Trump Conquers New Media As Harris Runs Walled-Off Campaign

Former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris are two radically different candidates running radically different campaigns in what’s become a national popularity contest.

In September, the two candidates sparred in their one and only presidential debate, featuring activist moderators who might as well have been picked by the DNC. Out of the four controversial live fact-checks issued during the prime-time debate, not one of them were made against Harris, who, as the sitting vice president was allowed to claim “not one member of the United States military who is in active duty in a combat zone in any warzone around the world [for] the first time this century.”

Harris was also allowed to regurgitate the Charlottesville “very fine people” hoax debunked by Snopes, and she got away with characterizing Trump’s “bloodbath” comment as having to do with a political massacre rather than the collapse of the auto industry.

But ABC didn’t fact check anything Harris said, which is probably why the Democrat presidential candidate walked on the set of “The View” confident she could skate through the fall election with nothing but star treatment from Oprah Winfrey and the editors of Vogue.

Even when Harris joined the all-women panelists on ABC’s daytime Manhattan talk show, the vice president couldn’t get through the half-hour interview without stumbling. When Harris was asked whether there was anything she might have done differently than President Joe Biden over the last four years, her response was “not a thing that comes to mind.”

Stephen Colbert offered Harris an opportunity on CBS that very night to walk back her remarks in an election where Americans are obviously hungry for change. Harris, however, doubled down on her strategy of “no ragrets” just a month before voting ends.

“I’m obviously not Joe Biden,” she said. “So that would be one change.”

Trump on the other hand, has continued to campaign through the hostile treatment typical of the traditional press toward Republicans. While Harris escaped fair criticism from the debate moderators with ABC, Trump was confronted with dubious “fact-checks” that are highly subjective but at this point, predictable.

Trump has responded to the antagonistic media environment by doing exactly what he did in 2015 and 2016. By embracing Twitter as an avenue of direct appeal to voters eight years ago, Trump leveraged alternative media that him to circumvent the hysterical press coverage. Once again, Trump has leveraged a changing media environment to his advantage by appearing on long-form podcasts while still participating in most of the traditional forums that define presidential elections, such as debates, press conferences, and town halls. The Republican nominee might have skipped this year’s sit down with CBS’s “60 Minutes,” but only after the network’s special was particularly egregious last cycle when Lesley Stahl combatively denounced Trump’s claims related to the Russia hoax and Hunter Biden’s laptop, which have since proven true.

Trump’s embrace of long-form podcasts for the internet have allowed the former president to do two things: 1) present a genuine image of a major candidate engaged with an in-depth discussion free from the glare and hostility of prime-time television and 2) reach millions of voters who have otherwise tuned out of establishment media as their primary medium of information.

A prime example of Trump’s authenticity powerfully showcased in an online discussion was when comedian Theo Von spoke with the ex-president about addiction.

“I had a great brother who taught me a lesson: Don’t drink. Don’t drink,” Trump said. “And he said ‘don’t smoke.’ He smoke and he drank.”

Von spoke about his own recovery for “most of the last 10 years” from “drugs and alcohol” while asking Trump about the last moments spent with his brother.

“He’d have periods where he’d get sick, very sick. And we thought we’d lose him, or we lost him, then he’d get better,” Trump said. “And that happened five or six times. I mean, well, you thought you lost him, and then he got better, and it was amazing. I mean, he was certainly very strong in that sense. I just tell people, it’s so tragic. Don’t drink. Just don’t drink.”

“I would just do cocaine,” Von said moments later in a clip that would go viral.

Trump went on to reveal candid new details about the FBI’s investigation of assassination attempts against him with a panel of comedians for the “Flagrant” podcast. The FBI, Trump said, has yet to open the “three or so cell phones” possessed by the attempted shooter who stalked him on his Mar-a-Lago golf course.

“They had no problem getting the J6 people’s cell phones open,” Trump said. “They opened their cell phones very quickly.”

Harris, whose own messy traditional interviews have apparently failed to move the polls substantially in her favor, has been scrambling to adopt the Trump playbook while calling foul on the Republican strategy.

“Today marks one month since Donald Trump sat down with mainstream reporters,” the Harris campaign said Monday. “He pulled out of ’60 Minutes.’ He’s refusing to debate. And he’s refusing to release his medical records. What’s he hiding?”

A natural follow-up question for the vice president could be when she plans to hold a press conference, of which Trump has held several this year in addition to myriad interviews with antagonistic television hosts.

Harris, meanwhile, is now trying to adopt Trump’s campaign playbook with podcast interviews of her own, including one on the “Call Her Daddy” podcast and an apparent plea to appear on “The Joe Rogan Experience.” On Wednesday, Harris will give an interview with Bret Baier on Fox News nearly a week after her town hall with Univision.

Trump will answer voters’ questions in a follow-up town hall by Univision Wednesday night.

Tristan Justice is the western correspondent for The Federalist and the author of Social Justice Redux, a conservative newsletter on culture, health, and wellness. He has also written for The Washington Examiner and The Daily Signal. His work has also been featured in Real Clear Politics and Fox News. Tristan graduated from George Washington University where he majored in political science and minored in journalism. Follow him on Twitter at @JusticeTristan or contact him at [email protected]. Sign up for Tristan’s email newsletter here.