I can’t think of a better use of $100,000, can you?
During the homestretch of the 2024 Presidential Election, both Republican candidate Donald Trump and Democratic candidate Kamala Harris were pulling out all of the stops to reach voters. Well, perhaps there was one stop Kamala didn’t pull out… going on Joe Rogan. But overall, both presidential hopefuls were going on more podcasts than we’ve ever seen before… more than traditional media.
Donald Trump appeared on a number of so-called “Bro Podcasts,” including a three-hour episode of The Joe Rogan Experience. Some criticized Rogan at the time for having Trump on his show, but not Kamala. The podcast host clarified that he had tried to get the Vice President to join the JRE and it didn’t work out because Harris didn’t find a way to work it into the schedule, and couldn’t agree on what that episode would look like.
Rogan said:
“Also, for the record the Harris campaign has not passed on doing the podcast. They offered a date for Tuesday, but I would have had to travel to her and they only wanted to do an hour. I strongly feel the best way to do it is in the studio in Austin. My sincere wish is to just have a nice conversation and get to know her as a human being. I really hope we can make it happen.”
Also, for the record the Harris campaign has not passed on doing the podcast. They offered a date for Tuesday, but I would have had to travel to her and they only wanted to do an hour. I strongly feel the best way to do it is in the studio in Austin. My sincere wish is to just…
— Joe Rogan (@joerogan) October 29, 2024
It never happened.
Partially because Harris and her team reportedly wanted to do the interview in a place other than Rogan’s Austin studio. Though she never joined Joe Rogan’s podcast, Kamala did carve out some time to sit down on the Call Her Daddy podcast with Alex Cooper. Unlike Rogan, Cooper agreed to terms with Kamala – keeping the conversation at around an hour and recording at a location of the Harris team’s choice.
Which ended up being a “random house” in Washington D.C. where the Kamala Harris campaign had recreated the set of the Call Her Daddy podcast.
Since they recorded and the episode came out in early October, reports have suggested that Harris’ campaign spent upwards of $100,000 recreating the podcast studio that Alex Cooper has out in Los Angeles. That obviously seems absurd, and when Cooper was asked about that number recently, she was astounded and highly skeptical that their recreation ended up costing that much:
“I did see that. It’s hilarious. My studio – that is gorgeous, in Los Angeles, doesn’t even cost six figures. So I don’t know how cardboard walls could cost six figures.”
It’s possible that the Kamala Harris campaign said it was six figures, and some of that additional money was actually funneled towards some other discrete parts of the campaign. It’s also possible that the $100K cost that has floated around is just a made up number. Either way, the idea of spending campaign money to recreate a set seems pretty insane when you could just… go to their studio?
Cooper was highly doubtful – respectfully – that Kamala and her team could have spent that much with how… let’s just say unimpressive the makeshift studio ended up looking:
“Absolutely not. With love to them, it was gorgeous… but it wasn’t that nice. It wasn’t gorgeous marble. No, that was not six figures.”
BREAKING: Call Her Daddy host Alex Cooper criticizes Kamala Harris’ campaign for allegedly spending $100k on a fake set:
“It was like a random house… My studio in LA doesn’t even cost six figures. How could cardboard walls cost that much?”
pic.twitter.com/ECLPUzL4xF— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) December 5, 2024
Here’s a look at Alex Cooper’s actual studio:
And then the knockoff the Harris campaign put together:
Sorta similar, but definitely the Walmart version of Cooper’s studio… but it all begs the question? Did you really need to do that? Podcast hosts shoot on-the-go all the time when a special occasion calls for it. Even our own Whiskey Riff Raff podcast utilizes various locations. If Cooper was willing to travel to Harris, unlike Rogan was, why go to the trouble and expense of building a cheap look alike? That allegedly wasn’t that cheap?
And look, Alex Cooper doesn’t know what the Harris campaign spent, she’s just saying that it certainly didn’t look like a six-figure studio. And she would be right, it doesn’t look very expensive. But who knows what the circumstances were… was this a last minute project that drove up the cost? Did they have to overnight some furniture to complete the look? Stick a little extra in a carpenter friend’s pocket on the donor dime? Not exactly unheard of in the political world… anytime you have political budgets, there always seems to be a little extra to go around, you know? The Mayor of Chicago, Brandon Johnson, recently was under fire for spending $80,000 of taxpayer money renovating an office… for his wife. All while the city tries to figure out their nearly billion-dollar budget shortfall. Funny how that works, isn’t it?
Either way, Harris probably should’ve made that trip to Joe Rogan, eh?
