Offline with Jon Favreau - The Biden Campaign’s Plan to Beat Trump Online

Episode Date: April 28, 2024

Can Biden outpost Trump in the run up to 2024? Why is the president on TikTok if he wants to ban it? Rob Flaherty, former White House Director of Digital Strategy and current Deputy Campaign Manager for Biden joins Offline to explain. Jon and Rob talk about the ways the media environment has changed since 2020, how the Biden campaign is cutting through the noise this time around, and the importance of acknowledging voters’ frustrations. For a closed-captioned version of this episode, click here. For a transcript of this episode, please email [e-mail] and include the name of the podcast.

We need to be able, we need lots of people saying Joe Biden is great, but it's okay to vote for Joe Biden and just think Joe Biden is okay. Yeah. And you are, if you think Joe Biden is okay, you are welcome in our campaign. If you disagree with Joe Biden, you are welcome in our campaign. Like if you're having a conversation with your friend who's like, I can't possibly vote for Joe Biden, you go, I hear you. And I disagree on with him on X, Y, and Z point, but he's been really good on this issue I care about and this issue I care about and this issue I care about. And ultimately, this election is about whether or not we are moving our democracy forward and we are protecting our freedoms and all that stuff. You know, people, that's believable and plausible.

Hey, everyone. It's Jon Favreau and you just heard from today's guest, Rob Flaherty. I'm in D.C. this week, so I thought I'd sit down with one of the most extremely online people I know who also happens to have the job of making sure Donald Trump doesn't become president again. Rob ran digital strategy for the Biden campaign in 2020. Then he became the director of digital strategy at the White House after his boss won. And today, Rob is back on the campaign trail working as Biden's deputy campaign manager. I wanted to talk to Rob because if you haven't noticed, quite a bit has changed since 2020 when it comes to communicating with voters. The media environment is more fractured. TikTok has evolved from a dance app to a national security

threat. And Twitter, the platform that defined the Trump era, is, to put it charitably, no longer what it once was. A Biden versus Trump rematch may make it feel like we're reliving 2020. But when it comes to digital media, the election could not be any more different. I've been curious about how the Biden campaign is thinking about these seismic shifts, how they're attempting to reach voters, what messages they think will cut through the noise, why the campaign joined TikTok, and what their plan is to win the internet. Rob and I talked about all of that, plus why he thinks it's important to acknowledge voters' frustrations, why the campaign's spending more time trying to get volunteers to talk to their

friends and family, and what he thinks of Donald Trump's digital strategy. Since I'm on the road, we're going to skip the news block this week and get straight to the interview. Here's Rob Flaherty. Rob Flaherty, welcome to Offline. Thrilled to be here, John. All right, I want to start with the most important headline about your current gig. This is from the Boston Globe. North Reading native Rob Flaherty to serve as deputy manager of Biden re-election campaign.

That's right. You've made our little hometown proud. Go Hornets, you know. You also made me feel old since you graduated 10 years before me from our high school. Which is just brutal. Different generations. Although I remember very vividly walking back into the high school being like the kid who comes back, you know, whatever. And there's, you know, I had been in politics.

You'd been in politics. And there was a giant picture of you. And no's, you know, I had been in politics, you'd been in politics, and there was a giant picture of you and no picture of me. I did not even know that. So you have quite a lead. For people who don't know, about 100 people graduate from North Reading High every year, so it's not a big of a deal. So I do want to start there because I'd love to know how and why your area of expertise in politics became digital strategy and communications. Yeah, it's funny. I got into it.

Like, the embarrassing thing is, like, I got into it because I watched the West Wing and I was like, I want to do that, you know? That's good. No harm in that. Like, among us. And now you say that and it's embarrassing. But no, and then, you know, I wanted to be kind of a press person, but I went to school for television production and video editing and all that stuff.

And so when I graduated, and I did all this like political stuff in college and thought that would, you know, get me a job pretty easily once I graduated, and it didn't. And so I took an internship on Terry McAuliffe's campaign, and they were like, does anyone here know how to edit videos? And I was like, well, I guess I do. And so I just started making hashtag content, and then I just kind of kept moving. So you did Digital for Hillary in 16, Beto in 20, Biden White House after that, and now the Biden reelect. Yep.

