Harris and Trump Campaigns Zero In on Podcasts

Harris and Trump turn to digital venues with niche audiences to sway tiny slivers of the electorate.

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Both presidential candidates have embarked on a marathon of podcast outreach to undecided voters.

Good evening! Tonight, my colleague Michael Grynbaum explains why the presidential candidates are spending so much time on podcasts. Plus, a story about a historian who once thought the label “fascist” shouldn’t be used to refer to Donald Trump. He has since changed his mind. — Jess Bidgood

By Michael M. Grynbaum

Presidential candidates used to visit 99 counties in Iowa.

Now, it seems, they go on 99 podcasts.

Former President Donald Trump is headed on Friday to the Texas studio of “The Joe Rogan Experience,” where he will record an interview with a podcaster who commands 14.5 million followers on Spotify and 17 million followers on YouTube, many of them the young, male, low-propensity voters that Trump has been targeting.

In a kind of split-screen that same day, Vice President Kamala Harris is also visiting Texas, where she will be interviewed by Brené Brown, a researcher who studies “courage, vulnerability, shame and empathy” and has 15 million followers across her social platforms. Her podcast, “Unlocking Us,” is popular with a female audience that most likely includes plenty of undecided voters.

This year, both candidates have embarked on a marathon of podcast outreach.

Harris showed up on “Call Her Daddy,” “All the Smoke” and “The Breakfast Club,” often choosing podcasts that appeal to women and Black listeners. Trump has done Theo Von, “Bussin’ With the Boys” and “Andrew Schulz’s Flagrant,” in a tour of the anti-woke manoverse.

Readers may not be familiar with each and every one of these digital venues, many of which cater to niche audiences. That is by design. Both the Harris and Trump campaigns are zeroing in on tiny slivers of the electorate that remain undecided, calculating that the media megaphones of yesteryear — like network news and print newspapers — are consumed by voters who are already firmly committed.

(And why not? Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida tried the 99-county thing during the Republican primary, and look where that got him.)

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