Barron Trump, 18, who voted for the first time Tuesday, is working with campaign adviser Alex Bruesewitz to prioritize influential male podcasters with large followings, with an eye on young male voters, two sources familiar with the strategy said. The elder Trump has appeared on shows like Barstool Sports’ “Bussin’ With The Boys” as well as shows hosted by comedians Andrew Schulz, Theo Von and Mark Calaway, better known to professional wrestling fans as the Undertaker.

Their biggest success was Joe Rogan, who reached more than 17 million YouTube subscribers. In the final weeks of the campaign, Trump kept his supporters at a Michigan rally waiting for hours after traveling to Texas to tape Rogan’s show.

Harris was also invited to the show, and her campaign seriously considered it. Senior leaders pushed for it, but ultimately concluded it wasn’t worth the risk because they couldn’t win over Rogan’s audience, and Rogan himself endorsed Trump on the eve of Election Day. But the Harris team’s handling of the invitation highlighted the campaign’s and Harris’ cautious approach to public appearances; Democrats now say it was a mistake.

“We have to go on Joe Rogan. I disagree that progressives should create and support their own Joe Rogan,” said Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif.

In the weeks immediately after Harris succeeded Biden, while Americans were still formulating their opinions of her, she made no interviews or media appearances; Many thought this was a mistake because the data showed that voters responded well to him and moved more. and the closer they came to him, the more they saw him.

For example, Future Forward, the flagship pro-Harris super PAC known for its rigorous testing of ads before they run, showed more than 750 video clips to voters, and the most compelling ones often featured Harris’ own voice.

“At the beginning of his campaign, people knew him but they didn’t know him. To know he. They knew the name, but they didn’t know the person,” said Democratic strategist Jesse Ferguson, an advisor to Future Forward.

As she surveyed the wreckage Wednesday, campaign chairwoman Jen O’Malley Dillon faced particular criticism — inevitable for the leader of any losing campaign — with accusations that she controlled too tightly or sidelined people close to Harris.

A layer of high-priced former Barack Obama aides like David Plouffe and Stephanie Cutter were brought in to help manage the final stages of the race and were tasked with “fixing” projects that some felt didn’t need to be fixed, fueling resentment and distrust. surface of two teams forced to come together under challenging conditions.

Others criticized the campaign’s decision to court anti-Trump Republicans and glorify billionaire Mark Cuban even as he criticizes billionaires like Trump in TV ads.

“You spent hours with Liz Cheney and guess what? “We learned that Liz Cheney is irrelevant,” said a Democratic strategist who is an ally of Harris.

‘Gas is being burned’

It quickly became obvious to everyone except Biden and the loyal staff surrounding him that Joe Biden’s debate performance in June was a disaster.

“10 minutes into the debate, I texted a friend saying, ‘He needs to fall or we’re going to lose,'” said Ezra Levin, a co-founder of Indivisible, a progressive grassroots movement that emerged after Trump’s first election.

Biden’s age was hardly a secret; former special counsel Robert Hur, I called him An official report in March called him “an old man with a failing memory” and many Democrats privately hoped Biden would not run for re-election, but few were willing to publicly acknowledge it.

But while Biden’s allies angrily insisted even to his own staff that everything was fine, they told donors and party officials privately that Biden should remain in the race because Harris was unfit for office.

“The staff felt like they were being gaslighted,” said one Democrat involved in the re-election effort. “There was a determination among some people in the Biden campaign, at the DNC, and in the White House that Biden would not drop out of the race under any circumstances, even though all the data showed he had no path to win. That was probably the most disturbing thing.”

Many Harris aides believed Biden allies had been privately undermining Harris from the beginning of the administration, fearing she would overshadow her. They told Biden to stay in the race even as his support collapsed. And then many of them suddenly found themselves campaigning for Harris.

“The people who kept her approval ratings low are the same people who have been trying to increase her approval ratings and get people to like her over the last three months,” a Harris ally said.

It took nearly a month for Biden to step aside after the debate, costing Harris critical time and giving what is now her campaign just 100 days to assemble a campaign, hold a convention, choose a running mate, prepare for the debate and formulate a strategy. messaging strategy

Inherits a relatively sleepy campaign with limited infrastructure in battleground states and the difficulty of attracting top talent due to what many fear is a shipwreck.

“No one wanted to work for him,” a campaign official said. “He was dying.”

Biden retained the presidency, but he could hand it over to her, making it impossible for Harris to completely break away from someone to whom she feels fiercely loyal because she chose him as her running mate.

The White House shrank after Biden stepped aside. While the rest of the party was excited, the mood was more somber at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. The lame duck president now had to sort things out with his deputy. “Did we run this at the hands of the vice president?” According to a senior official, he would check again with his aides.

Upon his departureA senior White House aide gave this advice to a young White House staffer: “Revenge is a dish best served cold.”

What is considered Harris’ biggest faux pas, in what is otherwise a nearly flawless presentation, occurred on “The View,” where Harris struggled to tell Biden what she would do, unlike Biden. At his rallies, Trump and his running mate, Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance, brutally mocked Harris’ response.

“He’s making this mistake on ‘The View’ because he was told to ‘be loyal,'” said a person close to the campaign.

Another person from Harris’ campaign said, “Joe Biden is responsible for this.”

Asked what happened, another aide responded with two words: “Joe Biden.”

But Biden allies note how unusual it is for any political leader to voluntarily give up power and say his decision to seek reelection is sound, given Democrats’ better-than-expected performance in the 2022 midterm elections.

“This has been a historic partnership where the teams have worked extraordinarily well together,” said a White House official who was there from the beginning.

RFK, McDonald’s and ‘brat summer’

Despite the long delay—or perhaps because of it—Harris entered the race with a tremendous jolt of enthusiasm, and Democrats “write brat“We move from one big moment to the next.

Trump appeared completely confused about how to run against a younger, telegenic woman, and the opening began with a bizarre attack accusing her of recently being Black.

“What was shocking to me was that his team was extremely slow in getting him (Harris) into the race,” said a person close to Trump with direct knowledge of campaign operations.

It took a while Support from Robert F. Kennedy Jr. To shake Trump from his summer slump. The addition of political outsiders like former Democratic presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard and billionaire Elon Musk has helped Trump regain his image as a change agent unbeholden to an unpopular bipartisan duopoly.

“Not enough people understand the significance of this,” one Trump campaign official said of Kennedy’s nod. “I’m not saying it was decisive, but I think his support means a lot more than the media gives him credit for. “This was the campaign’s first energizing move since passage.”

A Democrat close to the Harris campaign said: “The brat summer needed to end. “It felt like the music stopped for a bit at the beginning of October.”

The campaign was unsure how to proceed after Harris recovered from the Sept. 10 debate, two months later and without a foothold.

The post-debate period was “frustrating” because the campaign was asking: “What are we going to do in this six-week period?” an aide said.

Running against Trump, who was convicted of felonies during the campaign, faced some unusual challenges.

Biden’s team initially thought Trump’s conviction would be a political gain. In a full-staff meeting following his conviction, there was a sense of a turning point in the race, according to a Biden campaign official. During that meeting, word spread that a line about Trump being a “convicted criminal” had been added to the talking points.

That logic was less clear-cut for campaign leaders when Harris took over. They worried that branding Trump a criminal might run counter to Black men, about a third of whom have criminal records, and potentially persuadable voters. Polls have found that many registered independent voters suspect the investigations into Trump are politically motivated.