Joe Davis was asked on the Awful Announcing Podcast this week how he would handle interviewing a sitting president during a broadcast. It’s not a hypothetical question anymore, not after Kenny Albert and Jonathan Vilma spent nine minutes with Donald Trump during last Sunday’s Commanders-Lions game.
“I hadn’t thought about how I would handle. I guess my first reaction would be, ‘Wow, the President of the United States — no matter who it is — is going to join us in the booth, awesome,'” Davis told host Brandon Contes. “My second thing is I gotta be prepared for this, no matter who the man or woman is, you gotta be prepared and make sure I nail this. I would probably make sure I spent as much time getting ready for that interview as I did getting ready for the game once I found out.”
Davis added that he’s “like the least political person you’ve ever met,” which he acknowledges could be “a strength, maybe a weakness.”
“I’m sure people will take sides on that, too, whether I should be more political, but I just, I don’t know, I would just show up and do the job, no matter who it was,” Davis said. “And I guess part of that is I’m armored by the fact I just try to not be political.”
The Fox broadcast with Trump didn’t stay apolitical. Vilma asked Trump to talk about “Where we are as a nation,” and Trump spoke about the stock market, inflation, and investment. Vilma also tried landing a 6-7 meme joke, but it went nowhere. What the segment didn’t address were topics with actual NFL relevance, such as Trump’s reported interest in naming the Commanders’ new stadium after him.
The appearance raised questions about whether Fox put Albert and Vilma in a bad spot. As Awful Announcing’s Drew Lerner put it, Albert and Vilma were “conducting this interview for an audience of one, and that audience was Lachlan Murdoch.”
That’s the reality Davis would be walking into—preparation and staying apolitical sound good in theory. Albert and Vilma probably had the same idea. But once Trump started freewheeling, none of that preparation mattered much.
About Sam Neumann
Since the beginning of 2023, Sam has been a staff writer for Awful Announcing and The Comeback. A 2021 graduate of Temple University, Sam is a Charlotte native, who currently calls Greenville, South Carolina his home. He also has a love/hate relationship with the New York Mets and Jets.