Former Obama administration aides said Wednesday that few Democrats are capable of going on a podcast like Joe Rogan’s the way President-elect Donald Trump did during the 2024 campaign.
Trump did numerous podcast interviews during his winning presidential campaign, including “The Joe Rogan Experience,” while Harris did far fewer and never appeared on Rogan despite being invited. After former Obama administration speechwriter Jon Favreau said that Democrats erred by focusing on identity politics, he noted that Republicans were coming across as rebellious and had become a counterculture.
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“I think it’s also a matter of like what Democrats say and how they say it, and I think it’s telling that we could probably list on two hands the number of Democratic politicians that we’d feel comfortable sending on Joe Rogan,” Favreau said during the “Pod Save America” podcast episode. “You look at Donald Trump. He got through all those podcasts… He was the best version of Donald Trump.”
“One hand,” Lovett interjected. Favreau said he was being generous.
Rogan’s podcast has over 14 million followers, according to Digital Music News.
Favreau noted that Democrats seemed too wedded to talking points during interviews and needed to be willing to speak freely without fear the rest of the party would criticize them for saying something “the wrong way.”
Harris and her running mate, Democratic Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota, largely avoided interviews and press conferences since President Joe Biden announced he would not seek reelection July 21 before doing a media blitz in October. One liberal pundit said the strategy may have been a factor in Walz’s poor performance during the vice-presidential debate.
“People hate politics right now and we sound like politicians,” former White House communications director Dan Pfeiffer said.
Earlier in the podcast, former Obama speechwriter Jon Lovett said that the “Pod Save America” podcast was intended as part of a “countervailing force” to a “right-wing… political media apparatus” funded by “conservative billionaires” before Favreau revealed how few Democrats he could trust on Rogan’s podcast.
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