How has the job changed over the years? Well, I think like the biggest shift from the 20 campaign to now is Ryan Broderick has Garbage Day, which is a really great newsletter. I love Garbage Day. Yeah, it's awesome. And he kind of talked about like the public internet and the private internet and the way that things are splitting between the places where people kind of consume discourse and the places where people talk to their friends. And I actually think that splintering is like really important. In 2022, I think it was, or no, last year, Adam Masseri, who's the CEO of Instagram said that half of the content that gets shared on Instagram happens in private. And so one of the biggest shifts I think has been

that we actually, as people who do digital need to actually be thinking about how do you get people to like share stuff in their group chats and talk to their friends and sort of rethinking. It's not enough just to like plaster content out there and like hope people will see it. You have to think about the distribution network too. And so it's that sort of linkage between this and organizing that I think is really the biggest change. I want to get into that a little more. How do you – like how has the media environment changed? Obviously there's the – as you mentioned, the split between like the public and private internet. Yeah.

But there's also just been this like complete splintering of where people are getting their news from, how much they're paying attention to the news. And that has, I imagine, all kinds of effects on public opinion, on what people view. It's just like, it feels like the, usually people talk about shared reality, like in the context of disinformation, but even disinformation aside, it's just people who are consuming information about politics right now just aren't in the same reality because there's so many different sources. Like, how did you guys think about that? Well, I think because like everyone talks about fractured, balkanized media environment, but it's really that it's personalized, right? And I actually

think the biggest distinction is not just that people who are on the left and people on the right live in different realities. It's that people who follow politics and people who don't follow politics live in very different realities. Which is most people. Which is most people. Who don't follow politics. Right. And so like, you know, for us, this presents a real challenge in a number of ways. One, if you look at this election, you know, the voters who show up all the time and really care about politics and are paying attention to traditional political media, we're winning a lot of those voters. It's why we're winning these specials. It's why we're winning these midterms.

Trump has his sporadic voters who are going to show up. And the question is, what happens to our sporadic voters who are deciding between, you know, not Joe Biden and Donald Trump, but Joe Biden on the couch. And for a lot of those voters, I mean, you know, we clocked it maybe a month ago. About 40% of them did not think Donald Trump was going to be the Republican nominee. Has that number changed at all? It's gotten smaller as he gets more coverage. But the truth of the matter is these are voters who like have other things to do

than pay attention to politics. Yeah. And for us, they are, you know, really a important constituency. And those voters are seeing tons of media. I mean, the average voter, we have a clock that consumes 12 and a half hours of content a day. And that's not just. And those are people who don't pay close attention to politics. That's just content. Average everybody, just content and everybody. And that's overlapping, right? That's on being on your phone while you're on TV. It's just like a lot, but it's just a bananas amount of stuff that they are seeing. And when a lot of it is not

political or it's political on the margins, it's really hard to communicate. And so for us, it means you got to be in more places, both from a paid media perspective, which is just like, you got to diversify how you think about paid media. You got to diversify how you think about earned media, right? The president does all these interviews with influencers and content creators and, you know, engagements with them. And then also you need to think about how you get to people through who they ultimately trust the most, which is their friends and their family. So talk to me about like the beginning of this campaign. You've got the media environment you just described you've got a fairly grumpy electorate you've got a president who has accomplished an enormous amount is not

getting credit for it has is getting blamed for things many of which are largely beyond his control um what are the like initial strategy strategy sessions like in terms of like, all right, this is how we're going to communicate and reach people. And this is how much we're going to think about making sure people know what Joe Biden has accomplished. This is how we're going to think about laying out the choice between he and Trump in terms of the content that you're putting out there. Well, so a couple of things is we came in knowing that we don't actually, like the playbook needs to change and that there's plenty of stuff that we know works and will be part of the arsenal.

But there's just some assumptions that we need to really pressure test. And so this is really the advantage we had of having an incumbency and having a campaign and having, by the way, a DNC that was, you know, the political arm for a while. We spent four years sort of refining and testing tactics. If you look at last year, we had this like $30 million ad buy that we started in like August. And these organizing pilots that were sort of sitting under, you know, them at the same time in Arizona and Wisconsin. And the goal of that was to go like what tactics are going to work, what messages are going to work, all that stuff. And I think there's like a couple of things that we found.

Like trust is like the real variable here. Like in this – with an electorate feeling the way that it does with the media environment that it is, like who people trust really matters. And so, you know, certainly we found, like, we tested different media mixes. We found, you know, the ways that people consumed information were really different and really surprising. And the places where they are, you know, we needed to be in different places. Messengers really mattered. Like, having the president in content so folks could see him more directly matters. Validators and testimonials really matter, people sharing their stories themselves.

