Harris team planned Houston rally with Joe Rogan in mind

The Hill

29-01-2025

Former Vice President Harris made a substantial effort to get on Joe Rogan's popular podcast amid concerns about her traction with male voters — going so far as to plan a Houston rally to justify a stop at Rogan's Austin studio, according to a forthcoming book.
In the final weeks of the election, the Harris team was in talks to sit down with the media personality, whose reps insisted that the interview take place at his home base in Austin, as reported in an excerpt from NBC News's Jonathan Allen and The Hill's Amie Parnes in 'FIGHT: Inside the Wildest Battle for the White House.'
For Harris, stopping in the solidly red Lone Star State in the waning days of her campaign threatened to draw scrutiny and waste resources. But as her campaign weathered accusations that she was dodging tough interviews and woes about her shaky support from young men, a showing on Rogan's popular program was seen as a big potential boost worth working for.
'Harris had less than zero reason to be in Texas. It was not a swing state. Her campaign was flush with cash—so it made no sense to take her off the trail to raise money. She was in battleground-or-bust mode. Plus, a detour to Texas might smell like desperation to the press and a waste of money to donors,' reads an excerpt from 'FIGHT.'
So the Harris team planned to fly Harris to Houston for an Oct. 25, 2024, rally, Allen and Parnes reported, 'under the cover of visiting a state with one of the nation's most restrictive abortion laws — to put her in proximity to Austin.'
The announcement struck some observers as a surprise break in the Democratic nominee's criss-cross of swing states ahead of Election Day, even as her team said the stop would spotlight the impacts of anti-abortion policies. But then, on the same day the campaign announced the Houston rally, news broke that now-President Trump would sit down with Rogan on Oct. 25.
Rogan, one of the most popular and controversial media personalities in the country, had previously said he wasn't a Trump supporter. But his three-hour interview with the Republican 2024 frontrunner went quickly viral, and Rogan eventually endorsed his return to the Oval Office.
The failure to find agreement on a potential sit-down for Harris may have blunted efforts by the former vice president to reach young men, who make up the bulk of Rogan's massive fan base.
Young voters have historically swung for Democrats and helped push former President Biden to victory in 2020, but the Trump campaign's pointed focus on young men appeared to capitalize on a growing gender divide, with young male voters moving away from the Democratic Party.
With the accelerated timeline of her fast-tracked campaign, Harris appeared to use targeted appearances to reach key demographics, like sitting down for Alex Cooper's 'Call Her Daddy' podcast, widely popular among women.
Gov Tim Walz (D-Minn.) played video games on Twitch with Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), which the Harris-Walz campaign pointed to as evidence of their efforts to 'meet young men where they are.'
But the campaign still struggled to reach young men, whom experts have said were catered to by the Trump campaign with its appeals to hypermasculinity.
A Harvard University poll just ahead of the election found Harris led Trump among both young men and women, but while she led by 30 points among young women, she was just 10 points ahead with young men.
It was the latest in a string of signs across the last several cycles that younger men were moving away from Democrats, while women of all age groups have appeared to grow more likely to identify as liberal.
Parnes and Allen further reported that there was one 'final stab' from Harris aides to offer Rogan another meeting, this time in Washington after Harris made an Oct. 29 closing argument speech.
'For the record the Harris campaign has not passed on doing the podcast,' Rogan wrote on the social platform X on Oct. 29. 'They offered a date for Tuesday, but I would have had to travel to her, and they only wanted to do an hour.'
In the end, the Harris-Rogan sit-down never materialized.
Harris went through with her Oct. 25 Houston rally, and was endorsed on-stage by music superstar Beyoncé Knowles-Carter, whose song 'Freedom' was used as the Harris campaign anthem.
There had been buzz that the 'Texas Hold Em' singer might appear at the Democratic National Convention, though a performance didn't materialize. But 'FIGHT' reports that there were plans for Beyoncé to sing at the Houston event, citing a source that said the team planned for 'her singing 'Freedom' a capella before Harris walked on stage.'
That, too, fell through, according to the book excerpt: 'Her handlers said the campaign did not have the right microphone for her, according to the person familiar with the discussions. She would speak. But she would not sing.'
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Harris-Walz raked in A-list backers for their fast-tracked campaign, including Beyoncé, Taylor Swift, Oprah Winfrey and James Taylor.
But in post-mortems of the election, Democrats have questioned whether celebrity endorsements helped or hindered Harris, as her party was pelted with accusations that it was out-of-touch with the working class.