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- [00:00]
Jon Favreau
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- [00:52]
Tommy Vietor
Can't believe it.
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Jon Favreau
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- [01:12]
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- [02:12]
Kyle Tharp
So like one day you will see Laura Loomer and a bunch of others talking about why some random legislation is important to the government of India. And you're like that is 100% paid. And people have slowly been publishing investigations and receipts of this. I think in one instance I saw a bunch of right wing influencers were paid $50 just to hit the retweet button on a post. Others were being paid $1,000 just to copy and paste certain posts. And this is all in hopes of getting in front of Republican elected officials who are all addicted to using the app personally. And they know that they can get their stuff in front of the big guy in the White House as well. So I think X is just like a really, really important plat.
- [03:01]
Jon Favreau
Jon I'm Jon Favreau and you just heard from today's guest, Kyle Tharp.
- [03:04]
Tommy Vietor
Kyle writes an excellent newsletter about all the ways the Internet is upending our politics. Appropriately named Chaotic Era.
- [03:10]
Jon Favreau
He covers everything from the partisan media ecosystem to new digital campaign tactics to creators on the left and right who are suddenly having a huge political impact. For anyone trying to figure out how
- [03:20]
Tommy Vietor
the hell people are getting their information
- [03:22]
Jon Favreau
these days, it is an essential read. Today I invited Kyle on to talk
- [03:25]
Tommy Vietor
about the many trends he's written about,
- [03:27]
Jon Favreau
but also to zero in on a couple that I believe may have an outsized impact on the 2026 midterms, namely the emergence of pay for play, political influencers, and whether Democrats have made any progress in figuring out the Internet. We also covered the fall of Ben Shapiro in the Daily Wire, the new
- [03:42]
Tommy Vietor
success of Legacy Media on TikTok, and
- [03:45]
Jon Favreau
the intense grassroots anger online and off around data centers. It was a great conversation and we'll
- [03:50]
Tommy Vietor
get to in a moment. But before we do, if you want
- [03:53]
Jon Favreau
to hear this episode ad Free, subscribe to Friends of the Podcast. Subscribers get Ad free episodes of Offline Pod Save the World, Love it or Leave it and Pod Save America, as well as special behind the Paywall episodes
- [04:04]
Tommy Vietor
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- [04:06]
Jon Favreau
and an extra bi weekly episode of Pod Save America called Pod Save America.
- [04:11]
Tommy Vietor
Only Friends.
- [04:12]
Jon Favreau
Of course, if you don't care about Ad free episodes, you could always subscribe to support Independent Pro Democracy Media, one of the last outlets left out there that's Independent and Pro Democracy. So head on over to cricket.com friends to subscribe. All right, here's Kyle Tharp. Kyle, welcome to Offline.
- [04:32]
Kyle Tharp
Thanks for having me on. We have a lot to discuss.
- [04:35]
Tommy Vietor
We do, we do. So you've been covering the intersection of politics and the Internet for years. You were first tracking digital ad spending in a newsletter for Courier News. And now you're at Chaotic Era, a substack you launched right as Trump's second term began. Just to start with a big picture question. When you compare the Internet's role in politics today to when you started, what is the single biggest change? Like what. What would surprise the. The 2018 version of yourself?
- [05:06]
Kyle Tharp
I mean, I think that's a really great question. I think the biggest thing is people are paying a lot more attention to it. Feel like back in 2018, there was, like, little bits of attention paid to, you know, ads on Facebook or whatever. But now it seems like the mainstream political press and generally voters are much more in tune with how they're being reached online and all the various forces that are influencing them now. I think also things are moving a whole lot faster, just like technology is accelerating. And so campaigns are and outside groups and other influence operations are just like reaching voters at a much faster pace online.
- [05:43]
Tommy Vietor
Do you think it's. It's too simplistic to say that we've moved from the ad era to the creator era? I obviously know that ads are a big part of the spending, but it does feel like we're just feel like the creators are at least in tight competition with. With ads.
- [05:58]
Kyle Tharp
Yeah, absolutely. Like, what types of paid media that campaigns are deploying to reach voters has changed dramatically since 2020. Since 2016. Since 2012. You know, it used to be really cable, broadcast radio, mail. And now not only are people spending tens of millions of dollars, hundreds of millions of dollars, on digital advertising on places like Facebook, but they're integrating sort of paid creator marketing campaigns into their media mix in a way that is now spreading down ballot. You saw a bunch of it during the California gubernatorial primary. There's like every week there's stories about how campaigns are paying off creators in sort of under the table or undisclosed fashion that we more about. But absolutely, I mean, I think, you know, so much attention is now being paid to these niche social media influencers, both small and large, that are reaching voters on behalf of candidates, whether they're paid or not, whether campaigns are doing interviews with them or content collabs. It's really taking over our politics. And I think in the midterms, we're going to See a lot more of it, and then heading into 2028, it's going to be insane.
- [07:13]
Jon Favreau
So I do want to get back to that.
- [07:14]
Tommy Vietor
I just want to. Before we get there, you know, after 2024, the interminable discourse about Democrats needing a liberal version of Joe Rogan, it was basically a shorthand for debate about all the ways that the Harris campaign, the Democratic Party, failed to adapt to the new media environment. Now that we all have the benefit of like a year and a half of hindsight, what do you think that discourse got right and what did it get wrong?
