Just hours into election night last November, it was already obvious that Kamala Harris’s short-lived and ill-fated candidacy was a masterclass in political self-destruction and how not to run for president. But two recent developments have revealed in even more detail just how bad her campaign was.
One of the most innovative and effective media strategies Trump employed during his 2024 campaign was embarking on a tour of some of the most popular podcasts in the country – a tactic that likely helped him make serious inroads with voters under 30.
By far the most influential podcast Trump appeared on was The Joe Rogan Experience. The episode amassed an astonishing 38 million views in just three days and has topped 55 million views to date.
In a book published after the election, Harris’s campaign aides claimed that Rogan refused to make time to interview the vice president, suggesting that Rogan only wanted to talk to Trump. But during a February 4 episode with Dan Richards, Rogan explicitly said that claim was false.
“They keep pretending that I lied,” Rogan said. “They never committed to doing it.”
“They’re saying that her people came and did a walkthrough of the studio,” he added. “That never happened. Trump’s people did a walkthrough.”
According to Rogan, while Trump’s team readily agreed to an appearance, Harris’s staff insisted on conditions that would have fundamentally altered the show’s format, including conducting the interview in Washington D.C. instead of Rogan’s Texas studio. “It’s gotta be the actual real show,” Rogan said. “It shouldn’t be some fake version of it where I’m sitting in a conference room.”
Failing to appear on Rogan’s platform, known for long-form, unscripted conversations, became yet another missed opportunity for Harris’s already struggling candidacy.
But another development last week revealed why the Harris campaign may have been reluctant to turn its candidate loose for hours of unscripted raw conversation with an honest broker in Rogan.
Just one day after Rogan released his podcast with Richards, CBS publicly released the uncut footage of the network’s October interview with Harris following a $10 billion lawsuit from Trump alleging deceptive editing.
The full tape of the “60 Minutes” interview was the smoking gun in the campaign’s media choreography scheme. As conservatives had alleged all along, what CBS presented to viewers was a meticulously curated performance, stripped of the moments where Harris struggled to articulate clear positions on key campaign issues and delivered meandering, incoherent responses.
The full interview reveals what appears to be a deliberate collusion between the candidate and corporate media, particularly considering CBS only aired 20 minutes of its conversation with Harris.
From the perspective of a media executive hoping to protect Harris from voter backlash, it’s easy to see why CBS was reluctant to release the full tapes.
For instance, in the vice president’s unedited comments, she boasted that while she was California District Attorney, her words “could move markets,” exposing what some might consider to be a deeply concerning view of government power.
When discussing Trump’s comments about reports of migrants eating pets in Springfield, Ohio, Harris also confusingly recounted: “One day when this happened was a school day, picture for an elementary school… Picture day, you know what picture day is for our children. They get excited the night when you put out the clothes they’re going to wear, they go to school making sure their faces are clean, and their hair is done, and they go to school for picture day. You know what happened to these children? They had to evacuate that day, because of the fear of the threats that were being issued in Springfield because of the words of Donald Trump.”
Time and again throughout the unedited CBS interview, Harris devolved the characteristic word salads that made her the subject of countless internet memes and earned her mockery from both the left and the right throughout her campaign. The fact that CBS went to such great lengths to bury Harris’s longwinded answers only to produce a final product that still drew criticism speaks to how deeply flawed Harris was as a candidate.
Harris’s campaign was also famously devoid of policy prescriptions and fixated on bashing Trump, another flaw that showed through in the unedited CBS tapes. Apparently recognizing this unhealthy obsession with her opponent, however, the version of the interview that aired excluded Harris’s most unhinged attacks.
The fallout from CBS’s deceptive editing has only added to the already catastrophic collapse in public trust in the corporate press. CBS is now facing scrutiny over all of its editorial decisions, with critics arguing that the network’s choices reflect a broader pattern of media organizations attempting to influence political outcomes rather than reporting objectively.
Both of these developments also underscore a fatal flaw in the Harris campaign: the vice president and her team were so terrified of gaffes and unscripted moments that they completely failed to engage in any meaningful way with voters. There remain serious questions about whether Harris had any ability at all to connect with everyday Americans. But perhaps even more damaging was the perception that she was unwilling to do so.
In many ways, the Harris campaign was the last gasp of an old and tired media strategy. Control the message, minimize risk, and avoid spontaneity. But 2024 made clear that the American people wouldn’t have it. Voters wanted something different — something real. And that’s what they got.
Sarah Katherine Sisk is a senior at Hillsdale College pursuing a degree in Economics and Journalism. You can follow her on X @SKSisk76.
