Kamala Harris let woke young staffers talk her out of Joe Rogan appearance

According to reports that came out after the 2024 election, Democrat Nominee Vice President Kamala Harris allowed some of her young, woke staffers to talk her out of appearing on the Joe Rogan podcast in the final days before the election.

“There was a backlash with some of our progressive staff that didn’t want her to be on it, and how there would be a backlash,” Jennifer Palmieri, a senior adviser to Harris’s husband, Doug Emhoff, told the Financial Times.

Her rival Donald Trump gave a three-hour interview on the podcast, and she was scheduled to appear when she suddenly changed her mind and backed out.

It wasn't a good look for her with voters, who either saw her as afraid of the long-form, unscripted format or as repudiating Rogan's audience, which included many non-woke males.

"A terrible look for her"

She tried to play it off as a scheduling issue after Rogan insisted she travel to his Austin, Texas studio for the interview.

Rogan endorsed Trump on the eve of the election, after Harris backed out.

The Daily Caller's John Loftus wrote about the decision that it probably wouldn't have gotten Harris over the finish line even if she had done the interview.

He said,

It’s likely Kamala’s appearance on Rogan’s show would not have made a difference. She probably would’ve bombed. But, for a campaign performing so poorly among young men, it’s also possible an interview with the mega-famous podcaster could’ve helped her make inroads with that demographic. It would’ve been worth a shot, at least. And it was a terrible look for her to back down from an appearance after Trump chopped it up with Rogan for hours.

"Cowards"

Loftus pointed to the decision as part of a larger trend in which younger staffers are making dumb decisions that don't take the wisdom of more experienced people into account.

He opened the piece by saying that "young, idealistic, left-wing staffers disconnected from reality" were "bullying the supposed adults in the room into making a stupid decision."

He then continued:

The saga seems emblematic of so many liberal institutions, which increasingly kowtow to a small minority of whiny activists. Whether it’s in legacy media companies like The Washington Post or The New York Times or prestigious universities like Harvard or Yale, young left-wingers are taking the older crowds out to lunch. The adults in the room are not adults at all: they’re cowards running little daycare centers for the spoiled and stupid.

When employed by the left, this strategy usually results in bad decisions that alienate the majority of voters in favor of a small minority.

Trump didn't seem to have this problem when he reportedly took advice from his 18-year-old son Barron about how to reach younger voters--in fact, Barron advised him to do the Rogan podcast, which was a great success.

It might have more to do with voters finding wokeness tiresome, no matter who propagates it.