And I think that connects. Like I think there's a through line between that, people responding to people talking about their experiences with the president's accomplishments and how it's made a difference in their lives. And the fact that also we believe that that is key to our organizing system, which is that like, you know, and so that kind of ties in with the organizing pilots, which is, you know, you know, we sort of believe that this community, like people say relational, but it's really organizing your community in a very traditional sense, you know, that this kind of like relational community organizing stuff where people talk to their friends and their family, you know, the hit on it was, well, if your volunteer base is all well-educated white people, how are you actually going to reach? Because that's

probably who all their friends are. And so this woman, Ruhi Rustam, who's our organizing director, came up with this system in these pilots to find organizers from those communities, recruit them at scale, and then have them recruit volunteers that they know. And so what we were able to develop through those pilots was a really good system of getting hard-to-reach volunteers to reach hard-to-reach people through conversations and through content. There's still more we have to learn. But I think to your initial question, it's like when we think about the problem set that we walked into, we spent basically all of 2023 sort of refining, testing, experimenting with the idea that we don't have all the answers quite yet. But now we're starting to scale in states, and a lot of those learnings are going to be part of the core program as we move into the general. Talk to me about the type of content that you create. a cohort of voters who don't pay a lot of attention to political news, who don't trust a lot of institutions or news, trust their friends and family,

like giving them traditional political content, a 30-second ad that you'd see in any campaign or like a list of talking points that's like, Joe Biden did the chipset, you know, like that's probably not going to resonate because these people have sort of like a finely honed bullshit detector. Like what kind of content have you found really resonates with some of these harder to reach voters? It's a couple of things. It's funny because I said this on Pod Save, but it's like if you, if I texted a graphic that said Bidenomics is working to my group chat, I would get hammered. You know, I would be removed.

And like I think there's – and I think that that's – I think one of the places where we had to evolve, which is like political – like political campaign content makers are great at making very glossy content. Yeah. That feels, you know, great. It's like an ad. But like people actually when they got in there were like, well, I'm not going to share that. And so, you know, there's like an aesthetic proposition, which is like we have to make it less aesthetic, whatever. But we've also found that like people like to share articles. They like to share – like one of the things we've worked on training volunteers on is like how to – and this is complicated.

I'm not good at it 100% of the time, how to share content without it seeming like propaganda, how to make it feel authentic. And that might be like sharing content might just be, I posted on Facebook or, you know, I put something in a group chat. You know, one example came from someone who is, we were bouncing ideas off was like, actually what you should be doing is sharing stuff to your friends going, what do you think about this? It's like a neutral observer versus – and ask for their reaction, and then you can have that conversation. Because actually what you're trying to do online – like, I think people conceive of this as like, oh, I share a graphic on my Facebook feed.

But what we're actually trying to do is start a conversation in the same way that we would ask you for a relational conversation where it'd be like, oh, I'm going to go talk to John. It's the idea of, okay, great. Well, I've posted this thing and these people have reacted to it and now I can engage with them further. And so it's like, how do you use it as a starting point? So it's less a content equation and more a conversation equation. Where are most of your like target voters getting their news from these days? I'm always so curious about like media diets and how they've changed yeah you know it's really interesting it's hard it's hard because there's what they tell you and then there's like what is actually true right if you ask the question of where do you consume news it's like well of course i watch cnn but then the ratings don't bear that out right sorry cnn you know there's what i think think is true is that like what we've seen is that where people are getting information is pretty similar. Age is the biggest distinction, right?

Whether – it's not race or any of this stuff. Like if you ask what – where you are physically getting it, you know, it's like it tends to be a little more TV for older audiences, less TV for younger audiences, more social media for younger audiences. And that's true across race, across gender. But once you get to those places, it's just insanely different. I think like a couple of things that are true for a lot of these voters is the role of local news still matters. And I think people in politics say that to the point of cliche, but it really is true. It's a lot of people watch local news. That's television.

Yeah. Local television. The thing people sleep on is Google search. We did some research on where do you go when news breaks. And like search was right up there. People are going there, which is, by the way, a big like campaigns don't invest in SEO in the same way that they ought to or search advertising, which is certainly a thing that we're paying a lot of attention to. So it's those sort of surfaces. But I also think that like – and it's sort of like the TikTokification of everything is that like people are getting news and information from just people.

This is back to like the text chains, group threads. People are just – that's how they're getting all that. Yeah, and like there are people giving their commentary. Like a 25-year-old or 21-year-old college kid is giving their commentary on the news and getting millions of views. And like that's where people are hearing about it. So there's just like, it's hard. The problem is, is I can't say where are people getting their news because it's, it's super personalized now. I mean, the challenge seems like just listening to it, it's like, gives me a headache because it feels like you almost have

to relinquish some control here, uh, over the entire communications apparatus, because the idea that you're going to blast out a message and it's going to get to everyone is just like that's been long dead. Yeah. No, it's absolutely right. And we think about sometimes the messages we put out from our accounts, the president's accounts. I always think it's better to think of them as like a distributed talking points. Like, like it's like their people are looking at us to go,

what are they doing? And then they're riffing and that's great. And like one of the things that I think we're working through is like, what do we use? Like Trump is really good at this, which is like using his social accounts to encourage further content generation, you know, like that kind of thing.

