A second local radio host says he was given questions before his Biden interview

A second local radio host told ABC News on Saturday that he was provided with a list of questions ahead of his interview with President Joe Biden this week.

“Yes, I was given some questions for Biden,” CivicMedia’s Earl Ingram told ABC News. Ingram, a prominent Wisconsin radio host, interviewed Biden this week following his debate performance.

Ingram said he was given five questions and ended up asking four of them.

“I didn’t have the chance to ask him all the things I wanted to,” she said.

Ingram is the second interviewer who now says Biden’s advisers gave her questions to ask the president this week. Earlier today, another local radio host who interviewed Biden this week told CNN that she was given questions to ask Biden ahead of the interview.

“We do not condition interviews on acceptance of these questions, and hosts are always free to ask questions they believe will best inform their listeners,” the Biden campaign told ABC News on Saturday.

Ingram told ABC that he didn’t see anything necessarily wrong with the practice. “To think that I was going to have the opportunity to ask the president of the United States a question, I think, is a little bit more than anyone should expect,” he said.

He went on to say that he was grateful for the opportunity to interview Biden.

“Certainly the fact that I was given this opportunity… it meant a lot to me,” Ingram said.

Earlier Saturday on CNN, Andrea Lawful-Sanders, host of WURD’s “The Source,” said Biden officials provided her with a list of eight questions ahead of her interview with Biden.

“They sent me the questions for approval and I approved them,” he said.

“They asked me several questions, eight in total,” he continued. “And the four they chose were the ones I passed.”

In response to Lawful-Sanders, Biden campaign spokeswoman Lauren Hitt said in a statement that it is not “uncommon” for interviewees to share topics of their choice. She noted that Lawful-Sanders was “free” to ask any questions she saw fit. She also noted that it was the campaign that sent the questions and not the White House, as other reports have claimed.

“It is not uncommon for interviewees to share their preferred topics. These questions were related to the news of the day: the president was asked about his performance in the debate and what he had done for black Americans,” the statement said.

“We do not condition interviews on acceptance of these questions, and hosts are always free to ask questions they feel will best inform their listeners. In addition to these interviews, the President also participated in a press conference yesterday, as well as an interview with ABC. Americans have had several opportunities to see him unscripted since the debate.”

A source familiar with Biden’s backup operation told ABC News that they will “refrain” from offering suggested questions to interviewers going forward.

“While interview hosts have always been free to ask whatever questions they want, we will refrain from offering suggested questions in the future.”

Another local radio host, Sherwin Hughes in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, said that when he interviewed Biden last month, the White House did not send him any questions to ask, and said there were no preconditions for the interviews — “nothing like that at all,” he told ABC News.

He said beforehand that he and the White House discussed broad topics he wanted to cover during the interview, including the Affordable Care Act, and the White House relayed what he described as “the messaging points they wanted to get across,” including how Biden differed from Trump.

Darian Morgan, known as “Big Tigger” on V-103 in Atlanta, interviewed Biden in May and told ABC News that he was sent “sample questions” but that it was “never a directive” to stick to them.

“I was sent some sample questions, but there was by no means an absolute directive to stick to those questions,” Morgan told ABC News.

Morgan said the process was no different than other interviews he had conducted and claimed that “it’s not an uncommon practice.”

“In my history of interviewing elected officials, a lot of people like to do that,” he said.