Biden faces growing calls to drop out of the presidential race, he and his advisers are once again turning to a host who has interviewed him at some of the most dire moments of his political career.
The high-stakes interview Stephanopoulos will give Biden on Friday will be taped in the afternoon in Madison, Wisconsin, and broadcast in full at 8 p.m. Eastern time. It is widely seen as the president’s best hope of calming growing alarm about his physical and mental state in the wake of his catastrophic performance in last week’s debate against former President Donald J. Trump.
Friday’s interview will likely last between 15 and 25 minutes, according to three people familiar with the negotiations, who requested anonymity to share details of the private conversations between ABC and Biden’s advisers. While presidential aides typically haggle over the frame of any major interview, the exact length often depends on what happens during the taping. Biden could extend the interview on his own accord, or Stephanopoulos could push for more time to ask additional questions.
ABC has pledged to air the full, unedited interview, meaning any attempt by a Biden adviser to cut the conversation short would be caught on camera and likely shown to viewers. The primetime special, “One on One with President Biden,” has been previewed for affiliates at 30 minutes, but could be extended.
The plan for the interview began to take shape late Tuesday morning, when Stephanopoulos received a text message from Ben LaBolt, the White House communications director, according to a person familiar with the sequence of events. Biden’s team wanted to know if the host would be willing to sit down with the president.
The White House chose ABC in part because it has a large audience compared with its competitors, and also because it is widely seen as a nonpartisan news outlet, according to another person familiar with the Biden team’s strategy.
ABC’s “World News Tonight,” which will air the first few clips of the interview at 6:30 p.m. ET on Friday, is the top-rated evening newscast, beating out NBC and CBS. ABC also had the largest audience for the debate of any of the big three networks, nearly matching the audience of the debate host, CNN.
Biden also knows Stephanopoulos well, having conducted dozens of interviews with him throughout his career as a senator, vice president and, finally, president. Stephanopoulos last interviewed Biden at the White House in August 2021, when the president faced intense criticism following the US withdrawal from Afghanistan.
Now Stephanopoulos, a star host and former Democratic strategist who helped oversee Bill Clinton’s message in the 1990s, has the delicate task of pressing the commander in chief on intimate issues like aging, physical decline and what exactly happened under the lights of the debate stage, where Biden repeatedly lost his train of thought, gaped at his opponent and struggled to make simple policy arguments.
Stephanopoulos has spent the past few days preparing for the interview before flying to Wisconsin, where Biden will make a campaign stop on Friday. “Good Morning America” executive producer Simone Swink and ABC News political director Rick Klein are expected to be present at the taping, according to a person familiar with the plans.
Stephanopoulos, who joined ABC in 1997, will inevitably face his own scrutiny. Will his questions be considered too soft and sympathetic, or too harsh and insensitive? How much candor can he get from Biden in the time allotted to him?
Some right-wing websites have already spread conspiracy theories that since the interview will not air live, ABC could selectively edit and reword Biden’s answers. ABC initially said it would air the full interview on Sunday morning’s episode of “This Week,” but hours later, the network changed its mind and announced that the unedited interview would air Friday in prime time.
ABC briefed the Biden team on that decision on Tuesday and received no objections, two of the people familiar with the discussions said.
Fans of “Jeopardy! Masters” may be out of luck: ABC’s parent company, the Walt Disney Company, agreed to cut short a Friday night rerun of the game show to allow the interview to air in prime time.
Katie Rogers Contributed reporting.
