Podcasts, TikToks and YouTube channels: Harris and Trump find new messengers for their campaigns

When Vice President Kamala Harris sat for an interview with the popular Call Her Daddy podcast that aired Sunday, host Alex Cooper started with a question that reflected the changing dynamics of a media landscape and the way political candidates must adapt to it.

"I'm curious, you don't do too many long-form interviews, what made you want to do Call Her Daddy today?" Cooper asked.

"Well, I think you and your listeners have really got this thing right, which is one of the best ways to communicate with people is to be real, you know, and to talk about the things that people really care about,” Harris responded, adding that listeners of the podcast were “part of a community.”

Call Her Daddy, which Cooper says is about "women and the day-to-day issues we face," and features frank, irreverent commentary, has a weekly audience of 5 million listeners and is the podcast most listened to by women on Spotify, according to the streaming service. While Harris embarked on a media blitz this week and will appear on more traditional media shows like 60 Minutes, The View, The Late Show with Stephen Colbert and The Howard Stern Show, she's also begun targeting voters in other spaces.

That strategy is nothing new for former President Donald Trump, who has given multiple interviews during the 2024 election to influencers, podcasters and business moguls who stand apart from mainstream outlets and have audiences measured in the millions.

“I just see that these platforms are starting to dominate,” Trump told computer scientist Lex Fridman when he appeared on his podcast last month. “They’re getting very big numbers.”

A tight race

A Yahoo News/YouGov poll released Monday found that Harris leads Trump by just two points nationally, 48%-46%. In a close race, each campaign must do everything it can to expand their base.

"She and Trump — they are running a very new kind of media campaign where he's reaching out on podcasts, to try and reach younger voters, and she's doing the same thing, trying to reach people where people are in these very small bubbles of ideology, demographics and interests," Alison Dagnes, a political science professor at Shippensburg University, told the National News Desk.

Fridman’s podcast has more than 3.6 million subscribers, nearly three-quarters of whom are male, and his interview with Trump has been viewed 5 million times on YouTube. Trump has also courted men like professional wrestler and YouTube host Logan Paul and comedian Theo Von who typically tend to focus on masculine lifestyle topics.

"In order to win, he needs to change the electorate," Shauna Daly, a co-founder of the liberal Young Men's Research Initiative, told NPR. "And young men historically are less likely to vote, but if he can turn them out, if he can get them to vote, that could change the electorate enough to give him a margin of victory."

Knowing that the way most Americans now get their news bears little resemblance to past election cycles, when cable and network news still held the biggest sway, Harris reached out to social media influencers to cover the Democratic National Convention and target female voters on subjects like restoring reproductive rights.

"These trusted digital messengers are able to share messages about the campaign that are unique, that are true to them, true to their life, and specific to the communities that they've curated online," influencer Deja Foxx, who has over 142,000 followers on TikTok and 56,000 on Instagram, told USA Today.

Strategic risks

For all the promise of a campaign strategy that seeks to meet potential voters where they live online, there are also risks.

Many Call Her Daddy listeners complained in social media comment sections about having politics invade their podcast, while others accused Cooper of going too easy on Harris and not asking her tough questions about fracking and other subjects.

"I'm probably not the one to be having the fracking conversation," Cooper told her audience ahead of the Harris interview. "But the conversation I know I am qualified to have is the one surrounding women's bodies and how we are treated and valued in this country. I wanted to be so clear, since this isn't a one-sided conversation, we reached out to former President Donald Trump to come on the show. If he also wants to have a meaningful in-depth conversation about women's rights in this country, then he is welcome on Call Her Daddy anytime."

Trump’s interviews with right-leaning influencers have also sometimes backfired, at times generating negative headlines.

In August, Adin Ross, who gained fame as a video game streamer for titles like Grand Theft Auto and NBA 2K, conducted a 90-minute livestream interview with Trump despite the fact that he had been banned from the streaming platform Twitch for using homophobic slurs and displaying racist, antisemitic messages.

Ross, who broadcast the interview on the streaming site Kick, also did something that would never be permissible from a mainstream media outlet when he presented Trump with a Rolex watch and a Tesla Cybertruck as a token of his appreciation.