Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign wanted her to appear on the popular internet show “Hot Ones,” but the show declined, campaign officials said.
On an episode of the podcast “Pod Save America” about what went wrong with the Democratic presidential campaign, the host Dan Pfeiffer interviewed Jen O’Malley Dillon, the Harris-Walz campaign chair; Quentin Fulks, the deputy campaign manager; and two senior advisors, Stephanie Cutter and David Plouffe.
Pfeiffer, once an advisor to President Barack Obama, asked about the campaign’s media strategy.
“It’s my understanding that you guys wanted to do a bunch of the larger, more popular, not specifically political podcasts,” Pfeiffer said. He asked “why that may not have happened,” citing “Hot Ones” as an ideal fit for the vice president.
“Never in time has there been a candidate better suited for a podcast than Kamala Harris on ‘Hot Ones,'” he said.
The show, which has more than 14 million YouTube subscribers, involves celebrities eating increasingly spicy wings as they discuss their lives and careers. Recent guests include Bowen Yang, Paul Mescal, and Jimmy Fallon.
Cutter, who spearheaded the campaign’s media strategy, said, “I think, if I remember correctly, on ‘Hot Ones,’ they didn’t want to delve into politics.”
She later elaborated, saying, “‘Hot Ones,’ which is a great show, they didn’t want to do any politics, so they weren’t going to take us or him,” referring to Donald Trump.
BuzzFeed, the owner of First We Feast, which produces “Hot Ones,” declined to comment.
The show has never featured a political candidate.
In the interview, Pfeiffer also touched on Harris’ absence from “The Joe Rogan Experience.” Trump appeared on Rogan’s podcast in October and talked with him for three hours.
The Harris campaign officials said that Rogan wanted to conduct the interview in Texas but that logistically it was too difficult to make that happen.
“What’s clear is we offered to do it in Austin; people should know that,” Plouffe said. “It didn’t work out.”
This year’s presidential election shined a light on a growing trend of politicians moving their fight to new media battlegrounds such as podcasts, gaming streams, Substacks, and TikTok debates.
Trump pursued an unorthodox media strategy that involved sitting down for many podcasts and YouTube shows to target a key demographic: undecided and politically disengaged young men.
