Top campaign staff from Vice President Kamala Harris' presidential run have revealed that the popular YouTube show "Hot Ones," which often invites celebrities to be interviewed while eating wings that increase in spice level, refused to host Harris.
Harris' staff retroactively evaluated her campaign in a Pod Save America podcast episode, in which they admitted that they attempted to get her onto "Hot Ones" as a guest, but the team behind the show declined their offer.
The showrunners "didn't want to delve into politics," Stephanie Cutter, who ran messaging and media strategy for Harris, said on the podcast.
"'Hot Ones,' which is a great show, they didn't wanna do any politics, so they weren't going to take us or [Trump]," Cutter said. "So that was the issue."
Cutter further indicated that this was the response the Harris team received "across the board" when trying to get her onto similar non-partisan shows, despite some of these shows later welcoming then-presidential candidate Donald Trump onto their platforms.
"I don't think he had the same problem," Jen O'Malley Dillon, a former Harris campaign manager, said. She noted that the Trump campaign "certainly was able to tap into some cultural elements in ways that we couldn't."
Podcast host Dan Pfeiffer, a former communications director for Barack Obama, was shocked at "the idea that it would be more politically problematic to have on Kamala Harris, the sitting vice president of the United States, than Donald Trump, a man who's been convicted of a crime and tried to violently overthrow the election."
Harris' campaign staff also reiterated their candidate's willingness to appear on the Joe Rogan podcast, noting that they attempted to get her on the podcast when she visited Austin, Texas, where Rogan lives, for her rally with Beyoncé. However, Trump was reportedly recording his episode on the podcast that same day, so they said scheduling issues prevented the episode from happening.
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