So yeah, it is, there is like a, you have to kind of let people talk about it in ways that feel real and authentic to them, but give people a sense of like a clear theme. And then they can iterate off of it. On ads, since there's so many people, like cutting the cord, obviously, you're still going to spend a lot on linear television, spend a lot of ads on there. Yeah. But a lot of people are going to platforms or streaming services. A lot of them like don't allow political ads. Yeah. How are you guys handling that? Yeah. Well, it's, you know, first that a lot of them don't allow political ads and a lot of them don't like a lot of the big ones don't have ads at all or barely have ad supported. And so,

you know, I think that is like one of the challenges, which is like, I don't think we can actually write off linear television as a surface, but you have to just think about where, um, like where people are when they're watching linear television, right? Like if you look at the top 100 broadcasts on TV, I think like 99 of them last year were sports games with like 90 of them being the NFL or some like crazy number like that. Like it, you know, I think we are seeing that you kind of want to shift to the, um, like not the long tail, the short end of the tail, um, uh, where there's like higher audience on TV. And then, yeah, like there's just limited, uh, more limited places when you get to streaming. That being said, I think we write off, um, social as a persuasion surface for advertising in a real way. And I think a lot of times people go, well, it's just – it's good for fundraising or direct response and all that stuff.

But actually, there is plenty of empirical evidence that social media changes minds. Do you think ads are still as effective as they were? I always wonder this from, again, like an authenticity perspective. Like if someone hears from a friend or sees a piece of content just floating around that is somewhat persuasive on why they should vote for Joe Biden, like that would be more effective than, oh, I know this is coming. This is an ad coming from the Biden campaign. I think that there's real truth to that, which is I think people's bullshit-o-meter is just higher. Yeah. But it's not to say ads don't matter.

I think – I actually don't think that that's true. What I do think is true is like no one's ever going to tell you they were persuaded by an ad. Yes. But you do start to hear that stuff. Like one of the best indicators of, and you know this, of is an ad setting in is do you start to hear about it on the doors? Yeah. And it's not because people are like, well, I saw this ad that said this. It's just because the thing has sort of sunk in.

I think it's the reality is it's a whole system, and the ads matter as part of a system, but they have to be reflective of what people are also talking about with their friends. And so this is the new thing, which is how do we think about messaging through our supporters to their friends in ways that is part of the same system

as the advertising that we are putting in front of them, as the content that we are putting out, so that there is sort of an air game and a ground game on the way that we are messaging and not just on, you know, there's a field system for GOTV and an ad system for communications and earned media in between. The most valuable resource on a campaign is the president's time. Yeah. How do you guys think about using his time in terms of reaching out to voters, communicating, doing interviews, producing content, all that kind of stuff.

Well, I think you have to step back on goals. So like a great example is we went to North Carolina. It was a couple months ago. And what we had Biden do is go sit down at a family's kitchen table and do like an hour long discussion with this father and his two sons. And it was closed press. It was just for us. Um, and you know, we initially conceived of it as, Oh, we'll get some content and it'll be like a great, you know, digital moment. But actually, um, first he walked in and there was a big pool spray, which, you know, all these reporters taking photos, whatever.

And then he goes in. We work with the kid to make a TikTok of the experience. The kid puts the TikTok out, gets 5 million views, leaves. All the reporters come. The family gaggles. And what we got was amazing local news coverage. And then this video from the kid got like 5 million views. It got picked up by Barstool and Complex and

The Shade Room and all these places. And if you look at the goal of, you have to like step back to what your goal is. If your goal is to drive local coverage with a rally, we just did that, you know, with this format that actually plays to the president's strength because he can talk to people in a way that Donald Trump could never dream of. And so, you know, what it means is like, I think given the environment has changed so much, we have to like rethink, like, what are we actually trying to achieve? You know, like a big rally with lots of cameras that generates local news coverage. Great. We also did that with this, but that rally, like a rally also generates data for the field program. So that's a huge, you know, like there's just different stuff. So we really

have to rethink the president's time. I think the other thing is in the environment that we live in, like, there's no true broadcasts anymore. You can only like go around collecting narrow casts. Yeah. So you'll see the president and vice president do, you know, these engagements with creators who might have, you know, I don't know, like the vice president went on a couple of like more niche podcasts, but that audience is an audience we really need. And so, you know, I think like, as you're seeing, you know, there's all this sort of gripes about, oh, well, the president's not sitting down with traditional media, but those traditional media outlets all talk to the same people. I was going to say, are you saying sitting