- [07:43]
Kyle Tharp
Yeah, I mean, I think that discourse was really helpful in getting sort of Democrats older donor class interested in the ways that the Internet is impacting our politics and the different ways that Americans are consuming information. So a lot of the folks that fund major outside groups and efforts on the left get their news from like paper, newspapers and probably like, I don't know, cable. Yeah. Network or broadcast television. And so I think it was really a wake up call for that class of folks that has a lot of influence in the Democratic Party that, oh, there are a thousand different ways that a thousand different niche subgroups of Americans are receiving information online. And we need to be more strategic about how we're investing in those ways. There have been like a whole wave of new efforts pop up across different platforms and different niche categories that have been trying to sort of angle for funding. And you've seen a lot of new groups just in the past year and a half grow really rapidly, both creators and brands online.
- [08:48]
Tommy Vietor
Where do you think Democrats on the, on the campaign sort of elected side have genuinely improved online since 2024 and where are they still stuck?
- [08:59]
Kyle Tharp
Yeah, for sure. I think something that I notice a lot that Democrats really deserve a lot of credit for are these like Capitol Hill communications directors and press secretaries. They have a really tough job nowadays. You know, they used to just be able to pitch a couple reporters on Capitol Hill or CNN bookers. Now they have to do hardcore research to find out what niche audience they're trying to reach, who are the people that speak to them, what podcasts they're listening to, what random YouTube interview shows should they go on. And they're succeeding wildly. Last summer I interviewed Sarah Drury, who's the communications director for Congressman Ro Khanna. And I think at the time, I think last year they went on over like 60 or 70 podcasts, which was like, you know, more than more than one a week. Everything from Theo Vaughan to probably your guys shows several times. And so these staffers that are working really hard for Democratic elected officials are making connections and really pitching out their bosses to reach a whole bunch of different audiences. And quite frankly, it's not happening on the right. Like you're not seeing, like Senator Marsha Blackburn from Tennessee, like, go on, Theo Vaughn. But you are seeing Democrats do it, which is really interesting. And it has a lot of implications for both the midterms, as you know, particularly in some of these larger states. And then the 2028 primary, like I mentioned earlier, it's just going to be wild.
- [10:27]
Jon Favreau
I hadn't thought about that.
- [10:28]
Tommy Vietor
From a communications staffer perspective. What a nightmare it must be to figure out what everyone is listening to or watching and how to put their bosses in front of those audience, because there's not like one central repository of information that you can go to. I imagine that's one thing that, like, AI might make easier for some of these staffers. But that's a, that's a big job. That's a big job.
- [10:54]
Kyle Tharp
Yeah, it's a lot of research and maybe they're, you know, they're, that's what a lot of these sort of entry level press assistants are doing. But I think what Rokhanna's team told me about how they decide what podcast to go on is they just like sit around in sort of like a writer's room and figure out, oh, you know, I was watching this YouTube show the other day. I think Roe would be really good for this. Whatever. It also depends on what constituency they're trying to reach. Right? Like, if they are trying to reach older voters in their district, then of course broadcast local news still makes a ton of sense. But if maybe they have more national ambitions, then I think going on the Adam Friedland show or something could be beneficial.
- [11:29]
Tommy Vietor
You mentioned the Democratic donor class. You wrote last fall that you've lost count of how many donor advisors, staffers, media entrepreneurs have mentioned Turning Point as something the left needs to replicate. Your own data shows Turning Point USA was one of the fastest growing political YouTube channels of early 2026. Two questions. What would a TP USA of the left look like? And why do you think the people writing the checks haven't been able to bring it into existence yet?
- [12:00]
Kyle Tharp
You know, that's, that's a really tough question that I definitely don't, don't have all the answers for. But, you know, I think what's really important for a lot of these growing liberal media efforts, thinking first about, like, what audiences they're actually reaching, there's been a ton of growth particularly on YouTube, among people that I would maybe like call in a somewhat derogatory fashion, like Blue MAGA influencers, people that just like scream into the camera about how bad Donald Trump is. But those people's audience is overwhelmingly sort of old, wealthy, white people, people like my in laws that are just really addicted to the news and really upset by everything that Donald Trump is doing. And so there's a lot fewer efforts that are reaching young people and some of the same people that Turning Point USA is reaching. That's a major challenge. Like the content, the formats and the platforms that are needed to reach young, college age kids or younger is very different from the platforms that you and I consume and the content that we consume online. And so, yeah, there's currently not, not a lot we can do about it. I think there's several efforts that are trying to sort of experiment and grow and reach younger people, but it's going to take a lot of different strategies, tactics and groups to do so.
- [13:16]
Tommy Vietor
Do you think this donor class suddenly discovered TPUSA and how effective it is because of Charlie Kirk's assassination? Do you think that's what did it? Or why do you think so many people are bringing TP USA specifically up to you?
- [13:33]
Kyle Tharp
Yeah, I mean, they just, you know, they became a massive grassroots juggernaut on the right seemingly overnight. Now I have charts that also show how much money they've raised since like 2012 or whenever they were founded back in the Obama era. And they've slowly been able to amass now what is around like 90, 95, $100 million in revenue each year, year over year. They, and I do think like the Kirk assassination and its cultural resonance with people of all stripes, particularly young conservatives, was a wake up call for people that this is a huge juggernaut. They're tied very closely to the Trump political operation. In 2024, the Trump campaign basically outsourced their on the ground field organizing to Turning Point usa, their voter registration efforts. And so I think liberals see something very big and scary on the right and are like, great, we have to replicate this. We have to do something about this. And so I think folks are going to try. It's unclear if Turning Point is going to have real staying power on the right. They're incredibly disorganized. Of course, they're very good at the podcast space. They have a huge presence on YouTube. They have real organic engagement on their chapters on campuses around the country. But will it be able to continue growing under new leadership? It's unclear to me. I think A lot what they're doing right now is recycling old content from Charlie Kirk and trying to recreate the magic that he brought to the organization. Yeah.
