With young male voters in mind, 18-year-old Barron Trump, who cast his ballot for the first time Tuesday, worked with campaign adviser Alex Bruesewitz to prioritize influential male podcasters with large followings, two sources familiar with the strategy said. The Big Trump appeared on programs such as Barstool Sports’ “Bussin’ With the Boys” as well as shows hosted by comedians Andrew Schulz and Theo Vaughn and Mark Calaway, better known to professional wrestling fans as Undertaker.
Their big coup was Joe Rogan, who reached over 17 million YouTube subscribers. In the final weeks of the campaign, Trump kept supporters waiting for hours at a Michigan rally after traveling to Texas to tape Rogan’s show.
Harris was also invited to the show and his campaign gave it serious consideration. Senior leaders pushed for it, but ultimately decided it wasn’t worth the risk because they couldn’t win over Rogan’s audience — and Rogan himself endorsed Trump ahead of Election Day. The handling of the invitation by Harris’ team underscored the campaign’s and Harris’ cautious approach to public speaking, which Democrats now say was a mistake.
“We have to go to Joe Rogan. I oppose that progressives should create and support their own Joe Rogan,” said Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif.
Immediately after Harris replaced Biden at the top of the ticket, a precious moment when Americans were still forming their opinions of him, he didn’t do any interviews or media appearances, which many thought was a mistake because data showed voters responding well to him and making more moves. . and they saw more in his direction.
For example, Future Forward, a Harris supporter known for rigorously testing ads before airing, showed voters more than 750 video clips and found that the most compelling ones often featured Harris in his own voice.
“At the beginning of his campaign, people knew about him, but they didn’t to know his. They knew the name, but they didn’t know the person,” says Jesse Ferguson, a Democratic strategist who advises Future Forward.
Surveying the debacle Wednesday, campaign chairwoman Jen O’Malley Dillon came in for particular criticism — inevitable for the leader of any losing campaign — with accusations that she over-controlled or sidelined people close to Harris.
A cadre of high-priced former Barack Obama aides like David Plouffe and Stephanie Katter were brought in to help manage the final stages of the race, and some were tasked with “fixing” projects that didn’t need fixing, sparking resentment and mistrust. two teams forced to come together under difficult circumstances.
Others criticized the campaign’s decision to meet with anti-Trump Republicans and promote billionaire Mark Cuban, despite his criticism of billionaires like Trump in television ads.
“You spent hours with Liz Cheney and guess what? We learned that Liz Cheney is irrelevant,” said a Democratic strategist who is a Harris ally.
‘The gas is on’
It was immediately clear to everyone that Joe Biden’s June debate performance was a disaster — except for Biden and his loyal staff.
“I texted my friend 10 minutes before the debate, saying, ‘He has to go or we’re going to lose,'” says Ezra Levin, co-founder of Indivisible, a progressive grassroots movement that emerged after Trump’s first election.
Biden’s age was no secret—it was former special counsel Robert Hur called him “an elderly man with failing memory,” an official report in March — and many Democrats privately hoped Biden would not run for re-election, though few were willing to say so publicly.
But Biden’s allies angrily insisted, even to their own staff, donors and party officials, that it was all right because Harris was unfit for office, while Biden should stay in the race.
“Staff felt they were being gassed,” said one Democrat running for re-election. “There was a determination among some people in the Biden campaign, the DNC and the White House that Biden was not going to drop out of the race under any circumstances, even though all the data showed he had no way to win. That was probably the most disturbing thing.”
Many of Harris’ aides believed that Biden’s allies had privately undermined Harris from the beginning of the administration because they feared he would outrank him. They told Biden to stay in the race even as his support collapsed. And then many of them suddenly found themselves running Harris’s campaign.
“The people who kept his approval ratings low are the same people who have been trying to raise his approval ratings and get people to like him these last three months,” said one Harris ally.
After the debate, Biden pulled out, costing Harris critical time and giving his current campaign just 100 days to build a campaign, hold a convention, choose his running mate, prepare for the debate and prepare for the debate. messaging strategy.
He inherited a relatively sleepy campaign with limited infrastructure in the battle provinces and a ship that struggles to attract top talent to what many fear is doomed.
“No one wanted to work for him,” said a campaign official. “He was dying.”
Biden retained the presidency, though he could have handed it to him, making it impossible for Harris to fully break with someone he felt so loyal to as his running mate.
After he abdicated, the White House was reduced in numbers. While the rest of the party was excited, the mood at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue was more subdued. The lame duck president now had to clear things up with his deputy. “Did we run it vice president?” he will double-check with his aides, according to a senior official.
In his walkA senior White House aide gave this advice to a young White House staffer: “Revenge is best served cold.”
What was widely regarded as Harris’ biggest gaffe in a near-flawless presentation came on “The View,” when he, unlike Biden, struggled to say what to do. At their rally, Trump and his running mate, Sen. JD Vance Harris of Ohio, mercilessly mocked the response.
“He’s making this mistake on ‘The View’ because they told him to be loyal,” a person close to the campaign said.
“This is all about Joe Biden,” said another person in the Harris campaign.
Asked what was going on, another aide responded with two words: “Joe Biden.”
Still, Biden’s allies point out how unusual it is for any political leader to voluntarily step down and say his decision to seek re-election is a healthy one, given the Democrats’ better-than-expected performance in the 2022 midterm elections.
“This has been a historic partnership where these teams have worked extraordinarily well together,” said a White House official who was there from the start.
RFK, McDonalds and ‘brat summer’
Despite, or perhaps because of, the long delay, Harris entered the race with a great deal of enthusiasm that brought Trump up from behind as Democrats gloated.brat summer,” leading one big moment to another.
Trump, seemingly at a complete loss as to how to run against the young, telegenic woman, opened with a strange attack, accusing her of recently being Black.
“What shocked me was that his team was so slow,” said a person close to Trump with direct knowledge of campaign operations. [Harris] enter the race.”
He bought one Endorsed by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. To get Trump out of his summer slump. The addition of non-political figures such as former Democratic presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard and billionaire Elon Musk has helped Trump restore his image as a change agent not beholden to bipartisan bipartisanship.
“Not enough people understand the significance of it,” a Trump campaign official said of Kennedy’s nod. “I’m not saying he’s decisive, but I think his endorsement means more than the media gives him credit for. It was his first energizing move since the campaign was suspended.”
A Democrat close to the Harris campaign said: “Brat summer had to be over. At the beginning of October, the music stopped a little.”
After Harris passed the September 10 debate, he wasn’t sure how the campaign would proceed, with two months to go and no tentpole moments to go.
The post-debate period was “nerve-wracking” as the campaign asked, “What are we going to do with these six weeks?” he was looking ahead with his question. said an aide.
The campaign faced some unusual challenges against Trump, who had a felony conviction.
Biden’s team initially thought Trump’s conviction would be a political victory. There was a sense throughout the staff call after the conviction that it was a turning point in the race, according to a Biden campaign official. During that meeting, the word came up to add a line to the talking points about Trump being a “convicted felon.”
That logic was less certain to campaign leaders when Harris took office. They worried that framing Trump as a criminal might sound counterintuitive to black men, about one-third of whom have criminal records, and potentially persuasive voters. Polls have found that many registered independent voters suspect that Trump’s harassment is politically motivated.