down with a bunch of New York Times reporters so that the president can just have a couple quotes in a story that's framed by someone else? That's not the most valuable use of his time. Might not be the way to reach voters today. We're sitting here as this whole White House, New York Times controversy, stupid controversy has erupted. But my initial thought on that was like, it's not about how the Times covers the president. It's not about the president. I want to get questions. It actually is about the fact that the New York Times, while still the biggest media outlet in the country and still quite influential, is no longer as influential as it once was. Not for any fault of the Times itself, but just because of everything that we we've been talking about so far. Like there's so many other ways that

people are getting their news. And if you're using the president's time, you have to think to yourself, okay, how many people read the New York Times are already Biden voters? That's right. Like what good is that going to get you guys from a campaign perspective? Totally. And I'm not here to denigrate the New York Times. I am myself a subscriber. I'm a subscriber. No, I love you. But the problem is that we're subscribers.

That's what I'm saying. Right. And we're good. We're voting. And we're voting for Joe Biden, I think. I'm in. I'm in. You're like, you know, Bobby Curious.

But, you know, so it's that we have to be really intentional about the voters that we need. And the voters right now that we need to figure out how to talk to, it is probably rare that they are going to The New York Times. And so we need to go to where they are. And so that's how we think about it with how we use the president. Everyone made a big deal about the Biden not sitting down for the Super Bowl thing. Was that because you guys thought that maybe... I saw you guys say that, like, well, if he does that, you know, people are just trying to watch a game and they're going to ask him all these tough questions. Did you think that he wouldn't get a bunch of questions

that would fit with the mood of people watching, like, a sporting event? Or what was, like, the thinking there? I think you just had to think about that the context of of of where people were i mean it's just like you know i was at a super bowl party the last thing i want to do is like talk about like uh you know x y and z contentious issue like introduced to people for the first time special counsel robert her question yeah it's just it's not where like it's not where people – there's a potential of – there are times where talking about politics can really turn people off. Yeah.

And you hear that. You hear that particularly around a lot of sports games, like leave the politics out of it. So I just think that there are other places and other times where we're able to have that discussion. And the president has had that discussion day in and day out with reporters asking him questions all the time. So it just, you know. Is that a larger challenge? There's people getting sick, like tired and exhausted by politics after all of us having

to like live in this fucking trump purgatory for eight years i think it's true are you guys noticing that i feel like we notice it too even and like it's just like there's there's a core of of junkies like us who are paying attention yeah but the universe of people who i feel like in 16 and even 20 were like active and engaged even that there's some fraying there and people are like, I'm just tired. I think it's true. I think, look, I've been working on stopping Donald Trump now

for like 10 years. You know what I mean? Have we all? It might have been. I don't know. Like, I think people are certainly experienced in this fight. But I'll say like every election is different. This election is different. This election

is like a different, you know, there's just a lot of pent up anti-Trump energy in 20. And in this one, there's like a couple of things that are different. One, Trump is less visible. Um, the media has covered him less. He's not on Twitter doing his thing. Um, uh, uh, two, like, um, you know, Trump is, it's just a darker, he's darker, you know, the version of the country he is presenting is darker. But I think what you're going to see is this is an election where people are going to tune in late. And that is true of the voters who are not paying attention. It's just true of folks who are like, all right, I got to get my energy back up to fight this. But, you know, I think there are – we're starting from a good foundation.

One of the things in my job that lives outside of like highfalutin thought about media environments is like I also am over the grassroots program, grassroots fundraising program. You know, if you look at Joe Biden's donors, we have 1.6 million grassroots donors. Forty percent of them are new. I was pretty amazed by that. And so, you know, what that tells me is like, there's, there is that energy that is sitting there. And it's just a matter of like people starting to clock in. And, and I think that'll happen as, as Trump gets more

coverage. I think that'll happen as, as, as we start to get closer and the stakes get higher. And so, you know, that stuff is all part of it. But there's definitely a, you know, I think all folks are recognizing like, okay, we got to do this again. And that's definitely a factor. I know someone on your campaign told the New Yorker for that Evan Osnos piece that they thought polling was broken. Like you and I could talk forever about like the problems with public polling. Yeah. We could just do a whole episode on that. But like internally, do you guys feel good that you have a approximate sense of where the electorate is in the key swing states? Yeah, I think we, I think we do. And like breaking news,

it's going to be a really close election. I'm not like, you know, like I'm not here to say it's going to be anything but close. Last time we only won by 45,000 votes. I know. That's why I keep saying, I'm like, even if you put all the argument about the polling, if you put all the polling aside, you would, and you couldn't see it. You would just say the last, like 16 was close, 20 was close. And now 24 is literally a rematch between the two people who ran in 20. Yeah. It's just going to be close. And there's like a couple of things about that, which is like one, if you look at it structurally, you know, from the issues that we are running on that are popular, from the fact that our core challenge is winning back voters who already voted for us and not even winning back, just persuading them to participate.