- [15:06]
Tommy Vietor
And it does seem like to the extent that they are different than other organizations both on the left and right, and to the extent there is some kind of magic about it, it is the on the ground, real life organizing effort that I think you don't see with a lot of other media organizations on either side. But it feels like that is maybe one of the most important things to do is to sort of blend the online and offline media organizing strategies together if you actually want to win elections. So to your earlier point about a lot of the liberal media enterprises sort of reaching older voters, high engagement, older voters at a higher volume, who do you see that's actually reaching some of the lower engagement, younger voters on the left?
- [15:59]
Kyle Tharp
I think any of these efforts that are focusing a lot on TikTok, you know, journalists, particularly here in D.C. wrote incessantly about TikTok's impact on our politics back in 2024. And it seems like no one's like checked in on that ever since. But it's still a place where young people get so much news, information, cultural trends are born. And so there are a bunch of efforts, probably too many to name, that are focused on reaching people on platforms like TikTok, to some extent Instagram as well, I think on YouTube, like more perfect Union, which is an outlet that does investigative short form documentaries about issues impacting working people, is doing a really good job and they've explicitly kind of expanded into trying to reach younger audiences. But there's no single force that is doing a huge job of organizing young people. Back when I was coming up in politics, speaking of California gubernatorial race, Tom Steyer founded and ran NextGen America. And it was a huge organizing force and he stepped away from that organization to pursue his own political goals. And I think Democrats since then have really taken the youth vote and young people for granted. Just thought that they were always going to vote for Democrats. And 2024 really kind of was a wake up call.
- [17:20]
Tommy Vietor
It is a hard thing to do. And I can say this speaking is a co founder of one of these media companies that it is, it is an easy thing to say, oh, we want to reach young people in this media and information environment. I find that one of the big challenges is younger people. Younger audiences are gravitating towards individual creators and more so than like larger media companies. And I mean our audience is, I think is, is, is younger than Some of the other, some of our other counterparts, like you've written that like Midas Touch, which is huge also. It's like their audience does skew older, which might be surprising.
- [18:02]
Jon Favreau
It was surprising to me when I learned.
- [18:04]
Tommy Vietor
But if you have an information ecosystem where the younger creators that reach the younger audiences are all on their own and why would they sort of join up with a big media company or a bigger media company, then it becomes trickier as the media company to like find those audiences.
- [18:25]
Kyle Tharp
Yeah, for sure. The incentives are all messed up and, and also for sort of the liberal media companies, you know, like your incentives are, you know, you want to grow as fast as possible, you want high engagement, you want to monetize that audience. And I think older audiences that are hyper engaged in politics and news are much easier to monetize. They're the folks that are going to subscribe 10 bucks a month to a substack or you know, binge if you're retired. They're going to be binging, you know, on YouTube. And so that's low hanging fruit. And that's why we've seen liberal media outlets over the past year grow so quickly. But you're right, I mean a lot of, a lot of content reaching younger audiences, particularly on YouTube is, is really personality driven. You know, I like me and my husband watch like Mr. Beast all the time, which is insane. And if you think about like what he's pushing, he's like selling a candy bar company that tells you how like how young his audience is. It's like he's pushing feastables in every one of his videos. So like, like he's trying to reach children. So I think, I think there's a lot we can take particularly from some of these non political efforts in the YouTube space that would be really, really fun to try and replicate online with more sort of overtly political projects.
- [19:45]
Jon Favreau
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- [21:08]
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- [22:12]
Jon Favreau
I do want to zero in on
- [22:13]
Tommy Vietor
YouTube because it's arguably the most political the most important political platform in America, but probably less discussed than your TikToks or your exes, at least on the media. Your April Data on the 100 biggest political channels has 64 that lean right, 36 that lean left, and the right's
- [22:32]
Jon Favreau
cumulative subscriber base is around 250 million
- [22:35]
Tommy Vietor
versus about 150 million for the left. When it comes to politics, is YouTube
- [22:39]
Jon Favreau
more of a right wing platform or
- [22:41]
Tommy Vietor
is that gap closing?
