Social media has been abuzz the past few days over clips of Joe Biden’s so-called “interview” with late-night talk show host Seth Meyers on Monday. And the mainstream media similarly fawned over the clips of the staged moments.
Naturally, the day after the interview, the hosts of “The View” were ecstatic and completely convinced it would “resonate” with people.
“Look at the way [The View] audience reacted to it [more applause]. You know, Ronald Reagan famously used his sense of humor. He was only 73 in 1984 when he said, ‘Well, I’m not going to hold your age against you.’ Remember that? Because the guy he was running against, Walter Mondale, was like 50-something and that was one of those things that put him over the top,” Joy Behar gushed. “And also, you notice how relaxed Biden is here? Because when he’s relaxed he doesn’t stutter, he doesn’t get nervous and the whole thing of his age goes out the window.”
It was an amusing admission that Biden’s weakness is his advanced age and poor memory, coupled with the bizarre belief that a few staged moments of an interview will assuage concerns about that weakness. Apparently, we’re all supposed to give him credit for speaking coherently in brief stints.
Well, there was little reason to believe that it would anyway, but it turned out people weren’t all that interested in watching the interview after all. According to a report from Mediaite, Biden’s interview “did not score a ratings win for the NBC program, particularly with younger viewers.”
The Monday night interview with the president brought in some 852,000 average total viewers and 181,000 viewers in the 25-54 age demographic, according to Nielsen Media Research. The demo viewership marked a 32 percent drop compared to the same day last year, which tracks with the show’s already declining demo viewership for the year – down some 10 percent year to date.
For context, Greg Gutfeld got 2.2 million viewers—nearly three times as many as Biden—the same night.
Even those who did watch it were likely underwhelmed. According to Daniel D’Addario at “Variety” the platform wasn’t all that great.
Hypothetical comparisons don’t flatter President Biden: In a comparable setting, Obama might have caught the joke, lobbed it back, and then pivoted into whatever he was really there to discuss. And Trump, by this point in his term, would never have been invited on “Late Night” specifically, but certainly did not struggle in making whatever news program had given him a platform into a blistering and strange referendum on whatever topic he chose. Here, Meyers and [Amy] Poehler were handing the President a gift of sorts — the opportunity to play into a long-running joke that his amiable and aloof personality conceals a mastermind. He seemed a beat behind in catching the joke each time, and missed the opportunity to use it to say anything more substantive. What is “Dark Brandon’s” agenda, his master plan? That joke remained untold. [Emphasis added]
And despite the narrative in the media that Biden aced his appearance on the show, it wasn’t the home run it’s being made out to be.
A second segment, after Poehler left the stage, placed the President on firmer footing, though even his most ardent defenders may need to come to terms with the fact that certain of his long-held rhetorical traits — like trailing off and stopping himself when he spoke angrily about Trump, as he did twice — can read now as his having lost a step. (And his penchant for misstatements, as when he referred to his plan for the rest of this year as “the 2020 agenda,” remains an Achilles’ heel.)
In the end, D’Addario couldn’t bring himself to gush over Biden’s performance.
How did the President do on “Late Night,” in the end? It’s a complicated question, vexed both by what our expectations for a generic 81-year-old might be and by the type of politician Biden is. Unlike the two political outsiders that preceded him, he’s a creature of Washington who seems fairly unimpressed by the entertainment industry. But that also means that, even in the best of times, it’s been a bit lost on him how best to leverage it for his own purposes. Here, he stayed on message, he volleyed back a joke made to him (if woodenly), he came out alive. Is that coming as good news for a person in a Trump-negative frame of mind the ideal? Well, no. But, for Biden and for us all, it’s been a long 10 years.
It’s certainly been a long three for the nation.