President Trump will be interviewed by Margaret Brennan for Super Bowl

President Trump has agreed to sit down with CBS for a Super Bowl Sunday interview, CBS confirmed Monday.

“Face the Nation” moderator Margaret Brennan will speak with the president on Friday, and portions of the interview will air Sunday both on her program and on the Super Bowl pre-game telecast.

The Super Bowl rotates between several major networks, and this year it is CBS’s turn. It is traditionally the highest-rated event of the year by far.

The hours-long pre-game broadcast has a fraction of the audience as the big game, but it is still a valuable spot for the president to reach viewers beyond his Fox News base.

And Trump has a couple of specific reasons to speak right now. He has been trying to persuade the public that he did not cave to the Democrats by ending the partial government shutdown without securing border wall funding.

“This was in no way a concession,” he tweeted last Friday.

He addressed congressional negotiations in an interview with the Wall Street Journal on Sunday, and will likely use the CBS interview to continue advancing his pro-wall arguments.

CBS and the White House declined to comment about the interview plans.

The idea of a Super Bowl Sunday interview originated with George W. Bush. Barack Obama picked it up in 2009 and sat down for an interview every year.

Trump continued the tradition shortly after being inaugurated in 2017. It was Fox’s turn to air the game, so Trump sat down with his longtime friend Bill O’Reilly.

Last year, however, Trump passed on a chance to appear on NBC’s pre-game hours. He has repeatedly attacked NBC, his former network home, on Twitter.