Where Trump has to expand the amount of voters who voted for him, which he has shown no real interest in doing. I would rather be holding our cards than theirs. That doesn't mean I'm sitting here saying this is going to be anything but hard. It is going to be a tough election. It is going to be close. But 45,000 votes is the margin of execution.

Yeah. And that is the margin of a really good campaign with really great supporters doing really good work and showing up and volunteering and making calls and donating and doing all that stuff. Like, I find the closeness of the election to actually be really empowering because you can do something. If you don't think you can move as a, as a person, 10 votes, 15 votes, you can do it. And, and, and then you multiply that. Like, that's like, that's a pretty, we can do that. What you've talked about this a couple of times, like empowering the volunteers and the organizers to like go be messengers. Like Pfeiffer always talks about this too. What's like getting into the details?

How do you do that? Like if someone comes to the campaign and is like, I'm a volunteer, I live in Michigan, I want to go do my thing. Like what do you, what do you arm those people with? So one of the things, one of the things that came out of those pilots was the idea that different volunteers want to volunteer in different ways. Right? So there are plenty of volunteers who were like, I don't want to talk to a single friend of mine. You know what I want to do? I want to go knock some doors. Okay. And I want to make some calls. And there were plenty of people who were like, I don't want to knock a single door and talk to a single stranger. I will talk to my friend. And there was one lady who just like, literally did 300 relational contacts, like in two weeks in Arizona, who is like one of the great

heroes of the early stages of this campaign. You know, and so like, one of the foundational principles for our program is this idea, it's, you know, kind of like come as you are, right? Like, if you want to do something, we want to give you the tools to do that thing and it will be impactful and it will matter. In the context of talking to your friends, one of the things Reach is sort of our app of choice. And basically what you do is you sign up

and you can match your contacts. It'll tell you who you know that we need you to talk to, that kind of thing. But it will also provide you with galleries of content, either as starting points and all that stuff. There's some stuff that we are – like there's some stuff we're going to – like one of the things that's true about the way we're setting up our states programs is they're run by really experienced people who have won those states before, and they're given real latitude to do what they need to do to win those states. And so different states are going to try different things

and different ways of getting people to share content and getting them to talk to their friends. For example, like if we're writing off WhatsApp, which is a just absolutely massive platform for Latinos, or really anyone who has, you know, large immigrant communities, API, you know, particularly South Asians. We are, we're not talking to people.

So like different states are going to have to play around with that. So reach is sort of the core foundation, but there's going to be, you know, a lot of variance of how we apply it when we get to different states. Huge difference between 20 and 24 is like Twitter, not what it once was.

Facebook's no longer pushing news. TikTok is now in limbo. Yeah. How do you think about like the different social media platforms now? Like is Twitter, I assume Twitter is sort of what you were saying before, mainly a platform to kind of communicate with journalists, people who are shaping public opinion, sort of like elites who are going to go out there and shape public opinion. Is that mainly how you guys see Twitter now? Yeah. I think it's helpful to like, think about it as the place for high attention people. And, you know, I think it has certainly diminished as a surface for that. But as long as reporters are still there, you know, and as long as people are still using it, you know, we are going to engage there. You know, I think the biggest difference is the uncertainty around organic content, like across the board, right? You know, it used to be Twitter

was the place where there were two advantages to it. One, elites were on it. But two, it was the place where you kind of break into culture. Like, you know, a good tweet can move to different audiences there and then it becomes like a whole thing. And we've had like a couple of those. Increasingly, though, like Instagram can be a service for that. And like TikTok really is that. And I think it's important,

like the public and private internet construction we talked about earlier, I think is sort of an indicator on this, which is like, Twitter's a behavior at the end of the day. Like what goes on on Twitter is there are people who want to talk about politics and there's people who want to watch people talk about politics and they want to, and that idea that people are watching the discourse happen and that discourse is happening in certain places, there's different platforms where that is going to live. But the places where people talk to their friends, that is shifting, and we need a strategy to deal with that. So it's sort of a two-prong.

Obviously, the president signed the TikTok, the legislation that forces ByteDance to divest TikTok within a certain amount of days until January, you could probably go too. You guys are still on it in the campaign for obvious reasons. It's still there. You're going to be on it. Are there any privacy concerns that you guys have in the campaign? Or do you just have a burner phone? Literally, yeah.

