Top former Harris campaign officials admitted Tuesday that the wildly popular, food-centric podcast “Hot Ones” rejected their request to get Vice President Kamala Harris on the show.
In an internet-breaking interview with progressive podcast “Pod Save America” on Tuesday, Harris campaign senior adviser Stephanie Cutter revealed that “Hot Ones” refused to do an episode with Harris because they were unwilling to get political.
“‘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,” Cutter said, mentioning that both Harris and President-elect Donald Trump would not have made it on the show.
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The Harris campaign recently disclosed it was rejected in its attempts to get Vice President Kamala Harris on the popular YouTube podcast, “Hot Ones.” (Hyoung Chang / Contributor | Andrew Harnik / Staff)
“Hot Ones” is a long-running YouTube talk show where host Sean Evans asks celebrities interview questions in between eating rounds of increasingly spicy chicken wings.
Recent guests have included “Gladiator II” star Paul Mescal, pop star Sabrina Carpenter, and late-night TV host Jimmy Fallon. The interviews routinely go viral. Evans’s interview with celebrity chef Gordon Ramsey currently has over 129 million views.
The Harris campaign’s attempt to get the vice president on the show was part of their strategy to have Harris appear on new, non-traditional media formats to increase appeal among younger voters who get their news online.
Harris appeared on the raunchy women’s sex and relationship-focused “Call Her Daddy” podcast that premiered on Oct. 6, though that appearance has failed to break 1 million views since. This paled in comparison to Trump’s appearance on “The Joe Rogan Experience” on Oct. 25, that has over 50 million views.
Cutter told “Pod Save America” that Harris was rejected “across the board” from non-traditional media shows that didn’t want to get into politics. However, she noted that some of the shows that rejected Harris for this reasoning still had Trump on.
Harris campaign manager Jen O’Malley Dillon chimed in, saying, “I don’t think he had the same problem.” Trump “certainly was able to tap into some cultural elements in ways that we couldn’t,” she added.
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Joe Rogan and the Harris campaign both wanted to schedule an interview, but according to Harris’ aides, they were unable to find the time. (Left: (Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images), Right: (Photo by Jeff Bottari/Zuffa LLC))
Podcast host Dan Pfeiffer replied, indicating he found it hard to believe “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.”
The campaign officials also shed more light on why Harris never got on Rogan’s podcast, noting it was because of scheduling conflicts with Trump’s own interview with the host.
“We were hoping to fit it in around that but ultimately weren’t able to do it,” Cutter said. “As it turns out, that was the day that Trump was taping his Joe Rogan [appearance], which they had never confirmed to us. We just kind of figured that out in the lead-up to it. You know, she was ready, willing to go on Joe Rogan.”
Cutter insisted that the campaign “wanted to come on.”
“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,” she said.
Rogan previously said he gave ample opportunity for Harris to appear on his show.
“She had an opportunity to come here when she was in Texas, and I literally gave them an open invitation. I said anytime,” he said.
“Hot Ones” declined to comment when reached by Fox News Digital.