- [22:42]
Kyle Tharp
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, conservatives have dominated YouTube and the podcast space quite frankly, for many years. And it's just a place that you think about conservative personalities that are really primed for TV news, or maybe they spun off from TV news. People like Tucker Carlson, Megyn Kelly, all of the Daily Wires cast of characters, whether it's Matt Walsh or formerly Candace Owens, Ben Shapiro, these people are yelling into the camera, trying to sell outreach bait. And YouTube is a really good platform to algorithmically spread that type of content. And so over the past 10 years, you've just seen these creators accumulate millions and millions of followers with like this very easy to replicate format. I think the dynamics of the platform are still similar. Some of those right wing creators, YouTubers are starting to plateau and kind of hit a ceiling. While like I mentioned earlier, there are some young sort of pro Dem creators that are really surging and growing on the platform. It's really interesting to kind of see like who is up and who is down at a particular moment, particularly on the right. You hear so much about the influence of Ben Shapiro and there's already been a lot of reporting about this recently. But Homeboy has lost like 120,000 YouTube subscribers since the beginning of the year, which is more than a lot of these political channels even have. And the other channels owned by the Daily Wire, his media company, have also lost tens of thousands of subscribers. Meanwhile, meanwhile, people like Tucker Carlson, who are even more to the fringe on the right and are making a lot of enemies in some MAGA circles, are surging. Candace Owens spreading conspiracies about Charlie Kirk's death, also growing really rapidly. And you have some of these up and comers like Nick Shirley, who does kind of faux investigative journalism, also growing. So the old kingmakers are kind of going away and new ones are rising all the time. And, and YouTube is just really unique in the fact that people are growing really, really quickly, constantly. And that's why I put out some of these reports every quarter.
- [24:43]
Tommy Vietor
What do you make of that? That Shapiro and the Daily Wire are losing audience to the Tuckers, to the Candices. As you said, there's sort of a rage bait element to this, where you're yelling at a camera. But I'd say that Tucker is pretty fringy and so is Nick Fuentes and these characters. But, but a lot of what they're doing is kind of like long form conspiracy theory. They're not always doing the like blaring headlines, but they are like captivating a lot of the right's attention for a long period of time.
- [25:20]
Kyle Tharp
Yeah, for sure. I mean, I think something that, that their audience really demands across these right wing influencers is, is kind of like a, a seeming like independence and contrarianism. And so Tucker is really good at like finding ways that he sort of the MAGA crowd seem very independent. People will flock to that. Whereas Ben Shapiro has been a little bit more of a cheerleader for traditional right wing views, particularly on Israel at a time when Israel is increasingly unpopular with grassroots in both parties. And I wouldn't attribute his fall entirely to the Israel issue, but I do think it's illustrative of him unwilling to kind of cater to the changing demands of the America first movement. Also, his content is just a little stale. He's been doing it for so long that it's not really bringing a lot of new people to the table. And he could have just hit a ceiling. Right. If he has, I don't know, it's something like 7 or 8 million YouTube subscribers. Is that the ceiling for this type of format on the platform? Like there's just not more people that want to listen to that kind of stuff.
- [26:29]
Tommy Vietor
Do you see any kind of analogous dynamic on the left in left media or even like the beginnings of one? And is there, is there sort of a lesson or maybe a warning for liberals and Democrats in this?
- [26:44]
Kyle Tharp
It's you, John. It's you guys. No, I think, you know, I do
- [26:47]
Tommy Vietor
think we're gonna go straight conspiracy from now on.
- [26:50]
Kyle Tharp
Yeah, I do think what's really interesting is all of these investments and this growth in sort of a new liberal media ecosystem and particularly these individual personalities and creators is creating a bench of new gatekeepers on the left. You think about people like podcast, I really like. I've had it with Jennifer Welch. She has her own political views and opinions that when a candidate, particularly a 2028 presidential candidate, potentially goes on her show, they're going to want to cater to what they already know and research that she believes and say the right things for her. That goes for all of these different folks. You know, some candidates are going to want to go on your show and some are going to be a little bit more scared maybe based on your past opinions. And so. So that new bench of gatekeepers is going to really. I hope that a lot of these folks understand the influence that they have on both their audience and on the candidates in the party and even the party's platform moving forward. Because you see what happens when there are these giant juggernauts like Candace Owens and Ben Shapiro and Tucker Carlson, Steve Bannon all feuding against each other. It's creating serious divisions and creates entire news cycles of drama that then become a distraction for their entire side. You've seen it like little micro dramas have played out. I mentioned the California gubernatorial race. I think the race earlier this year between James Talarico and Jasmine Crockett got a little nasty with some mid tier influencers feuding and accusing each other of things online. And as these creators on the left continue to grow, I expect to see a whole lot more of that quick
- [28:23]
Tommy Vietor
one, because this surprised me. You found Fox News is now big on TikTok of all places.
- [28:28]
Kyle Tharp
I know.
- [28:29]
Tommy Vietor
And then also since the Iran war started, you found major mainstream news brands growing on, on TikTok faster than they have in years. What, what do you think's going on there?
- [28:39]
Kyle Tharp
Yeah, it's weird. I mean, you think about when, when a lot of people think about TikTok, they think about individual creators doing, you know, cultural trends, whatnot, or even individual news creators explaining, you know, the, the news of the day direct to camera to their audiences. But in recent months, it seems like the platform and its algorithm have really prioritized legacy news brands that are spreading news clips to their audiences, growing really, really quickly. This British tabloid, the Daily Mail, has always been one of the biggest news brands on the platform, which was really striking to a lot of people. But over the past year, Fox News in particular, they really didn't have a major presence on the platform during the 2024 election and they somewhat tripled their posting cadence. TikTok is a major volume gain and these legacy news brands have a lot of video clips that they're able to post and share. And so they have grown super rapidly, outpacing a lot of their other sort of more mainstream counterparts, as have really any of these outlets, whether it's Al Jazeera, BBC posting content about the war. Some could say it's kind of a good thing that users are being fed more like authoritative information about the news of the day. Obviously the increase in conservative content on the platform, in my view, not a great thing. The platform changed to ownership in January and I've been really monitoring it closely to see how politics on TikTok has shifted in these past few months. And I'll probably write something about it in the coming weeks, but it's something to keep an eye on. I mean, like I said earlier, it's a place where people, millions of Americans, continue to get their news information and folks need to pay attention to it.