Okay, that's what I was wondering. Oh, yeah. I mean, we're not taking any risks on this. And certainly we go in clear-eyed about the platform risks that come with TikTok. You know, we have no bearing on what the government does with it. But, you know, we have to take those precautions. And, you know, at the end of the day, as long as it's a place where people are getting information about the president, it's a place where we need to be inserting our side. Have you guys gotten blowback from TikTok influencers that you're working with because of the legislation? It varies. We hear from folks on both sides of it, honestly. We hear from folks who are like, this is a little sus. We hear from folks who are like, this is going to be hard for me.

We do that outreach. The official side does a lot of that outreach too, the Office of Digital Strategy and everything Christian is doing over there. But folks have different opinions on this, and we're going to continue. Keep moving ahead. I've heard you talk about the importance of communicating in a way that meets people where they are. Right. So like acknowledging that, you know, whatever frustrations they may have. Yeah. Anger, making sure people know that they like they don't have to agree with everything that Joe Biden believes in or has done to vote for him. That is like that is the kind of nuanced, thoughtful approach that is what politics is all about. Right. That's whatto-door organizing is all about. It doesn't really fit well online. Yeah. How do you translate that to the work that you do? Well, but, like, here's my thing.

It's like, I... This is my, like, perpetual frustration with politics. Yeah, I know, 100%. Like, why I started this show. Yeah, this entire thing. Like, to me, I thought AOC gave a really eloquent answer along these lines, which was even if you are,

and this is assuming, you know, you're someone with sort of a lefty political valence, but, you know, if you're someone who is mad at the president for X, Y, and Z reasons or has X, Y, and Z policy disagreements with him and you're coming at him from the left, you know,

what conditions do you want to organize under, you you know, what conditions do you want to organize under? You know, and what conditions do you want to be doing your work under to advance your agenda? Do you want someone who's going to be open to it? Or do you want someone who's going to be totally close to it? I think that is a really compelling argument. My thing is like, we need to be able, we need lots of people saying Joe Biden is great. But it's okay to vote for Joe Biden and just think Joe Biden is okay. And you are – if you think Joe Biden is okay, you are welcome in our campaign. If you disagree with Joe Biden, you are welcome in our campaign. Joe Biden will be the first one to say this.

He's a president for all Americans. And so, you know, I think that like at the end of the day, folks making the argument that I disagree with Joe Biden on X, Y, and Z or I would have liked to have seen him do this thing, but I'm going to vote for him because it's really important. That's fine. That's part of the tent. And candidly, there's some evidence we've seen in testing that that is a really good way in. Like if you're having a conversation with your friend who's like, I can't possibly vote for Joe Biden, you go, I hear you. And I disagree on with him on X, Y, and Z point, but he's been really good on this issue I care about and this issue I care about and this issue I care about. And ultimately this election is about whether or not we are moving our democracy forward and we are protecting our freedoms and our, and all of that

stuff. You know, people that's, that's belie freedoms and all that stuff, you know, people, that's believable and plausible. It's interesting you mentioned that about AOC because we at Crooked, I'll notice that when we post clips that are favorable of Joe Biden, I notice this on all platforms everywhere now, and I'm sure you guys see this, it gets flooded with a lot of conversation about Gaza because people feel very strongly and we've talked about it a lot of conversation about Gaza because people feel very strongly. And, you know, we've talked about it a lot on our pods too. But when I interviewed Bernie on Pod Save America

and Bernie both like in one clip criticized Biden on Gaza, but then gave the answer similar to AOC, which is like, this is why it's so important to elect Joe Biden. Yeah. The comments on that were like more favorable towards Biden and Bernie. Yeah. It's seen. Yeah.

So I do wonder if there is like, are you guys trying to create permission structures, not just with young people, but with like all kinds of different groups that are sort of at the edge of the coalition that elected Biden? This is it's the this part of the campaign is the age of permission structures. That is what this is. There are tons of, and I, and I actually, one of the things that has been a gripe for me about the campaign is there are tons of enthusiastic Joe Biden supporters. They are just not very loud on the internet. Yeah.

You know, and, and we see that in the fact that we have this big grassroots fundraising machine that has proven to be really effective and really stable. There are a lot of voters who just love Joe Biden and they're here for Joe Biden. Our coalition needs some people who are like, you know, and that's OK. And that's right. How do we create the permission structure for them to go? All right. How do we create the permission structure for them to go, all right, I'm voting for him even if I don't agree with him on literally every single thing, which you're never going to agree with every politician on every single thing. And yeah, and this goes back.

