ABC News plans to air its much-anticipated interview with President Biden in its entirety on Friday evening, a sign of the growing importance of the event.
The decision to accelerate the release of George Stephanopoulos’s interview of Biden—set to be taped earlier Friday, but originally slated to be released Sunday—comes as the president is under pressure to show he is fit to stay in the race after a disastrous debate performance last week.
ABC News also said it would release a full transcript of the unedited interview.
Friday’s interview is expected to mark Biden’s highest-profile appearance since last week’s debate, during which he stammered and appeared to lose his train of thought several times. Any signs of that happening during the ABC News interview will be closely watched.
Before it announced its decision to air the full interview in prime time on Friday instead of Sunday morning, ABC News had planned to release some snippets of the interview during Friday’s “World News Tonight with David Muir” and on “Good Morning America” on Saturday and Sunday. The complete interview would have run later Sunday, on “This Week.” The network now plans to have the full interview run again on that show.
Ted Koppel, a former ABC News anchor and “Nightline” host, said that despite all the attention and scrutiny this interview will receive, he doesn’t expect it to put the doubters of Biden’s mental acuity at ease.
“The honest answer is no one is going to be completely satisfied with what ABC does or what the president does,” Koppel said in an interview. “All it takes is one more slip in one more interview or public appearance and all the same questions will be raised again.”
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