- [30:24]
Tommy Vietor
It's interesting that it seems like the key there is that it's a volume game and if you are a big enough media organization, and this is probably a lesson for folks on the left who have this capacity like your Ms. Nows and places like that, and you just pump out more clips on TikTok, you're gonna grow your audience.
- [30:43]
Kyle Tharp
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, during the 2024 election, I was leading the national team at Courier, which is progressive newsroom.
- [30:49]
Tommy Vietor
Oh yeah, huge.
- [30:50]
Kyle Tharp
We really, yeah, we really focused on TikTok as a strategy. My team, I think in the final, you know, couple weeks of the election, we were posting something like 300, 400 videos a week on TikTok. Original pieces, both news aggregation and original content. And that volume gain is really, really important to kind of feed the beast of that algorithm. And as a result, we grew zero to several million really rapidly.
- [31:13]
Tommy Vietor
The topic I really wanted to get into that we've mentioned a few times now, is are these sort of the paid influencer world now? Both parties are now spending like millions per cycle. Paying these influencers. Most of it is invisible to people who are watching walk all of us through this world like we know not nothing. How does a campaign actually engage creators? Who's paid, who's unpaid, who's brokering these deals? How does it all work?
- [31:41]
Kyle Tharp
So there's a couple ways that a political campaign might work with creators. The first is really straightforward. Comms team reaches out to a major social media influencer whose audience they want to reach and they just want to partner and have a conversation with them. Maybe they'll connect the candidate directly with them. Friendly, you know, basic surrogacy, no money exchanged. And that's really common. You know, folks just want to support campaigns like minded, whatever. Increasingly, though, creator marketing is being seen as a paid media technique for these campaigns. And while it has been doing that, you know, since the 2020 election, at least on the presidential level, it's really moved down ballot this year. So campaigns will either pay creators directly to post content, maybe they will pay them per post. They could, in some cases I've seen they're paying $10,000 a post to post something favorable about a candidate. They may have them on retainer. So one campaign in California claimed that they were not paying an influencer to post, but they gave him $400,000 to be just a digital strategist, which had nothing to do with the size of his audience, I'm sure the post that he was making. And then another way that campaigns do this is that they work with an intermediary creator marketing firm. So there's a, there's a half dozen creator marketing firms on the left, there's a half dozen creator marketing firms on the right. And everyone from a presidential campaign to an organization like Planned Parenthood or something, an advocacy group, will pay these firms to run short term creator marketing campaigns. And what those firms do is they go out and find, find social media influencers across platforms large and small, different interest groups, different audiences, and they'll send them a creative brief. They'll say, we want you to talk about abortion rights in California and why it's really important to pay attention to that issue this fall. And then those creators will receive a set amount of money. Maybe they'll be paid on a conversion basis. Maybe they'll be paid for how many views they get on their content. Maybe they'll just be paid a flat fee per post and they go do that. Now, you would think some of these creators will disclose in the comments, like, this is a paid partnership with X campaign. But the vast majority of the time these paid relationships go undisclosed. And so no one in the audience understands, like, who is paying for this message. Is this something that the influencer really believes or not? It's becoming a huge issue. Every week it seems like there's new reporting and investigations happening about this money changing hands. And like I said, you know, one candidate in California recently spent millions of dollars on this.
- [34:22]
Tommy Vietor
Is this the Steyer campaign?
- [34:24]
Kyle Tharp
The Steyr campaign? Yeah, for sure. I think they paid one influencer $400,000. They were paying random people that weren't even in California just $10 to create a video of them backing Steyer online, I guess to create some sort of organic engagement and some. Yeah, it's wild. And I joke a lot to reporters and folks here in D.C. that like, come 2028, some of these campaigns that are running for president are just going to be handing YouTubers like bags of cash. There's not a lot we can do about it. This week, a member of Congress, Mark Takano from Riverside, California, who watched all of this play out in the California gubernatorial race and was really upset about it and thought it was disingenuous that this undisclosed stuff is happening and he wants to start a conversation on Capitol Hill. He introduced a bill to require FEC disclosures and these types of things like you see in political TV advertising. But it's got a long way to go. He's got a lot of work to do on education. And of course there's going to be tons of different loopholes that need to be addressed.
- [35:23]
Tommy Vietor
So how did the Steyer paid influence campaign end up Coming to light, like, was it, it, was it, was it the fec? I mean, because. So there's no disclosure requirements whatsoever. Like, was it their campaign finance reports?
- [35:38]
Kyle Tharp
It was campaign finance filings. So people, you know, notice X amount of money being paid to a certain LLC or a certain creator's name. And, and then they sort of went back and found out like, oh, they're spending this much money on creative marketing. I think they paid a couple creative marketing firms to run their campaigns too. And so you can definitely find out about this on the campaign finance side. But in some cases, creators will have their own sort of Delaware based Anonymous LLC that they will use. So it's just like paying any other consultant. It's really opaque. I think California does have some modest disclosure laws and some folks were accusing the Steyer campaign of violating those laws. But, but generally most states do not have any sort of regulation of this.
