{"id":93791,"date":"2026-05-24T09:42:22","date_gmt":"2026-05-24T09:42:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/fallsurfing.net\/firstnews\/ryan-grim-is-being-able-to-hold-a-lengthy-interview-with-a-podcaster-the-new-litmus-test-for-a-presidential-candidate\/"},"modified":"2026-05-24T09:42:22","modified_gmt":"2026-05-24T09:42:22","slug":"ryan-grim-is-being-able-to-hold-a-lengthy-interview-with-a-podcaster-the-new-litmus-test-for-a-presidential-candidate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fallsurfing.net\/firstnews\/ryan-grim-is-being-able-to-hold-a-lengthy-interview-with-a-podcaster-the-new-litmus-test-for-a-presidential-candidate\/","title":{"rendered":"Ryan Grim: Is Being Able To Hold A Lengthy Interview With A Podcaster The New Litmus Test For A Presidential Candidate?"},"content":{"rendered":"

“Breaking Points” co-host Ryan Grim is joined by Kamala Harris deputy campaign manager, Rob Flaherty, to discuss the 2024 DNC autopsy. Flaherty discussed his article on the DNC autopsy<\/a>, the bad decisions the campaign made, the decision not to go on Joe Rogan’s podcast, and more. <\/p>\n

RYAN GRIM, HOST: You made an interesting YouTube comment, which kind of dovetails with the whole Joe Rogan controversy, which you were part of. You wrote<\/a>, “The whole country is on YouTube and uses it in ways that feel completely out of alignment with how I use it… Which brings us to that whole Rogan thing. I somewhat infamously was involved in the Rogan negotiations. We agonized for a long time over doing it. I was in favor of doing it, but it was a close call. I didn’t think it was going to be a clean interview. In fact, I thought the best case scenario would be a draw. But we just needed an attention event, which in my mind made it worth doing.” Actually, I should have you reading these since this is yours. ROB FLAHERTY, KAMALA HARRIS 2024 DEPUTY CAMPAIGN MANAGER: I’ll do that. You can get the audio book. GRIM: So on the first point, before we get to Rogan, that YouTube is interesting as somebody who lives in it now. What did you describe and what is the kind of gap between the way that kind of professional Washington Democratic campaigns understand YouTube and the way that it’s actually exists in the world now? FLAHERTY: Yeah, a hundred percent. Well, first of all, the vast majority of YouTube is watched on television. GRIM: Which is crazy. FLAHERTY: Which is crazy. GRIM: People might not know that. FLAHERTY: That is not how I use it, but that may be how you at home are using it. Hello. GRIM: More than, more than, more than half of our audience, according to our data watches it on television. FLAHERTY: That is thing one. And I think that people in campaigns often miss that it’s television for people. And so the kinds of programming, the kinds of content is, you know, long form and conversation, all those kinds of things. And so, and also it’s dominance. 80% of the country goes there at least once a week. I mean, it is, it is the place where I think the election is going to happen in 2028. And so it’s really important from a campaign perspective that impacts where you go and do interviews, the people you talk to those kinds of things. But also how you do your own content. And as you guys know, building a YouTube channel is very hard. It doesn’t come easy. GRIM: It takes a lot of time. FLAHERTY: So, you know, it’s, it’s a challenge for campaigns, but I think it is really going to be a core battleground for political campaigns going forward. GRIM: And so the channels that have built audiences like Rogan, for instance, who’s gone in a kind of different direction last year, year and a half or so. That was a big thing and you were directly involved with this question. Why did you think it would be slightly a good idea? And what were the counter arguments and, and walk people through why it ended up not happening. FLAHERTY: So we landed on wanting to do the show and talk to his team quite a bit. And you know, pretty much agreed to, you know, no holds barred. We had some time limits in place, but you know, cause we had a schedule and things. GRIM: How long? FLAHERTY: I forget what we said, but he said something like we only wanted an hour. And I think we had not — we said we did not ever, we didn’t say that. So I think we had discussed a longer engagement. GRIM: Cause he’s normally does three to four. FLAHERTY: Yeah. And I think it was probably shorter than he normally does, but longer than he said that we were asking for, if I recall correctly. And look, you know, I think the reason why was, you know, I think the vice president wanted to talk to the audience, but also we just, I mean, I say this in the piece, I think we started to really lose the race when we lost the attention war with Donald Trump and we needed something that would shake it up. But I