The viral YouTube show Hot Ones turned out the chance to interview Kamala Harris during the election as the show’s producers did not want to ‘delve into politics’, amid a serious Democratic re-calibration surrounding the use of social media.
A post-mortem run by Pod Save America saw former aides reveal how the campaign was run and what it ought to differently in 2028.
Comparing their campaign to Trump’s, which capitalised on massive audiences held by podcasters and social media stars like Joe Rogan, they revealed they tried to get on Hot Ones, but were turned down by producers.
Hot Ones, presented by Sean Evans, sees a different celebrity eating a series of chicken wings that are covered in increasingly spicy sauces, all while being asked more and more probing questions.
The show’s host has been praised for his in-depth research and presentation of questions, which Harris’ team wanted to use during the race for the White House.
But producers turned them down, telling them they didn’t want to ‘delve into politics’, according to Harris’ presidential comms chief Stephanie Cutter.
DailyMail.com has reached out to Hot Ones’ parent company, Buzzfeed, for comment.
The aides also said during the interview that the ‘political environment sucked’, leading to Harris’ loss.
Hot Ones turned out the chance to interview Kamala Harris (pictured) on its viral show
The show is presented by Sean Evans, known for his penetrating questions given to celebrity guests
‘We were dealing with ferocious headwinds’, said David Plouffe, who ran Obama’s 2008 campaign and then served as a White House advisor.
Plouffe also insisted that Biden was so unpopular when he dropped out of the race and endorsed Harris that it was a difficult task to improve her ratings.
He noted that Harris began the race with approval ratings only in the 33-35 percent range and although they improved her numbers by 15 points, they did not have enough time to sell her to voters.
And Plouffe complained about how difficult it was for Democrats to win support from independents in battleground states like Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania – despite that being the job at hand, and one the team assured Democrats across the country they were capable of doing.
‘It’s really hard for Democrats to win battleground states,’ Plouffe maintained, noting that those states were more conservative than the average blue state and that even the moderates there tended to lean right.
Meanwhile, campaign manager Jen O’Malley Dillon repeatedly complained about the lack of time they had to make Harris a winner in the 107-day campaign that began in July when Biden finally dropped out of the race and endorsed Harris.
She defended their approach of highlighting how Harris was ‘different’ than both Biden and Trump and a candidate for the ‘future’ instead of trying to differentiate herself from Biden, whose approval rating were epically low.
Campaign advisor Stephanie Cutter confirmed that Harris was ‘unwilling’ to separate herself from Biden.
‘She had a huge deficit in favorability, because either people didn’t know about her or what they did know about her was because of negative media,’ she said.