- [36:21]
Tommy Vietor
And we should say that it's. It wasn't just. I think Steyer's campaign sort of got the bulk of the attention on this. I think Becerra had some issues too. And it's happening sort of all over the place, for sure. I watched your interview or I read your interview with, with Congressman Takano and he said something about the legislation he introduced that sort of stuck with me, which is the bill tries to draw a line between a creator who's, who's a genuine paid advisor and one who's become, in his word, was a mouthpiece.
- [36:50]
Jon Favreau
That seems tricky to do.
- [36:53]
Tommy Vietor
And I don't know that the like is the, is the fact that a creator becomes a paid advisor for the campaign. Like better in a way than a creator who's just posting as a mouthpiece. Like, I'm not quite sure I know what the difference between being a paid advisor and a mouthpiece is.
- [37:09]
Kyle Tharp
Yeah, I mean, I think, I think what they're trying to avoid there is a campaign hires a communications director who just happens to have 100,000 followers on Twitter or something. And as long as the vast majority of the work that they do for the campaign is not posting on their personal socials, then they would be exempted from the disclosure. But I think the reason why they wrote it is the one example from the Steyr campaign where they presumably paid a creator $400,000 to, to be a mouthpiece for the campaign and that creator said that it was just for advising.
- [37:51]
Jon Favreau
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- [39:18]
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Kyle Tharp
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- [39:47]
Tommy Vietor
Oh yeah, it's a World cup holder. Like the soccer tournament. World cup holder for the world. Fits every car, holds every cup.
- [39:55]
Jon Favreau
It has a Carvana logo. Carvana made it.
- [39:57]
Tommy Vietor
They buy and sell cars.
- [39:59]
Jon Favreau
So they made a car cup holder. So.
- [40:02]
Tommy Vietor
Got any good cups lately?
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- [40:04]
Kyle Tharp
I just couldn't figure out where in
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Ad Read / Sponsor Voice
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- [40:06]
Tommy Vietor
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- [40:08]
Jon Favreau
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- [40:11]
Tommy Vietor
sign up today to win yours@cup-holder2026.com not authorized or endorsed by FIFA. Not a real product for parody and fair use purposes only. Practical advice for listeners because probably everyone listening consumes this content. Like, how can you tell when you're watching paid content?
- [40:29]
Jon Favreau
Are there tells?
- [40:31]
Tommy Vietor
Like, does paid content even look different
- [40:32]
Jon Favreau
from true believer content?
- [40:34]
Tommy Vietor
What do you think?
- [40:35]
Kyle Tharp
Here's my thing is like, I don't really buy that, like pay to post political creator messaging is like very effective whatsoever. If you give Jon Favreau a long list of talking points for you to say on an issue and you just kind of read those out in order to get your $10 for your user generated content or whatever is, that's not as convincing as you actually believing in the issue. And you want to tell your audience about it because you think it's so important and so a much more authentic way of engaging these people with very large audiences and reaching their audiences, I think would be beneficial to all of these campaigns.
- [41:14]
Tommy Vietor
Yeah, one thing the whole thing does is it increases people's cynicism of you when you're not being paid. But you really do have a genuine belief about a candidate or a cause that you say, say like people now just assume that you're, you're getting paid by the campaign. And you know, it's, it's tough to blame them if this is sort of, if this whole like creator paid creator economy is out there and without any kind of disclosure or regulation. But I do think that it is, it is. Overall, whether it's effective or not, whether the actual, you know, paying for it is, is more effective politically, I do think it sort of damages the overall sort of political ecosystem because it just increases cynicism and distrust in the process, which is already sky high.
- [41:58]
Kyle Tharp
Absolutely. And also like, there's this thing online where like, you know, people on Twitter, particularly from the left, will be like, are you paid by the DNC to do this? And I'm like, girl, the DNC does not have the money to pay these people. So no, but yeah, it's like there's, there's a, there's already a lot of people that are very distrustful. Particularly, you know, I saw this a lot like during the early Biden presidential reelect, people were like, you're not genuinely excited about Joe Biden. Why are you posting favorable content about this? And last fall during the off year elections, there was a lot of content favorable to Abigail Spanberger and Mikey Sherrill. And some of it was like, get ready with me while I go vote for Mikey Sherrill. Because XYZ I'm like, this is 100% paid.
- [42:45]
Jon Favreau
How does the Republican paid influencer ecosystem differ from the Democratic one.
- [42:50]
Tommy Vietor
I would guess it's older, maybe better funded, more comfortable with non disclosure, but maybe not. I don't know. You probably have actual data.
- [42:56]
Kyle Tharp
A lot of it revolves around Twitter, so X particularly because Trump is in power. There are a ton of corporations and lobbying groups that are paying far right influencers like Laura Loomer and others to, to, you know, post content about their pet issue. So like one day you will see Laura Loomer and a bunch of others talking about why some random legislation is important to the government of India and you're like, that is 100% paid. And people have slowly been publishing investigations and receipts of this. I think in one instance I saw a bunch of right wing influencers were paid $50 just to hit the retweet button on a post. Others were being paid $1,000 just to copy and paste certain posts. And this is all in hopes of getting in front of Republican elected officials who are all addicted to using the app personally and they know that they can get their stuff in front of the big guy in the White House as well. So I think X is just like a really, really important platform for them. And you know, they, they really aren't as much on, on platforms like TikTok. There are a lot of corporations, particularly like the crypto industry, the AI industry, the prediction markets that are spending a lot of money on this type of stuff, particularly because Trump is in the White House.
