Never let it be said that Joe Biden stood in there and took the fire; that he resolutely answered the tough questions from an intrepid and adversarial press.

He didn’t. And they weren’t.

Heading into Super Bowl weekend, and in the wake of his State of the Union fib-fest, his still unfolding classified documents scandal, his failure to shoot down a Chinese spy balloon until after it had completed its mission, and House Republicans’ launch of an oversight investigation into the influence-peddling charges surrounding him and his son, the president would seem to have much to explain to the American people. And what better venue for doing so than the traditional sit-down interview between the sitting president and the network that happens to be broadcasting the Super Bowl to upwards of 100 million people?

Unfortunately for Joe, the network broadcasting this year’s Super Bowl is Fox, which means that the interview would likely be conducted by a legitimate journalist — likely either Fox News Chief Political Anchor Bret Baier or “Fox News Sunday” host Shannon Bream.

So Biden is begging off, and, as of now, without even having the decency to give the network a definitive response. “Fox News has regularly hosted an interview with the sitting president during its pregame coverage since 2009,” the Washington Examiner reports, “when then-President Barack Obama first started meeting with the network ahead of the championship game. Former President Donald Trump continued that tradition throughout his presidency.”

What are we to intuit from all this, from the guy who supposedly had the stones to square off against Corn Pop? Three words: B-bawk-BAWK!

Indeed, our 46th president has taken a page from the Tale of Brave Sir Robin: When danger reared its ugly head, Joe bravely turned his tail and fled.

In fairness to Biden, he won’t be the first president to skip this interview. Trump snubbed Lester Holt and NBC News in 2018. Variety suspects that Trump’s reason for doing so was to avoid answering tough questions about his criticism of woke NFL multimillionaires protesting racial injustice by kneeling during the playing of the national anthem.

Frankly, though, we don’t ever remember Trump dodging a tough question. Not once. On the contrary, we tend to think he had better things to do than to grant an interview to a fake news network that had become a de facto mouthpiece for the Trump-hating Democrats.

As for Scranton Joey Unitus, he and his handlers instead opted for a “friendly” with PBS and Judy Woodruff, who giddily asked him about his State of the Union speech: “You are getting a lot of attaboys from your fellow Democrats,” she said with a grin. “You stood up to the Republicans. They were yelling at you. Some of them were calling you a liar. Did you expect that kind of reaction?”

Biden responded: “From the folks that did it I was. The vast majority of Republicans weren’t that way, but, you know, there’s still a significant element of what I call the MAGA Republicans, the ‘Make America Great’ Republicans.”

“There was a deliberate effort by the last guy to play on people’s fears and to appeal to base instincts,” Biden said, referring to Trump and the 74 million Americans who voted for him.

And then he had the nerve to lament the lack of bipartisanship. “Most Americans,” he said, “are of the view that [politics have] just gotten too mean; it’s gotten too personal, gotten too divisive. And I think one of the messages they sent this last election was: ‘Come on. Work together. Get something done for us.’”

As for his widespread collection of classified documents, he resolutely threw some anonymous underlings under the Biden bus, insisting that the only reason such documents were in his personal possession was because “the help” didn’t sufficiently examine his papers when cleaning up his offices. “And to the best of my knowledge, the kinds of things they picked up were things that were from 1974 and stray papers.” Wait, so he’s been squirreling this stuff away since 1974?

As for a run in 2024, Biden told Woodruff: “Watch me. That’s all I can say.”