The NPR Politics Podcast - Call Her Daddy, The View, 60 Minutes: Kamala Harris Goes Wide

Episode Date: October 8, 2024

Kamala Harris and Donald Trump are both leveraging popular entertainment media to reach voters who might not follow traditional news sources.Our coverage of the Trump-Vance media strategy.This episode: White House correspondent Asma Khalid, politics reporter Elena Moore and senior national political correspondent Mara Liasson.The podcast is produced by Jeongyoon Han, Casey Morell and Kelli Wessinger. Our editor is Eric McDaniel. Our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi.Listen to every episode of the NPR Politics Podcast sponsor-free, unlock access to bonus episodes with more from the NPR Politics team, and support public media when you sign up for The NPR Politics Podcast+ at plus.npr.org/politics.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

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Hang in there. Just a real, real tough situation right now. Try to distract you for a few minutes at least. All right. Well, hey there. It is the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Asma Khalid. I cover the White House.

I'm Alina Moore. I cover politics. And I'm Mara Liason, senior national political correspondent. And today on the show, a look at Vice President Harris's media strategy. It's a follow on to our previous episode about the Republican presidential nominee, Donald Trump's media strategy, which, by the way, we will link to in the show notes if you all miss that episode. Harris is doing a whirlwind of three interviews today, which was the impetus for our podcast. You know, since she has become the Democratic nominee, she's done a mix of mainstream broadcast television interviews with places like CNN and CBS's 60 Minutes. And then she's also done untraditional

interviews with podcasts to engage with folks who might not be traditional news consumers. Aline, I want to start the conversation with you. What is the thinking behind the mix, the combination of interviews Harris has been doing? I think it's to reach as many people as possible before Election Day. And there's, you know, less than 30 days now. And so fit as many as possible into one week, if that's what it takes. I mean, the Harris campaign is very explicitly trying to appeal to voters of different backgrounds, living in different places, different ages, you know, different older audience. And then you've got the talk shows, which we know, you know, presidential candidates, presidents have cycled through in the past. And then this new kind of realm of podcasts going on social media,

you know, that's kind of a clear hand out to younger voters to kind of get them involved in the places that they consume information. And, you know, regardless of where she's going, these are places with audiences of millions of people. And she's going on these podcasts that, you know, are kind of more geared towards younger folks. She just went on on Sunday to Alex Cooper's show called Call Her Daddy, which is a show, mostly, I mean, entertainment podcast. It's one of the top shows in the country, and it's about topics like sex and relationships. And Harris kind of had this long conversation about different issues affecting young women today and talked a lot about abortion. Last week, she went on another show hosted by two former NBA players, Steven Jackson and Matt Barnes,

called All the Smoke. And they talked about a lot of issues, including some, you know, that directly affect black men, another group that she's trying to reach. So there are these podcasts that she's trying to get on to talk to very specific audiences that she wants to connect with. So, Mara, these platforms might be new. The specific podcast shows might be new. But the strategy of going outside of traditional mainstream news is not necessarily new, right? Not at all. Every political cycle, the media environment is different. There are new platforms, broadcast news gets less significant, cable news gets less significant, podcasts get more

significant. I mean, back in 1992, Bill Clinton took his saxophone on the Arsenio Hall show, and it created quite a kerfuffle. The goal of Kamala Harris and every other person running for president in terms of their media strategy is not to make news. It's to make more voters comfortable with voting for her. And she needs to reach all these different audiences, which Elena just described. And we know from polling that large numbers of people say they still don't know enough about her. And she's trying to remedy that. So let's talk a little bit more about a couple of these specific podcast interviews she's done. You know, I would say, I don't think I heard any news, new news nuggets, really,

from any of these interviews. Let's talk specifically about the Call Her Daddy episode. You know, I felt like it was, in a lot of ways, it was like an infomercial for Harris. It was just an opportunity for her to talk at length about abortion. Yeah, I feel like that's what she wanted. It almost, to me, felt like the point of that interview was to do the interview, if that makes sense. Like her being on the podcast, just to say the words, Kamala Harris is on Call Her Daddy, like that in itself is something I've heard, you know, folks around my age be like, oh my God, this is kind of crazy because of what I said earlier, this show is not known for talking about politics. And I feel like the big objective here is to continue to come across as authentic

and, you know, approachable. And obviously, again, like Mara said, that's not new. That's why that these candidates are starting to go on the entertainment shows, the talk shows. I kind of think of it as another form of that. It's just the 2024 version. I'd say Harris's appearance on the show more than anything, I think, was just about the platform itself. Call Her Daddy has a really interesting audience. You know, some of these talk shows and TV shows, you know, they skew older, but not everybody has a television when you're younger or can have cable. And Cooper's podcast has millions of listeners. It is overwhelmingly has an audience of women. It's like seven in 10 are women, like nine in 10 are under 45,

closer to, you know, 75%, 76% are under 35. And like, politically, I found it interesting that about half of the audience says they're Democrats, but a quarter says they're Republican, about 20% say they're independent. That's, you know, that's pretty varied and roughly squares to how young folks identify politically, you know, a little more split. And I'm getting all of this from Edison Research, by the way. And the last thing I'll say about what I found interesting about this audience is it's geographically really diverse. I mean, Alex Cooper is a young millennial. She lives in L.A. She's a white woman. Her show, though, has a pretty broad outreach. The biggest portion of her audience lives in the South. And we know that there are some pretty key states in the fact that she was literally on Call Her Daddy and that it's got an audience. Like it's going to pop up on the phones of young college students in Georgia and North Carolina. It's no surprise that candidates are going to try to go where the voters are, just like a diner in New Hampshire. They're going to go to a podcast. This is the virtual diner in New Hampshire. It was a major platform for Harris to introduce herself and offer a clear narrative of who she is.