- [44:16]
Tommy Vietor
Lovely, lovely.
- [44:17]
Kyle Tharp
Yeah, that's great.
- [44:18]
Tommy Vietor
I want to ask about Substack. You wrote a piece on this and argued that the biggest political voices on substack skew progressive. How much do you think of a counterweight? Substack is to the right's apparatus. Newsletter readers are the most engaged, most educated slice of the electorate. Do you think that is influence? Is that now all the substack people are in a bubble and talking to the same people. Like, how do you, how do you think about that?
- [44:46]
Kyle Tharp
Yeah, I very much view Substack similar to Blue sky in the sense that it's like, it's very liberal. Vast majority of particularly political and news publications are left leaning and a lot of the folks that have succeeded there are, are mostly opinion based, anti maga, anti Trump voices. You think of people like Don Lemon or Jim Acosta, Heather Cox Richardson. A lot of these folks are speaking to the same kind of older crowd. I think of college educated people that are just looking for content to consume and like I said, it's really monetizable. So it is kind of its own eco chamber. I think It's a really powerful tool. I appreciate the platform. I've used it before. I'm currently on competitive platform called Beehive. But it kind of came into, you know, came of age at the same time that a lot of people were leaving X because of Elon Musk's takeover. And so that's where a lot of people went. In addition to like threats and blue sky. I do think it's, it's really impactful, particularly I've seen a lot of Democratic candidates starting to join it. It's a good way to connect directly with your audience in their email inbox. I'm sure it could help with fundraising. Q and A's, the substack live stuff is really important. But I do think that there is a major, major, major issue with the fact that so many Democrats and left leaning voices left X because of, of Elon Musk's thing while mainstream political journalists remain on the platform and are just scrolling looking for stories and it's like quietly skewing their perception of our politics and, and how political narratives are spread.
- [46:23]
Tommy Vietor
So people have been saying that you know, X is dying and has become, you know, a wasteland since even before Elon took over. But especially I do think in the last like it has gotten really bad now just in terms of the content you speak. I think because so many people have left, it really is like the most right leaning platform around. Like you're just not getting any. You get journalists, you get sort of like Democratic strategists and electeds and then you've just got right wing is the rest of it.
- [46:53]
Kyle Tharp
Oh, and it's all so negative. I mean you log on, it's like going to war. It's like, wow, why? I didn't even plan on like yelling at random strangers today, but here I am am like furiously typing like I can't help it. Yeah, yeah, it's really bad. You know, I've done some research into what accounts are get what political accounts are getting the most views on the platform. I think I published something like a year ago or so and surprise, surprise, like Elon Musk's account is like the biggest, most viewed account on the entire platform. And it's because there are multiple reports alleging that he's instructed, you know, X's engineers to, to serve all of his content to everyone, all the time. And he's more likely to engage with some of these right leaning influencers which then boost their content. And so it's overwhelmingly a conservative platform, at least in the content that's that's fed to the vast majority of users in the political space. And it's a real shame. It's, it's super powerful. I think we, we don't talk enough about the, the influence of the platform and like I said, like, it's a place where news cycles that disseminate through CNN and Politico, New York Times, whatever, and become a larger issue kind of start and bubble up.
- [48:02]
Tommy Vietor
Yeah, that is the central sort of paradox or tension with X, which is, it is garbage. It is very right wing, but it still. And it does have a small user base, smaller than most of the other platforms. But that doesn't mean that the influence has decreased all that much because so many journalists are still on the platform. And whether they like to admit it or not, you know, even subconsciously, the content that they're getting there and what they're reading there is, is seeping into coverage. It is seeping into decisions that political campaigns make and Democratic politicians like it is, it is, it is tough to get around.
- [48:39]
Kyle Tharp
Absolutely. Yep.
- [48:40]
Tommy Vietor
Let's talk 2028. I won't ask you to make any predictions, but maybe we can sort of grade the digital strategies of the, of the potential 2028 candidates. You've written about Josh Shapiro as the influen governor, about Gavin Newsom having a very good year online, about Ro Khanna flooding the zone. Like, who do you think actually understands this environment? Who doesn't seem to get it yet, who's sort of missing altogether?
- [49:04]
Kyle Tharp
I very much view the 2028 Democratic primary for president is like well underway and it has been for, for many months. And so seeing what types of media appearances that these folks are doing, what types of influencers they're doing content with is, is going to be really illustrative of how they're going to run a campaign a year from now. I talked a lot about Josh Shapiro, his team. He has a team of folks that work explicitly on influencer engagement and do all sorts of less conventional, I would say, sort of collaborations and content work. Sports creators like golf, podcasters. He's a big sports guy and so he's talking both in state and out of state with people that are very non political. Whereas, whereas Gavin Newsom is playing all the hits, he's hitting all the big political creators because ever since the early 2000s blogger era, he's been building relationships with these types of new media voices. I think one of the most interesting things I saw last year was that the lack of podcasts and major influencer collabs from Alexandria Ocasio Cortez. She really kept a low profile last year while others were flooding the zone Zone. I mentioned Ro khanna doing like 60 or 70 podcasts and now she's just started to, it seems like in the past month or two, start to do a little bit of unexpected content plays and collaborations and interviews with different folks. Just this week I saw a video of her from, from more Perfect Union video startup on YouTube. Going down to Georgia, meeting with residents upset about data centers. And to me that read immediately like a 2028, you know, content play, testing the waters both in the south and on an issue that's going a lot to voters. So yeah, people are angling, you know, some people are running ads like Pete Buttigieg is out there grassroots fundraising online all the time. It'll be really interesting to see like, you know, how they staff up, how they think about online creator engagement, what podcast they're willing to go on, which ones are they like dead scared of going on. I feel very bad for Rahm Emanuel's communications team because, you know, he's getting hounded on all of these podcasts. So yeah, it's gonna be, it's gonna be fun to watch.
