(NewsNation) — “Just wondering if you’d ever want the representative I work for as a guest on your YouTube channel or podcast?”
Keith Edwards, a successful political content creator, and other left-leaning influencers have fielded numerous calls like this since November’s election.
When it comes to reaching digital audiences, Democrats “have gotten the memo,” he said.
Despite the fact that they’re known as “blue wall” states, Trump won Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin in 2024 by 229,766 votes. Trump’s campaign was ultimately successful, due in part to a very active online conservative influencer ecosystem. The left is eager to match their success.
Open-ended influencer content created Trump’s ‘cool’ vibe
“Donald Trump is cool. Donald Trump reclaimed his coolness by breaking through and running a media campaign that went through TikTok and direct-to-camera interviews or podcasts.” says Alex Bruesewitz, adviser to Trump on podcast strategy and CEO of X Strategies LLC.
Many left-leaning creators actually agree that Trump is considered cool online, and influencers helped get him there.
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David Pakman, a progressive political commentator, says right-leaning influencers such as Joe Rogan, Lex Fridman and the NELK Boys, helped create a, “kind of vibe and environment” supportive of Trump and his policies.
“That’s completely missing on the left,” Pakman said.
Some think Trump’s advantage was bolstered by the Democrats cultural messaging misses. On inflation, foreign aid and even health care, Jack Cocchiarella, a progressive YouTube creator said of Democrats, “We are not cool on anything that anyone’s talking about.”
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Bruesewitz explains that many influencers owe their audience growth to Trump.
“The Charlie Kirks of the world built platforms by advocating for Trump and his policies” and it became a “full time organic operation that Trump could tap into,” he said. Across platforms, hundreds of accounts grew, and they’ve been building for eight years.
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During that time, camaraderie and friendships developed, with influencers backing each other up when advocating messages. Bruesewitz also noted that the influencers monitor Trump’s posts on Truth Social. Once those messages go out, “influencers will organically defend it,” he said.
Of course, that defense is not limited to posts. Jack Posobiec, a MAGA influencer, pointed out that during the presidential debate, the Trump campaign held an influencer round table, “almost a war room-like atmosphere,” designed to amplify what Trump was saying while also competing in a way “to see who can go the most viral, who’s going to have the best clip.”
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Harris campaign advisers said they understood the value of creators, as evidenced by their outreach to influencers even when former President Joe Biden was still at the top of the ticket, according to Daniela Hernandez, Harris’ deputy director of digital partnerships.
Posobiec actually agrees: “It was the Biden and then the subsequent Kamala campaign doing that up front that I think may have pushed Trump into doing it later. And maybe the [Trump] campaign wouldn’t have been so open to it if they hadn’t seen the Biden and then the Kamala campaign being so aggressive about it.”
For example, Hernandez pointed out that they invited 200 creators to the Democratic National Convention, giving them press access and content opportunities. They had a battleground creators program that engaged around 1,500 creators and a “Creators for Kamala” community on Instagram that ballooned to around 11,000 by Election Day. Hernandez said, “I think the overall scale is something we did really well.”
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Hernandez acknowledged she wishes they did more longer form interviews, knowing their value.
“It’s not, I think, for lack of appetite from the principal [Harris] side. I think there was just really the short runway [of time for Harris’s campaign], the hard decisions that we had to make about which interview she’s doing and where. But at every opportunity we had, we absolutely were, like, ‘Let’s make [it] happen.’”
Albert Thompson, founder of the marketing firm Transient Identiti, agrees that the 107 days of the Harris campaign wasn’t enough time to successfully reach the masses.
“I think the strategy was very smart. I think they needed more of it and more time … We don’t establish and align our membership with people that quickly. The human psychology never works that fast.”
‘Non-political’ podcasts and influencers
Many of the podcasts and YouTube channels that Trump and Harris appeared on were not explicitly political. “Call Her Daddy” and “Club Shay Shay,” which Harris spoke on, and Joe Rogan and Theo Von which Trump appeared on, are not known for being overtly political venues. They mostly cover topics including sex, comedy, sports and general lifestyle issues.