think it was going to be a challenging interview. I mean, Rogan is not easy. And he’ll ask questions that you’re not used to getting. And you have to get comfortable with being uncomfortable and, and a lot of political figures, that’s, that’s a hard thing. And so, you know, I figured if we did the show, you know, he would get a couple of marks on the vice president. I thought the vice president might get a couple of marks on him. But, you know, it was a, a sort of team discussion and we ended up wanting to do it, but the logistics just sort of didn’t work out. GRIM: The idea that all attention is good attention is net good, I think is an interesting one. Cause I remember thinking at the time, if I were you guys and Kamala Harris was my candidate, I would actually not tell her to do Joe Rogan. FLAHERTY: Yeah. GRIM: Because she might be okay in five minutes on MSNBC or CNN, or even FOX, like a little pushback here and there. But like, she didn’t strike me as somebody that for an hour, an hour and a half is going to kind of win over the audience. Because that’s just not the style that she’s kind of, kind of come up in. But I think, I’m curious for your take on this. I think it has created a kind of obstacle course or litmus test of sorts for candidates. That is actually a good thing that, that the new kind of bar that you have to clear to be a national candidate is, can you sit down for 90 minutes in a free-form interview and come across as a normal person? And I think, like, I think Bernie did really well with that in 2016 and beyond, even though he just says the same thing, millionaires and billionaires, but it’s charming because he’s been saying it for 50 years. FLAHERTY: Exactly. GRIM: I think AOC could do it. FLAHERTY: Yeah. GRIM: Because she lives in that kind of, you know, she calls audibles all the time. FLAHERTY: Yeah. GRIM: She’s not that scripted. Ro Khanna does it all the time. He goes, goes to these places. Buttigieg could probably do it. FLAHERTY: Yeah. GRIM: Newsom can do it, but I can imagine that some others couldn’t. Like, do you agree? Like, is that, is that like the new, is that the new bar to entry into national politics? That is that you have to actually be able to sit down. FLAHERTY: I agree. I think that’s downstream from something that is, is really the important thing, which is like everyone is consuming tons of content produced by people who are really close to that production of the content. And so they’re used to super authentic stuff, right? They know Ryan Grim, you know, they know where you think. And they know where you stand and that you believe what you’re saying. And so you’re up against all of that. And so when you show up and you’re a politician and you’re like, here are my three talking points, like people, the bullsh*t-o-meter has gotten higher. And so one of the indicators of that is, yeah, can I, can that person have like a real conversation that doesn’t sound like they’re reciting the party line over and over and over again. And so I think that is, is, is an indicator and has moved people in that direction. And I think it’s going to be a factor in, you know, who wins in, in 2028.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

RealClearPolitics Videos<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“Breaking Points” co-host Ryan Grim is joined by Kamala Harris deputy campaign manager, Rob Flaherty, to discuss the 2024 DNC autopsy. Flaherty discussed his article on the DNC autopsy, the bad decisions the campaign made, the decision not to go on Joe Rogan’s podcast, and more. RYAN GRIM, HOST: You made an interesting YouTube comment, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[17171,254,5648,8126,2405,2934,7583,29252,26668,7183,1599,315],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fallsurfing.net\/firstnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93791"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fallsurfing.net\/firstnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fallsurfing.net\/firstnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fallsurfing.net\/firstnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fallsurfing.net\/firstnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=93791"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/fallsurfing.net\/firstnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93791\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fallsurfing.net\/firstnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=93791"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fallsurfing.net\/firstnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=93791"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fallsurfing.net\/firstnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=93791"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}