Joe Biden declined an invitation to be interviewed on Super Bowl Sunday. CBS was turned down. It is the second year in a row that Biden declined Super Bowl Sunday interviews.

Granted, last year’s Super Bowl was on Fox and there is no way Joe Biden would sit for an interview with that network. Fox offered Bret Baier or Shannon Bream to conduct the interview. Biden has avoided Fox News Channel since he became president. He’s following through with the boycott Barack Obama demanded of Democrats against Fox during his administration. It’s a huge mistake most Democrats make. Fox continues to be the highest-rated cable news channel and it’s not even close. Joe Biden’s handlers have been very careful to only consent to interviews with news anchors who are very friendly to the president.

So, why is he turning down an interview with CBS? In recent years, presidents have done an interview with whatever network is airing the Super Bowl. The interview is usually aired right before the big game begins and the audience is guaranteed to be huge. One exception was in 2018 when Donald Trump declined the invitation extended by NBC. Trump took a pass because he wanted to make a point that NBC News was biased against him.

Is Biden killing off the tradition?

President Joe Biden will not take part in an exchange during the pre-game festivities leading up to CBS’ broadcast of Super Bowl LVIII on February 11, CBS News confirmed. The Paramount Global news operation had been in discussions with the White House in recent weeks. Details about which correspondent might have been eyed for the assignment could not be learned, but the CBS News offer was believed to have been for a 15-minute interview, three or four minutes of which would have aired during the network’s pre-game coverage.

The name of the interviewer isn’t in the reporting about Biden’s decision but who does CBS News have that would intimidate Joe Biden, other than Catherine Herridge? She isn’t a political reporter for the network, she’s an investigative reporter, so she wouldn’t do the interview. CBS is very friendly to Biden. He has granted interviews with Norah O’Donnell and Scott Pelley. Biden has spoken briefly with Robert Costa and Ed O’Keefe.

Joe Biden is running for re-election and polling is historically bad for him. His poll numbers at this point in his presidency are second only to Jimmy Carter’s, that’s how bad they are. The Biden administration is very bad at communication. It is always on the defense, never on the offense, it seems. It is easy to guess that Biden isn’t doing the interview because he would be seen by tens of millions of American voters. His handlers always have to do clean-up for his remarks after big interviews. Joe Biden is not up to the task. His cognitive decline has been accelerating as his term in office plays out. It is impossible not to notice that he doesn’t speak well. He slurs his words and finds it almost impossible to string a complete sentence together. It is shocking to see the decline because when he began his term, he was old and looking feeble but not to this extent.

The interviews with presidents before the Super Bowl are usually very light on politics because the network and the president want to appeal to everyone in a very large audience. Sports fans don’t tune in for politics, they just want to watch the game. The conversation usually revolves around football and cultural issues. However, this year the world is on fire and Joe Biden is in the middle of everything. There is a malaise in America that hasn’t been felt since the Carter years.

Team Biden is trying mightily to convince voters that happy days are here again. They coined the term Bidenomics to push the narrative that the economy has bounced back from the pandemic days and is better than ever. The problem for Biden is that voters live in the real world. They see that the rate of inflation may have come down but prices have not. Grocery prices, gas prices, rent, mortgages, the cost of purchasing a home, and general everyday expenses are still too high. Over 60% of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck. No one is in the mood to have smoke blown up their butts.

Biden might get a stray political question in a pre-Super Bowl interview and he isn’t up to the task. He was filmed recently in a cafe and he was surprised to learn the price of a smoothie. I’m old enough to remember when George H.W. Bush was intrigued to see a grocery store’s check-out scanner. The press howled about that for days, stating how out-of-touch the president was at that time.

The president doesn’t want to risk being asked questions that might hold him accountable for the state of our nation. He still hasn’t addressed Americans about the air strikes happening in retaliation against the attacks on Americans by Iranian proxies. He still hasn’t reassured Americans that the Department of Defense is functioning properly and able to keep us safe in light of Secretary Austin’s absence, going AWOL without even notifying the president. The fact that Biden didn’t even notice Austin’s absence is unnerving. The United States is involved in the war in Ukraine and in the Israel-Hamas war, largely due to Biden’s weakness, and yet we learned he isn’t in regular communication with the Secretary of Defense. Sleep well, America

Biden should jump at the chance to be seen by millions of people in a soft television interview but he can’t. He is suffering from dementia. He is physically feeble. He will continue to campaign from his basement and concentrate on fundraising trips. Instead of addressing the country on retaliation against Iran this weekend, he is fundraising in Hollywood and Las Vegas. A vote for Biden in November is a vote for President Kamala Harris. It’s doubtful that Joe Biden can make it through another four years in office.