It’s potentially that appearance of authenticity lends credibility to the guests. However, political leanings are often infused in these conversations, according to Avi Ghandi, a creator economy expert.
“A lot of the young male listeners who come in not thinking they’re listening to a political podcast end up listening to a political podcast,” Ghandi explained.
Harris employed a similar strategy. Thompson pointed out that Shannon Sharpe, the host of podcast “Club Shay Shay” is a Black man who “represents the highest level of masculinity” as a former professional football player, but who is still relatable having come from a small town in Georgia. Harris’ appearance therefore made her more relatable, particularly at a time when she was trying to prove to Black men that she was hearing them and wouldn’t leave them behind, according to Thompson.
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A source familiar with the Harris campaign’s influencer strategy reiterated that Harris wanted to do more podcast and social media-first interviews but often was stymied by responsibilities as vice president.
As a sitting VP, the Harris team “saw a trend where, especially the bigger creators, wanted to stay as nonpartisan as possible.” To these influencers, having Harris on their platform was a riskier endeavor than having former President Trump on, who wouldn’t need to necessarily focus on policy and could instead vamp about, in the case of Rogan, life on Mars and his theories about election fraud.
Additionally, as the first female and woman of color vice president, she was being measured by the audience with a different yardstick. The source said that “these influencers wouldn’t have been able to have the same type of freewheeling conversation with the vice president, even if you would put her in the same setting with Joe Rogan at his Austin studio.”
The disarming authenticity of influencer media
The freewheeling, casual style of online media not only worked to Trump’s advantage, it also helped him counter the left’s warnings about the dangers of another Trump term, according to Cocchiarella.
“Trump’s own generals said he was going to be a dictator, but … when he was just a cool guy talking about watching the Yankees in the 60s … hanging out and talking about UFC with Joe Rogan and able to speak for three and a half hours uninterrupted … he could hang and he seemed normal, which made Democrats seem like we were overreacting,” which is the perception of the party right now, Cocchiarella said.
Pakman believes Harris was poorly advised and her natural skills were not well utilized. He said he met Harris in March of last year and that “she was awesome. She was impressive. She was able to talk off-the-cuff about so many different things.”
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In phase one of her campaign for president, Pakman praised her interview with Howard Stern, noting that she was “doing more dynamic speeches each day, rather than the same speech every time. And they were still doing that ‘These guys are weird stuff’ (about Trump and Vance), which I thought was working well.”
But he says in September, phase two of the campaign started and he noticed a shift. While he doesn’t know who was responsible for it, he said, “whoever it is got involved, the campaign was diminished in its strength.”
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“Not every candidate should be doing podcasts,” Bruesewitz said. “Sometimes you hear from a candidate and you like them less. In those formats, with President Trump, you heard from him more and liked him more. So it’s not for everybody, but it was definitely for him.”
Edwards, the successful political influencer, believes Democrats need to find candidates who are savvier with online media.
“We have to have candidates that not only are unafraid to go anywhere and everywhere, but also are willing to pick up their phone and just say something for two minutes without being worried if they mess up a word.”
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Ghandi believes part of the left’s problem is both who delivers the message and how it’s done. He said the left takes “moralizing positions. And people find moralizing positions obnoxious. It’s not entertaining.”
He also thinks the left needs people who are nonpolitical and have influence to step up and get involved in the same way as Adin Ross, the live streamer who gifted Donald Trump a car and interviewed him, providing access to his audience.
Internet culture is notoriously fickle. What, and who, are cool today may not be tomorrow. It’s up to candidates to assess how they can stay relevant because the battle for the hearts and minds of Americans has changed. It now exists both on traditional airwaves and online. Failure to exploit both risks losing, or worse, becoming obsolete.
