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.
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. The interview focused on sports returning to normalcy following months of COVID lockdowns, along with athletes and fans being hesitant to get the COVID shot, Fox News reported. Biden repeatedly admonished Americans to “follow the science” and get vaccinated during the interview.
“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.”
The interview made headlines when Biden came out in support of the MLB All-Star Game boycott of Atlanta after Republicans in Georgia passed a voter ID law. The president claimed the Georgia law “is Jim Crow on steroids” and “is all about keeping working folks and ordinary folks that I grew up with from being able to vote.” Despite Biden and other Democrats slamming the new voter law, early voting in 2022 in the state was at a record high, and Georgia voter turnout was the largest in the South during the midterms.
Steele told Fox News that she wasn’t sure if ESPN sent the questions to the White House before the interview, and said her exchange with the then-78-year-old president was “heartbreaking” considering his mental acuity. The former ESPN host told Bill Maher last fall that Biden didn’t appear to know what was going on just before he sat down with Steele for the interview.
“I had to chitchat waiting for us to start rolling,” Steele said, adding, “Of course he has someone next to him, and they keep a black, like, curtain over the lens of the camera, so you can’t see him until the last second, but you can hear, and we’re chitchatting… So I can hear him, and he goes, ‘What is this for?’… And he’s, like, ‘Who am I talking to? Wait — what’s her name?'”
Steele sued ESPN and parent company Disney in 2022, alleging the network retaliated against her for making negative comments about COVID vaccine mandates and former President Barack Obama. The anchor was suspended after making the remarks in September 2021 before she apologized a few weeks later.
CLICK HERE TO GET THE DAILYWIRE+ APP
Steele has also accused her former employer of asking her to refrain from talking about trans-identifying male swimmer Lia Thomas.
“I was asked to stop tweeting about it. I was asked to stop doing anything, saying anything about it on social media because I was ‘offending’ others at the company,” she said. “I made sure I sent off another tweet that night after I received that email. Because, no, let’s stop living in this lie.”
The former ESPN host recently launched a new podcast, called “The Sage Steele Show,” on Maher’s platform, telling “Morning Wire” in an interview last week that “it’s a beautiful thing” that the leftist Maher reached out a hand to the “controversial conservative.”