Biden’s Howard Stern Interview Is Exactly What the Campaign Should Have Been Doing All Along

by dap | Apr 26, 2024 | Mediate, Opinion

AP Photo/Alex Brandon

President Joe Biden was interviewed by Howard Stern Friday, a live chat that wasn’t particularly groundbreaking other than a declaration that he’s “happy to debate ” former President Donald Trump, but the president’s campaign team should still draw valuable lessons from the experience.

The White House announced the interview shortly before it aired, with Biden visiting the SiriusXM studios in person for their roughly hour-long conversation.

The president’s discussion with Stern ranged over a wide variety of topics, including a lot of nostalgic reminiscing over his childhood, early days in his political career, his grief over the loss of his first wife and infant daughter in a car accident and son Beau Biden to cancer, and of course the upcoming November election.

Biden also criticized the “modern media ” (although he didn’t single out any specific outlet by name) for not being tougher on Trump. “I think some of them are worried about attacking him, worried about taking him on,” he told Stern.

Stern commented that he was not sure if Biden was going to debate Trump, and the president immediately replied that he was willing do to so.

“I am, somewhere. I don’t know when. I’m happy to debate him,” he said.

The interview got the expected backlash from Biden’s conservative critics who pointed out that he can’t necessarily provide proof of the tales of his youthful exploits, like his claims he saved multiple children when he worked as a lifeguard. On the flip side, I am not aware of any proof that didn’t happen — but I digress.

At this moment in Biden’s decades-long political career as we trudge our way through the last few months before the November election, these Biden tall tales, gaffes, and so on are baked into the cake. A pollster would be hard pressed to find an actual real life voter who would say they were going to vote for Biden except they’re concerned because he couldn’t provide verification of some anecdote about a spring break trip to Fort Lauderdale.

“People who are worried about that stuff were never Biden voters any way,” former GOP strategist and Lincoln Project co-founder Rick Wilson told Mediaite when reached on the phone Friday afternoon. “And if you want to make it a competition between fabulists, ‘I’m a billionaire ‘ is a bigger lie than any typical political bullshitting Biden might have said.”

Outside of the predictable attacks from the right, the reviews of Biden’s interview with Stern were broadly positive, with many commenting on the president’s affability and self-deprecating mood.

To be fair, Stern didn’t pepper Biden with any hard-hitting questions and largely steered clear of tougher topics like the Israel-Hamas war and Americans’ ongoing frustrations with inflation. The commentators who shrugged off this interview as a “softball” are not wrong, but they are perhaps missing the forest for the trees: at this point, the campaign doesn’t need an interviewer to excavate new ground or deliver Drudge Report siren breaking news.

They just need to get their guy out there where Americans can see him, talking about literally anything.

The press will use whatever clips they have, and if the only video they have is a scripted speech followed by Biden walking out of the room as reporters yell unanswered questions at him, that’s what they’ll use.

What’s more helpful for the campaign itself? Recycling and reposting clips from the same speeches and professionally produced campaign videos? Or drawing from an ongoing series of new clips, where Biden is cracking jokes with a well-known media personality?

Doing a Howard Stern type interview — even if just once a week, for at least 15 to 30 minutes — provides a new stream of content to feed the insatiable appetite of 24-7 cable news channels and the endlessly-scrolling social media platforms. Stern is far from the only interviewer who would interview Biden without trying to score some viral moment by shouting him down or burying him in “gotcha” questions. (As a believer in Audentes Fortuna Iuvat , I’ll say to the Biden campaign team, if you’re reading, I’d love to have a tough-but-fair chat with him about student loans , free speech , and women’s health issues .)

This reporter’s own unapologetic self-promotion aside, a sitting president will have no problem finding media outlets interested in interviewing him. As Trump’s multitude of legal problems drag him into court, he’ll continue to occupy a large percentage of the media oxygen. Biden needs to counter that with some of his own content. Some of that will naturally arise just from carrying out his presidential duties, but a candid chat on a top podcast is likely to create more clickable content than announcing a new executive order regarding some esoteric regulation.

It’s a well-established maxim that voters often pick the candidate with whom they’d enjoy having a beer. We have two teetotalers for both major parties’ nominees, but the emotional evaluation of that adage still applies. Trump is objectively a skilled entertainer, but nearly a decade into his MAGA takeover of the GOP, his schtick fires up his base but repels pretty much everyone else. A lot of the video content featuring Trump lately consists of his endless bluster complaining about all his trials being “witch hunts” and attacking the judges, prosecutors, and witnesses — again, none of that is going to win over voters. Same with his rallies he’ll be able to resume in between court dates.

Biden, on the other hand, has been seen in countless instances appearing to have a blast with the retail politicking aspect of campaigning. Florida Democratic Party chair Nikki Fried was with the president during a recent trip to Tampa and introduced him to a gathering of grassroots activists.

“In a room of grassroots volunteers he was only supposed to spend a few minutes thanking everyone but talked for a good 20+ minutes and then he walked around taking selfies and signing pictures,” Fried said about Biden’s visit. “He is in his element when he gets to interact with people. If it wasn’t for Secret Service, he would have probably stayed all day.”

Wilson, who spent decades as a GOP communications consultant and will speak at the Florida Democrats’ conference next month, contrasted the two candidates to say that Biden was “fundamentally a guy who can communicate with people about his life in a way that connects emotionally, as opposed to a guy who only communicates abuse and hatred and ugliness,” while there was “nothing about Trump’s life, aside from the money, that has an appeal to normal human beings,” listing off examples like the “fundamentally broken home” of Trump’s childhood, his serial adultery, and general “scumbag” behavior.

Biden does have to counter both voter ennui over a 2020 reboot and concerns about his age, and it’s of vital strategic importance to win over the persuadable independent and moderate voters. Doing a regular series of interviews — as I suggested above, one a week — creates a pipeline of content that will get clipped, shared, recirculated, and cross-posted on different social media platforms, in both its original form and with reaction commentary.

Not all that commentary will be positive or flattering — even outside the extreme MAGA media fringe, Biden has agitated progressive elements in his own party on various issues — but having a growing collection of interviews means any given clip that draws attacks will be diluted by the volume of the others.

More importantly, the overall quantity of weekly interview clips will help counter a key Trump attack that Biden is avoiding the press and attempting to win re-election without campaigning. If a Fox News host tries to complain that Biden is “hiding in his basement ” but you’ve just seen a funny clip of him scroll through your Instagram feed, those words fall flat.

Semafor’s Washington Bureau Chief Benjy Sarlin had an out-of-the-box idea for Biden: Hot Ones, the YouTube show where celebrities are interviewed while they consume increasingly spicy chicken wings.

I don’t know the president’s personal spice tolerance, but I once sat at a table at a dinner during the Texas Tribune Festival with Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), and she got nods of respect from the mostly native Texans at our table for being a good sport about trying some jalapeño-enhanced dish that was definitely spicier than her Minnesota palate normally encountered. It was a warm and relatable moment.

Go eat some chicken wings, Mr. President. Go on Brene Brown’s podcast. And we’d love to have you visit Mediaite’s Press Club . Just go have these conversations with the American people. November is coming.

Listen to the full interview between Stern and Biden via SiriusXM .

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