You know, some Republicans, the former Trump press secretary, now governor of Arkansas, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, had criticized Vice President Harris for not being humbled by having biological children. And, you know, Harris spoke to the fact that she has stepchildren. They are my children. And I love those kids to death. And family comes in many forms. And I think that increasingly, you know, all of us understand that, you know, this is not the 1950s anymore. Families come in all kinds of shapes and forms and they're family nonetheless.

And I mean, also, there were moments in that episode where she did come across as more personable. I thought of this moment where Cooper asked her about that now kind of infamous previous comment that Trump's running mate, Ohio Senator J.D. Vance, made about childless cat ladies. And she kind of paused and just said, that's really mean. And it kind of stuck with me because it was like that felt I feel like in that moment, what Harris is trying to convey is, you know, I'm someone who, you know, kind of empathizes on on on all of these kind of divisive issues right now. All right. Well, let's take a quick break and we'll be back in a moment. This message comes from the podcast Pod Save America. It is here to help with all of the election analysis. Co-hosted by former Obama aides, the show is having honest conversations about the state of this race and they want you to join. Subscribe on your favorite

podcast platform now. And we're back. And a moment ago ago we were just talking about vice president harris's appearances on podcasts there's another one she did recently that i thought was actually really interesting it's the podcast called all the smoke alina and i'm curious what you thought of that appearance because i've heard a lot of harris over the years and i've interviewed her even myself and i do think that when it comes to policy she she can be somewhat predictable and offering, you know, the same answers and sticking to particular talking points. This podcast, I felt like, was revealing and showing a different personal side of Harris. It got into, these personal stories about her mother, you know, her time, you know, becoming a young elected official in California. But I thought that this was really interesting. She got into her, you know, childhood going to sports games in Oakland and like bonded with these NBA players about it. She seemed really engaged in talking with them about their kind of shared love for some of these things for

fun. She talked about her love of cooking, which we know, but at the same time, so I feel like there was a real personal side of Harris and kind of got into a few little anecdotes that we don't hear as much. But then at the same time, she did talk about some policy, but it was policy really geared, you know, at this audience that she was trying to appeal to. And like we said, that's young folks, that's men, that's men of color. She talked a bit about, you know, the line you walk when you protest and how it's important to protest and some of the racial justice protests of 2020 and how she was raised on that. I also just thought it was really interesting. And she's talked about this before,

but she was asked about the topic of mental health and how it affects Black men. And it just seemed like a slightly more in-depth conversation getting into some issues that could be really powerful for some listeners. Mara, it seems like a number of these interviews that Harris has been doing, not all, but certainly quite a few of them, are with friendly audiences. I'm thinking of the interview she just did this morning with The View.

That's exactly right. Whoopi Goldberg basically introduced her as if it was a campaign rally. I think she said the next president of the United States. And I think they played the song Freedom by Beyonce. Yeah, they played the song Freedom, which is her campaign song. Her campaign rally song. I think can be excused, yeah. But she went there for a reason, and she was smart to have something to announce, a specific policy announcement, which is more coverage for at-home care, which is very targeted for women, who often are the caretakers of their children and their aged parents. So she used that to make some news.

So when you say for a specific reason, you mean she was trying to reach out to women and women of a particular generation by going on The View? Well, I think that home care is actually very multigenerational because it affects a lot of generations in a family. But yes, she clearly was appealing to women. No doubt about that. Elena, let me ask you a follow up here about the Republican presidential nominee, Donald Trump. We've known that for years he has courted conservative, let's say, journalists, conservative kind of influencers. But is he going outside of traditional mainstream news outlets in the same way that we've been talking about with Vice President Harris? Oh, definitely. And I mean, I would say potentially for longer periods of time, for months now, former President Trump has been appearing with very prominent, often male influencers,

often younger male influencers. And our wonderful colleague, Danielle Kurtzleben, wrote this whole story about this that you should check out. And there's a podcast on it. But it's very striking to me, a huge part of Trump's outreach, especially to new voters, young voters, folks that don't consume mainstream media. And a lot of his supporters don't love the mainstream media. He's been really going into this realm of podcasts, social media collabs. And often that has meant podcasts with larger male audiences, though, you know, the campaign did tell our colleague Danielle that they want to reach all voters, not just young men. Well, you know, in a very deeply divided, evenly divided country, it's no surprise that the culture is divided and the media is divided. And that's why you see Trump go on all these bro-y white guy shows. That's a really big, important part of our culture right now.

And that's why you see Kamala Harris going on shows where there are a lot of women and young women watching. There's a growing gender gap here where we're seeing particularly young women are becoming much more aligned with the Democratic Party, much more progressive. And that's kind of leaving this middle between, you know, a lot of young men and a lot of young women right now. All right. Well, on that note, let's leave it there for today. I'm Asma Khalid. I cover the White House. I'm Alina Moore. I cover politics. And I'm Mara Liason, senior national political correspondent. And thank you all, as always, for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.