Leah Feiger: It’s like, what a beautiful idea.
Jon Favreau: And now, when you only organize people online and they only meet online and the debates happen online and all that, you’re going to lose trust. So I think there will be, and where I’ve seen this, a return to sort of in-person organizing, to in-person canvassing as a way to move voters because there’s something called relational organizing. Good?
Lea Feiger: Yes. There is a group that just contributed 10 million basically so that your friends tell you to vote.
Jon Favreau: Good. Because if you’re a voter and you’re on social media or you’re watching the news, let’s say you’re undecided, you don’t know who to trust, you don’t know what to trust. The only people you trust are the ones you know. And so, the people who become the most trusted messengers and the most persuasive messengers. And so a lot of campaigns kind of go back to that model, and they realize that just fighting on social media is not going to win you elections.
Tommy Vietor: Well, then you can also pay fitness influencers in Orange County to post your stuff.
Lea Feiger: I think RFK has discovered the fitness influencers.
Tommy Vietor: He has cornered the market on that.
Lea Feiger: He has them all. He has them all listed, every number. He is ready to start.
Tommy Vietor: The other day I came across a video of him in which he was on the floor of a gym, presumably between sets of bench presses or whatever he was doing, talking about Gaza and arguing at the top of his lungs why the Israelis should bomb the way they are. And I thought, “What is happening in this election? This is very strange.”
Lea Feiger: We cover RFK Jr. quite a bit and each time it’s just shocking. My favorite shark influencer, yes, that’s a very specific thing. Maybe he’s not my favorite, but he’s right up there with the shark influencers…
Tommy Vietor: Where are they based?
Lea Feiger: Hawaii, diving.
Jon Favreau: That makes sense.
Tommy Vietor: I follow the New England one.
Lea Feiger: Yes, fair.
Tommy Vietor: I really do.
Lea Feiger: There is much more.
Jon Favreau: Actually?
Lea Feiger: Yes. No, they are good. But this one in Hawaii took RFK off the ship.
Tommy Vietor: That’s smart.
Lea Feiger: It’s everywhere. You’ve figured out how to use social media for this election. What do you think about the Biden team’s performance on social media for this election?
Tommy Vietor: They are behind. I think they would be the first to tell you. What’s really stuck in my head since I saw it was a couple weeks ago, Trump went to an MMA fight in Newark or something. He enters the stadium with Dana White, the head of the UFC, 16,000 people applaud him. He hangs out with Logan Paul and all these guys, and everyone’s just happy. And the MMA, the crypto bros, the Paul Brothers type, they have a very smart strategy to find those people, talk to them on their channels, the NELC Boys, whatever. Some of their listeners have probably never heard of it, but they are like YouTube pages with millions and millions of followers and they are making a concerted effort to reach young men in particular. And I think for Biden’s people, it’s a lot harder when you’re president. It’s about much more serious things about politics: $35 insulin.
