Leah Fager: What a beautiful idea.
Jon Favreau: And when you organize people only online, and people only meet online, and debates and everything else happens online, trust is lost. So I think we’re going to see a return to in-person organizing, in-person campaigning as a way to mobilize voters, because we’ve already seen this, there’s something called relationship organizing, right?
Leah Fager: Yes, there is a group that has spent $10 million to get people to tell their friends to vote.
Jon Favreau: Yes, because let’s say you’re a voter and you’re watching social media and you’re watching the news. Let’s say you’re still on the fence and you don’t know who to trust or what to trust. You only trust people that you know. And those are the people that are going to be the most trusted messengers and the most persuasive messengers. And a lot of campaigns are kind of going back to that model as they realize that you can’t win elections just by fighting on social media.
Tommy Vieter: Well, you can even pay fitness influencers in Orange County to post your content.
Leah Fager: I think RFK understands fitness influencers.
Tommy Vieter: He dominates the market in that field.
Leah Fager: He has it all, he has all the numbers listed, he’s ready to go.
Tommy Vieter: I came across this video the other day of him on the gym floor, I think in between bench presses or something, talking loudly about Gaza and why Israel should bomb it the way it is, and I thought, “What the hell is going on with this election? This is so weird.”
Leah Fager: We cover RFK Jr. quite a bit and it hits home every time. My favorite shark influencer, yes this is a very specific thing. He may not be my favorite, but he’s in the league of shark influencers.
Tommy Vieter: Where are they based?
Leah Fager: Hawaii, scuba diving.
Jon Favreau: That makes sense.
Tommy Vieter: I follow the ones based in New England.
Leah Fager: Yeah, you are right.
Tommy Vieter: It’s true.
Leah Fager: There are many more.
Jon Favreau: Really?
Leah Fager: Yeah. No, they’re good. But this guy in Hawaii put RFK on a boat.
Tommy Vieter: That’s clever.
Leah Fager: He’s everywhere. He knows the social media strategy of this election. How do you think the Biden campaign is doing on social media in this election?
Tommy Vieter: They’re behind. I think they’ll be the first to tell you. One thing that’s really stuck in my mind since I saw it is Trump went to an MMA fight a few weeks ago in Newark or somewhere. He goes into the stadium with Dana White, the head of UFC, and there’s 16,000 people cheering him on. He dances with Logan Paul and others, and they’re all taking content. And guys like MMA, Crypto Brothers, Paul Brothers, they have a very clever strategy to find those people and they talk to them on their channels, NELC Boys and so on. Some of your listeners may not have heard of them, but they’re like YouTube pages with millions of followers, and they’re making a concerted effort to reach out to young men in particular. And Biden’s guys, I think it’s going to be a lot harder when he’s president. He’s getting a lot more serious about policy, about $35 insulin and so on.
