In an interview with Victor Blackwell on CNN two days ago, Andrea Lawful-Sanders, who conducted a live phone interview with President Biden on July 3 on her program “The Source” on radio station WURD in Philadelphia — the president’s first interview after his disastrous debate with President Trump six days earlier — admitted that the White House had provided questions to her in advance.
Lawful-Sanders appeared live on CNN on Saturday morning with the other black host Earl Ingram who also interviewed Biden on his Wisconsin radio show a day after Lawful-Sanders, seven days after the debate.
Image: YouTube video screen grab.
From CNN’s official transcript:
VICTOR BLACKWELL: Aundrea [sic] Lawful-Sanders is the host of the source on WURD in Philadelphia.
BLACKWELL: Andrea, let me ask you here about your interviews and something I listened to both of them. And there’s something that similarly here you each were you asked for questions, and maybe that’s what you’re allowed to ask by the campaign or the White House. But there were essentially the same questions, both interviews about accomplishments, progress in your respective state, what’s at stake in the election, what he has to say about his debate performance? And what he would say to voters who think their vote doesn’t matter, or might sit this election out?
Were those questions given to you by the White House or did you have or the campaign or did you have to submit questions ahead of this interview?
ANDREA LAWFUL-SANDERS, HOST, ‘THE SOURCE’ ON WURD: The questions were sent to me for approval, I approve to them [emphasis added].
BLACKWELL: Okay. So the White House sent the questions to you ahead of the interview?
LAWFUL-SANDERS: Yes.
BLACKWELL: Okay.
LAWFUL-SANDERS: I’ve got several questions. eight of them and the four that were chosen were the ones that I approved.
BLACKWELL: Okay. And the reason I ask is not a criticism of either view, it’s just that if the White House is trying now to prove the VIM vigor acuity of the President, I don’t know how they do that by sending questions first, before the interview so that the President knows what’s coming. Let me play here a bit of your interview. This is and you’ve probably seen it’s gotten a lot of attention. This is when he was asked about his accomplishments as president. Let’s play it.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
BIDEN: I’m proud to be the, as I said, the first Vice President -- first Black woman -- to serve with the Black president.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BLACKWELL: Did you hear as it’s being covered, the President say that he was proud to be the first black woman president because that's what the headlines all over the internet is suggesting.
LAWFUL-SANDERS: I find it interesting that they saw and heard that he’s what I got from him was that he was intimating that Kamala Harris was the first black woman Vice President, and I guess with a speech impediment, they heard something else and I find it interesting that was the only thing that they picked out of that entire conversation and ran with it. Look, we have a hard way to go in this country. I am listening to the community that is speaking to me every single day on WURD Radio. We are answering, looking at the things that are mattering to us. We can’t afford to get excited and fumble and fumble about what folks are thinking about this, the President and his frailty and his speeches. We are concerned about the purging of the government in Project 2025.
We’ve been talking about this on WURD since January, fully and completely the slashing of the Department of Justice and dismantling the FBI and replacing their traditional independence, from political pressure with fealty to the administration. Those are the things that matter to us in the black community. So when I asked them, what matters most to you that if President Biden has this speech impediment, or that he’s slowing down, versus the other person who has all these other things going on, they keep saying to me, we did it on Friday on the source. We did Thursday. We keep asking them. They keep saying the same thing. We want the Democrats to win because we feel like if we do anything else, it’s going to be a problem for us.
What I’m concerned about is that no one really seems to be in the community talking to the very people who has to vote.
BLACKWELL: Earl Ingram from Civic Media, Andrea Lawful-Sanders from WURD, thank you both.
As a journalist who has covered national politics including presidential campaigns on the ground going back to the 1970s, I have to wonder what was Ms. Lawful-Sanders supposed to do in this case? She was offered an exclusive of a lifetime, an interview with the POTUS at a critical point in his and the nation’s history. The fault, if any, IMHO, lies with the White House press ops who sent her the questions and insisted that she needed to comply.
Lawful-Sanders was open to appearing on CNN live on Saturday three days after her interview with Biden and honestly exposed the White House for its questionable, if not evil, doings in this case. Her revelations made significant news, adding to the questions about Biden and his fitness for office.
On Sunday, the Washington Post reported:
The head of a Philadelphia radio station said Sunday it has parted ways with a host who acknowledged that she interviewed President Biden with questions submitted by his campaign, going against the station’s practice and those of most news outlets.
‘On July 3, the first post-debate interview with President Joe Biden was arranged and negotiated independently by WURD radio host Andrea Lawful-Sanders without knowledge, consultation or collaboration with WURD management,’ Sara M. Lomax, president and CEO of WURD Radio said in a statement.
‘The interview featured pre-determined questions provided by the White House, which violates our practice of remaining an independent media outlet accountable to our listeners. As a result, Ms. Lawful-Sanders and WURD Radio mutually agreed to part ways, effective immediately.’
Lomax described the station as Philadelphia’s only independently owned Black talk radio station. She said such a move violated the trust the station has developed with its audience over the last two decades, and ‘is not a practice that WURD Radio engages in or endorses as a matter of practice or official policy.’
She added: ‘WURD Radio is not a mouthpiece for the Biden or any other Administration,’ and that ‘we will commit to reviewing our policies, procedures, and practices to reinforce WURD’s independence and trust with our listeners. But mainstream media should do its own introspection to explore how they have lost the trust of so many Americans, Black Americans chief among them.’
In a one-minute video posted on Facebook on Sunday, Lawful-Sanders said, ‘effective immediately I am no longer an on-air host at WURD. I tendered my resignation yesterday. It was accepted.’
Andrea Lawful-Sanders announces on her Facebook that she’s “moving on” from her show on WURD.
I recommend that readers who agree with me contact the radio station WURD in Philadelphia that fired Lawful-Sanders and demand her immediate reinstatement.
Peter Barry Chowka is a veteran journalist who has covered national politics and other topics for over five decades. His most recent interview on BBC Radio in the U.K. can be listened to here. His web page with links to his work and a bio is http://peter.media. Peter’s extensive American Thinker archive: http://tinyurl.com/pcathinker. His Twitter account is @pchowka.