Vice President Kamala Harris was turned down as a guest on the popular YouTube show Hot Ones, her campaign leaders revealed.
David Plouffe, a senior adviser on the Harris campaign; Jen O’Malley Dillon, head of the campaign; Quentin Fulks, deputy campaign manager; and Stephanie Cutter, who oversaw messaging and communications, all appeared on a high-profile episode of Pod Save America to give their postmortem of what went wrong. At one point, host Daniel Pfeiffer asked about the campaign’s nontraditional media strategy, a key approach for Harris and President-elect Donald Trump’s campaigns.
“It was my understanding that you guys wanted to do a bunch of the larger, more popular, not specifically political podcasts,” Pfeiffer said, pointing to Hot Ones as a prime example.
“Never in time has there been a candidate better suited for a podcast than Kamala Harris on Hot Ones,” he declared.
Cutter revealed that the campaign had, in fact, asked to go on the show but was rejected.
“I think if I remember correctly, on Hot Ones, they didn’t want to delve into politics,” she said. “Hot Ones, which is a great show, they didn’t want to do any politics, they weren’t going to take us or [Trump].”
Hot Ones, hosted by Sean Evans, features interviews with celebrities while eating progressively hotter wings. During its extensive runtime, no political candidates have appeared on the show.
O’Malley Dillon pointed out that despite most nonpolitical media rejecting Harris, Trump appeared on several major nonpolitical podcasts and media.
“I don’t think he had the same problem,” she said, adding that the president-elect was able to “tap into some cultural elements” that Harris was not.
The revelation was widely mocked online.
“Every new revelation is the most embarrassing thing that’s ever happened,” one viral post read.
Among the nonpolitical podcasts Trump appeared on was This Past Weekend, hosted by comedian Theo Von; Break 50, hosted by golfer Bryson DeChambeau; Six Feet Under, hosted by professional wrestler Mark “The Undertaker” Calaway; Flagrant, hosted by comedian Andrew Schulz; and Bussin with the Boys, produced by Barstool Sports.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
Trump’s crowning achievement was his appearance on the Joe Rogan Experience, one of the most popular podcasts in the world, and winning Rogan’s eventual endorsement. Harris was in talks to appear on the show, but it fell through for disputed reasons.
Elsewhere on the Pod Save America episode, the Harris campaign leaders revealed that despite public polls showing otherwise, their internal polling never had Harris ahead of Trump.