STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Donald Trump and JD Vance are sitting down for a lot of interviews. A few of them are on broadcast TV, but many are with podcasters, streamers and influencers. NPR's Danielle Kurtzleben asked who these interviews are reaching.
DANIELLE KURTZLEBEN, BYLINE: In June, Trump's campaign posted a TikTok of Trump and influencer Logan Paul. The two stood glaring at each other, their noses inches apart. And then something rare happened - Trump laughed.
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LOGAN PAUL: Yo, yo, yo, yo. I'm scared, bro.
KURTZLEBEN: Both of them dissolved into laughs. There was even something approaching a hug. The point of all this was to promote a Trump interview on Paul's podcast and YouTube show. It was all part of Trump and JD Vance's monthslong tour of podcasters and influencers, almost all of them men, many of them young. In multiple interviews, Trump has shot the breeze with hosts about the UFC and boxing, leading to memorable exchanges like this on Logan Paul's "Impaulsive" podcast.
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PAUL: You ever been in a fistfight, Mr. President?
DONALD TRUMP: Probably not. I've been, like, little duels. Nothing like - nothing...
PAUL: (Laughter).
KURTZLEBEN: According to the Trump campaign, the goal with this media strategy is simply to reach as many people as possible, not specifically men. But that is who they're getting, at least for the podcasts. Trump and Vance have appeared on nine podcasts, according to the campaign. Of those, Edison Research had data on seven. Five of those seven have at least three-quarters male listenership, and those audiences also skew mostly young. Meanwhile, only one podcast, "Phil In The Blanks," with Dr. Phil, is majority women listeners. What it amounts to is potential new young men voters getting long, intimate, not terribly newsy introductions to Trump and Vance by trusted hosts/friends. For example, podcaster Theo Von talked to Trump about Trump's late brother, Fred, and his struggles with alcoholism.
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THEO VON: Yeah. Do you remember the last time that you spent with your brother?
TRUMP: I do. And he had periods where he'd get sick, very sick, and we thought we'd lose him or we lost him. Then he'd get better.
KURTZLEBEN: Von and many other of these influencers have shows that are roughly an hour long. And in those long interviews, many hosts aren't fact-checking or pushing back all that much. In some cases, the hosts are outright supporters. Streamer Adin Ross gave Trump a watch and a Tesla Cybertruck. Occasionally, though, Trump and Vance have received harsher scrutiny. Last week, one host of the "All-In" podcast pressed Vance multiple times on the 2020 election.
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JASON CALACANIS: So would you have certified? I'll ask you for the third time.
JD VANCE: Again, I would have asked the states to submit alternative slates of electors and let the country have the debate about what actually matters and what kind of an election that we had...
CALACANIS: You wouldn't have certified? To be clear.
VANCE: I would have asked the states to submit alternative slates of electors.
CALACANIS: I think that's what you're saying.
VANCE: That's what I would have done.
KURTZLEBEN: The podcast and influencer strategy is a way to solve a particular problem, says Eric James Wilson, a Republican strategist who specializes in digital communication. That problem is that people get their information from thousands of different sources. So one route of reaching voters is what Wilson calls bottom-up, like canvassing or texting. This strategy is the opposite route.
ERIC JAMES WILSON: The second route is top-down, where voters have these parasocial relationships with maybe a podcast host or a YouTuber. And so they're relying on that to reach voters that they can't reach in other places.
KURTZLEBEN: All of this makes sense, according to Shauna Daly, a co-founder of the liberal Young Men's Research Initiative. In her opinion, Trump has hit his ceiling with likely voters. If that's true...
SHAUNA DALY: In order to win, he needs to change the electorate, and young men historically are less likely to vote, but if he can turn them out, if he can get them to vote, that could change the electorate enough to give him a margin of victory.
KURTZLEBEN: Recent polls have shown a wide gender gap among young voters, with young men leaning more toward Trump. So one goal of these appearances may be to nudge a few of those many nonvoting young guys into voting. Could it work? At latest count, that Logan Paul-Trump interview has 6.5 million views on YouTube. If a fraction of those are the right viewers in the right states, it might make a world of difference.
Danielle Kurtzleben, NPR News. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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