I mean it's a very Biden-y ethos, which is like don't compare me to the almighty. Compare me to the alternative. And I think that that's really at the core of it. What do you think about the Trump campaign's digital strategy? Anything that impresses you or keeps you up at night? I think that the Trump team is – the stuff you've talked about, about letting – encouraging an ecosystem that will amplify them. They are really good at it. And look, we would be dumb if we weren't watching them.

There's some stuff that they do where I'm like, I don't know about that. And I have always sort of thought that the 2016 Ooga Booga about their digital ad strategy was like a little overwrought. But they're smart. It's a more disciplined version of Trump, certainly. But, you know, not without – well, more disciplined version of the Trump campaign. Not necessarily Trump. But, you know, I think that there's some stuff over there that they're doing that's, you know, sharp and it's going to be tight. Why do you think he hasn't come back on Twitter?

I don't know. And I don't want to speculate. But, you know, maybe it is, you know, trying to – I mean, I'm like, I don't want to speculate, but I, I, you know, maybe it is, you know, trying to, I mean, I'm like, I don't want to speculate.

No, I'm speculating. I mean, there are, there are thoughts that it's like a financial. That's, that is, that's my bet.

Yeah. I just, and then there's thoughts that, I mean, the reason I ask is there's a larger challenge where, and you mentioned this before, that like people have not seen as much Trump. Yeah. Since he's been off Twitter.

And he's been sort of out of, and now they're seeing more of him, especially with the trial going on. And I always wonder if that's like a concerted stress, or if like there's the campaign, which is a little bit more disciplined, is actually saying to themselves, a little less Trump would be better,

knowing that they have a guy who's, they're not gonna be able to keep him out of the limelight. But I was sort of wondering if they, if they're purposely trying to sort of like cordon him off a little bit. Yeah, I don't know. You know, they are – I think that the more people hear about Donald Trump and the more people see Donald Trump, the more they are reminded. And that's not – there are times where, you know, he says something that's funny or goofy and like the nonpolitical world goes, oh, ha, ha, ha. That's funny. But at the end of the day, his recession in voters' minds is an advantage to him.

And so we have to do the work of drawing attention to him and making sure reporters are seeing it and covering it, making sure that voters are seeing it in their feeds. That's why this like Biden HQ strategy is like one that we adopted pretty early was because, you know, we just we need to there needs to be more Donald Trump in people's periphery. Yeah. So the stakes are raised in their eyes. Last question. How do you like what is your media diet? How do you keep up with? Yeah.

Are you just, like, you guys have, like, a campaign email where you're getting clips all day? Are you just, like, mainlining Twitter? Like, what are you doing? You know what's funny? Well, so it's like a couple of things. One, you know, like, I'm still on Twitter a good bit, though, not as much as I used to be. I do occasionally dabble in TikTok myself. Uh, I would say, um, you know, it's, it's like funny for me.

Like, uh, um, like I actually, like I, I never watch cable. Like, I don't know what's going on on cable on a given day. Um, uh, but yeah, I think it's like a mix of like Twitter, you know, TikTok. And then what's funny too is, you know, we're used to Clips email distributions, but we actually do it via a giant text chain now. Oh, interesting. Yeah, so it's like, which is like a new way of doing it. It's easier than just getting random individual stories on an email system.

Yeah, exactly. So it's sort of, the nice thing about working in the business is there's a fire hose in my phone of what the fuck, what the heck is going on in a given day. Can't turn it off. Rob Flaherty, thank you so much for joining Offline. Appreciate the conversation. Thank you, John. Go Hornets. Before we go, some quick housekeeping. Pod Save America is hitting the road this summer. The Democracy or Else tour all begins in Brooklyn on June 26th, followed by Boston on June 28th. Then we'll head to Madison, Phoenix, Ann Arbor, and Philly. See all the tour dates and get your tickets now at crooked.com slash events.

Offline is a Crooked Media production. It's written and hosted by me, John Favreau, along with Max Fisher. It's produced by Austin Fisher. Emma Illick-Frank is our associate producer. Mixed and edited by Jordan Cantor. Audio support from Kyle Seglin and Charlotte Landis. Jordan Katz and Kenny Siegel take care of our music. Thanks to Ari Schwartz, Madeline Herringer, and Reid Cherlin for production support. And to our digital team, Elijah Cohn and Dilan Villanueva,

who film and share our episodes as videos every week. Thank you. an ever-changing landscape, what keeps them up at night, and what it all means for our shared future. And now on Thursdays, you'll hear shorter episodes explaining big topics in the news with Verge reporters, experts, and other friends of the show. Decoder with Nilay Patel. Go check it out wherever you get your podcasts.