While many media outlets are, whether they admit it or not, pouring out partisan talking points and clickbait garbage, the team at SiriusXM’s POTUS channel is working hard to ensure an unbiased news source still hits the airwaves. This includes Steve Scully’s 12 p.m. to 2 p.m. show, The Briefing with Steve Scully.
“We’ve gone through difficult times in the past. We’ve gone through a civil war and the civil rights movement and world wars and scandals. We’ve been through all of this before,” Scully affirmed. “So when you try to understand the context of where we are today by understanding where we’ve been in the past, I think it makes it easier for many people to realize that, whatever you feel about the current political environment, this too is going to pass.”
The 14th of 16 siblings, Scully admitted that “politics was part of the conversation at the dinner table.” In addition to his paper route as a kid, the Scully family routine was to watch the news and then have dinner together. “So I grew up with a keen interest in understanding the news and understanding politics.”
Learning Balance at the Kitchen Table
Having a large family likely also helped him develop his calming cadence and neutral but forward demeanor. “In my family, I have Donald Trump [supporters], I have Bernie Sanders [supporters]. At our kitchen table and at Thanksgiving and at family get-togethers, I hear it from all sides. So maybe that’s a good training ground in understanding how you try to have a balanced point of view.”
The most important thing Scully brings when talking to either side is respect. “I respect the people who support Donald Trump, and I respect the people who support Zoran Mamdani, because that’s how they feel. I may not agree with everything that one side or the other says, but I want to understand where they’re coming from. And that’s always been my approach when it comes to the POTUS program.”
It’s an approach Scully carried on C-SPAN for 30 years before bringing it to his SiriusXM POTUS show. “A Northwestern University professor once told me, ‘Scully, don’t tell me what you think, tell me what you know.’ And so I’ve really taken that to heart,” Scully affirmed.
On his program, all are welcome, from MAGA Republicans to Democratic socialists. It’s how Scully brings a sense of balance to the airwaves. It is also how he has garnered the respect of, and been able to interview, every president since Gerald Ford.
The Key to a Great Presidential Interview
“Each president is different. If you’re interviewing, for example, Barack Obama, he is a law professor at heart, so he will give very lengthy answers. If you’re interviewing President Trump, you know that he’s going to do the weave and he’s going to kind of go all over the place. If you’re interviewing somebody like President George W. Bush or Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, especially, would give very, you know, crisp, concise answers.”
While most of his presidential interviews took place while the subjects were in office, Scully was able to interview both Presidents Ford and Carter after their terms ended. “When I interviewed Gerald Ford in the 1990s, it was during the time of the Bill Clinton impeachment. So we talked about impeachment and whether that was right or wrong.”
One common thread Scully maintains, regardless of whether the president is in office, is to use their own words when questioning them. “A president cannot dismiss what they’ve said in the past. And they can either back up or change their views on what they said at a certain point in time. So that’s always been my approach.”
Most importantly, he doesn’t want the interview to be adversarial. “You want to be direct, you don’t want to be confrontational, but you want to hold them accountable. And you want to be directing your questions, ask a single-part question, not a three-part question, listen to the answer, and then follow up. ‘But Mr. President, you didn’t answer my question; let me go back to point X, Y or Z.’ So that’s how I try to approach it.”
Looking Toward the Future
Today, in 2026, an Emmy Award-winning anchor like Scully is rare — he even admits this generation of Americans has “a highly polarized media, you have partisan media to the left and to the right, and you have social media, which is toxic.”
Scully, who in addition to his radio gig is also a university lecturer, believes this is causing a problem among Americans, where “people are gravitating to their own point of view without being open to another point of view.” The self-proclaimed “history and political nerd” noted that most generations have differences, but they all fought one common enemy. “This generation is more defined by the polarization.”
The political scholar advises his students and listeners to “turn off social media, turn off the partisan media to the left and to the right. And more importantly, be more open-minded to other people and their point of view and come to the conversation with a level of, if not respect, then a level of understanding that you can appreciate why that person feels the way they feel without making it personal and without making it toxic. And that really is the problem that we’re seeing in our media today.”
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