The massively popular YouTube show “Hot Ones” rejected a proposed pre-election appearance by Vice President Kamala Harris, according to her campaign leaders.
On Tuesday, Harris campaign chiefs made an appearance on “Pod Save America” — a left-wing political podcast hosted by former Obama aides Jon Favreau, Jon Lovett, Dan Pfeiffer, and Tommy Vietor.
‘So, we had discussions with Joe Rogan’s team. They were great. They wanted us to come on.’
The Harris campaign heads attempted to explain why Kamala lost to Donald Trump despite the Harris campaign spending roughly $1.5 billion in 15 weeks.
“This political environment sucked. We were dealing with ferocious headwinds, and I think people’s instinct was to give the Republicans and even Donald Trump another chance,” stated Harris campaign senior adviser David Plouffe.
Harris campaign senior adviser Jen O’Malley Dillon claimed that Kamala didn’t succeed because she didn’t have enough time.
“In a 107-day race, it is very difficult to do all the things you would normally do in a year and a half, two years,” Dillon alleged.
The Harris leaders claimed that time constraints prevented Kamala from appearing on “The Joe Rogan Experience.”
“I hate to repeat this over and over, but it was a very short race with a limited number of days, and for a candidate to leave the battleground and go to Houston is a day off the playing field in the battleground [states],” Harris campaign staffer Stephanie Cutter alleged. “As it turns out, that was the day that Trump was taping his Joe Rogan [episode], which they had never confirmed to us. We kind of figured that out, in the lead-up to it. … She was ready, willing to go on Joe Rogan. So we had discussions with Joe Rogan’s team. They were great. They wanted us to come on. We wanted to come on. We tried to get a date to make it work, and ultimately we just weren’t able to find a date.”
However, Joe Rogan claimed that he offered to interview Harris at any time to make it happen as long it was a long-form conversation in his Austin studio.
“You could look at this and you can say, ‘Oh, you’re being a diva,’ but she had an opportunity to come here when she was in Texas, and I literally gave them an open invitation. I said anytime,” Rogan explained. “I said if she’s done at 10, we’ll come back here at 10. I go, I’ll do it at nine in the morning, I’ll do it at 10 p.m. I’ll do it at midnight if she’s up, if she wants to, you know, drink a Red Bull.”
As Blaze News previously reported, Rogan stated that the Harris campaign wanted an interview that would be under one hour long in a location outside his Austin studio.
Longtime Democratic strategist James Carville previously skewered the Harris campaign for not doing an interview with Rogan — host of the most popular podcast in the world.
Meanwhile, Trump embraced long-form podcasts that garnered massive audiences with young, male Americans. Trump did a nearly three-hour podcast on “The Joe Rogan Experience” in Austin as well as making appearances on comedian Theo Von’s “This Past Weekend,” golfer Bryson DeChambeau’s “Break 50,” Mark “The Undertaker” Calaway’s “Six Feet Under,” and Barstool Sports’ “Bussin’ with the Boys.”
The Harris campaign attempted to counter by requesting to appear on the extremely popular internet show “Hot Ones.”
The well-received YouTube show features host Sean Evans interviewing celebrities while they eat progressively spicier chicken wings.
However, the producers of the “Hot Ones” show rejected the Harris campaign’s request to have Kamala on the show before the 2024 election.
“Pod Save America” host Dan Pfeiffer said, “‘Hot Ones’ as an example. Like, there never in time has there been a candidate better suited for a podcast than Kamala Harris on ‘Hot Ones.'”
Cutter noted that the Harris campaign tried to get her on the show, but “Hot Ones” producers didn’t want to get involved in the divisive world of politics.
“I think, if I remember correctly, on ‘Hot Ones,’ that they didn’t wanna delve into politics,” Cutter noted. “Anybody that took him would take us. It was more some of the, like, like ‘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. So that was the issue. But we got on plenty of them, and the bottom line is she was willing to do just about anything and have a conversation with anybody regardless of where they sat.”
“Hot Ones” has more than 14 million followers on YouTube. Episodes of “Hot Ones” regularly have millions of views, and the episode with celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay has nearly 130 million views.
The “Hot Ones” podcast did not respond to a request for comment from the Daily Beast.
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Kamala harris, Joe rogan, Joe rogan experience, Hot ones, Hot ones podcast, 2024 election, Election, Donald trump, Politics, Media
