President Biden just outsmarted the media at its own game
Even before the Friday news cycle, the White House announced that President Biden wouldn’t sit down to do the President’s Super Bowl interview. There was a whole lot of hand wringing about this over the weekend – even though the tradition itself is really not all that old (only the last four presidents have sat down for one – and even they weren’t able to do it every year.
While the Sunday political shows ran with their standard fare and desperately tried to “bothsides” two scandals that aren’t even remotely like each other, President Biden took to the airwaves to film a pregame public service announcement where he vowed to crack down on “shrinkflation” – a corporate practice of charging more for less product – particularly when it comes to Super Bowl snack foods.
He then made a short interview on Tiktok that garnered over five million views – launching his reelection profile and giving short pick one answers related to the game. Immediately, whether or not the corporate media realizes it, he pointed out one of their shortcomings: He doesn’t need their help to reach a large number of people, and this is what stings them the most about his refusal to do a Super Bowl interview. Despite their insistence that no one’s enthusiastic about this election, there’s a sizable viewership that’s following the president’s Tiktok already.
James Sullivan is the assistant editor of Brain World Magazine and an advocate of science-based policy making