- [51:22]
Tommy Vietor
Yeah, I always say we had Tommy interviewed Rahm the day before I interviewed Hassan Piker when they both came into the office themselves. And let me tell you, the reactions
- [51:33]
Jon Favreau
to both interviews, pretty bad in different directions. But I will say that the, the
- [51:38]
Tommy Vietor
comments on Rahm's were not much better than Hasan's, I'm sure. I do think the Shapiro thing is, is interesting because, because I would have said Shapiro's ex presence is like your typical cut and paste press office statement. He doesn't seem like he's anywhere but. But also I am a just political junkie and all I consume is political news. Whereas like you said, Gavin is trying to be like the king of the highly engaged political junkies online all the time. The, the like resistant libs, resistance libs or blue maga or whatever you want
- [52:11]
Jon Favreau
call to call it.
- [52:12]
Tommy Vietor
And it does, it does strike me that if you're going to try to reach beyond just Democratic primary voters and the highly engaged, you probably do want to have a strategy that gets you outside the political bubble.
- [52:24]
Kyle Tharp
Yeah, absolutely. I mean the point of this new media environment is that there's a thousand different ways that a thousand different groups of people are consuming thousand different formats and types of information. And so, you know, I, I think a good digital strategy in this age is stuff that, that you and I will never see or hear about. It's like little appearances on niche podcasts, collaborations with different influencers in different states. That, yeah, is meant to reach different types of people.
- [52:52]
Tommy Vietor
You mentioned AOC's trip to Georgia on data centers. You've called data centers maybe the defining issue of the election. I know you've done some like, you know, reporting on this where you've gone yourself to West Virginia. Talk about why, why you think it's, it's such a defining issue. And what you found and, and what struck me about it is, is it, is it one of these issues where sort of the mainstream press or the legacy media is talking about it A little. But if you sat in a focus group or you actually went and talked to some people on the ground in different states, they would be talking about it a lot more than you hear about it in the news. Almost like, you know, analogous, maybe on the right to like the Epstein files back in 2024.
- [53:38]
Kyle Tharp
I'm so into this issue. I'm, I'm like black pilled. I, it's like all I think about. I, I think there's just, it's such a fascinating issue for so many different reasons. One, you know, people don't want these like, hulking monstrosities in their backyards. Particularly where a lot of these things are being built is in like, wilderness areas near like pastoral, beautiful farmland. And people move, move to be. People live in farm country because they want to live next to farms and not giant cement warehouses. And so that issue is just cutting across both Republican and Democratic constituencies in a way that I haven't seen a lot of issues do. So in D.C. so many people that are focused on it are like, oh, it's about energy costs going up in water. Once we address those, it's going to be okay. But it's actually like people just don't want to live next to these giant things that like, give off heat. And you know, it's just like, it's insane. So I think, you know, what I'm really worried about is Democrats in D.C. listening to sort of some of these policy think tanks and not really thinking about, like just trying to make the issue work and not really thinking about how visceral the reaction is in many communities to these things just coming in and bulldozing thousands of acres of land. The place I went to in West Virginia over Memorial Day weekend, small county. I mean, you couldn't go 50 yards in the entire county without seeing a yard sign planted that said no data center in Tucker County. Wow. And what happened with that one is the state legislature passed a law in 2025 banning localities from doing any regulation of data centers. And the mayors of the towns in this county, county found out about the data center coming through like an ad in the newspaper. So no local input. It just touches on so many different flashpoints in our politics. And I really do think some free advice for Democrats is that potential presidential candidate JD Vance is very tied to this industry and the people behind it. And so if I were giving them advice, I would say to lean in pretty hard.
- [55:50]
Tommy Vietor
Do you see it getting a lot of traction online in a lot of these platforms and different online communities?
- [55:56]
Kyle Tharp
Yeah. That's one thing I didn't mention. Once I started consuming anti data center content, it's like all the algorithms would feed me was every other post was anti data center content. And it was the most stunning breadth and depth. I saw like country singers posting about data centers in Utah. I saw environmental folks in Kentucky, some folks in Appalachia, local news in Mississippi, Nebraska. You know, this week that I was digging really deep into, all of this type of content was just surfacing. A really diverse array of small, like not paid creators, people with 5,000 followers on Instagram or whatever talking about what was happening in their communities and urging people to go to county meetings and protest. Yeah, it's one of the fastest growing issues that I've seen in the political space online. Saw, you know, Google search interest in data centers is way, way up historic highs, particularly over the past six months. And posts about it from all sorts of different political accounts are peaking right now. So it's something that politicians aren't going to be able to not pay attention to.
- [57:00]
Tommy Vietor
I do think it's a fascinating contrast what you just mentioned, which is we talked earlier about this sort of paid creator influencer economy campaign, spending all this money so to get creators to like melt their talking points. And is it even effective? Because it just seems so inorganic. And then you've got this issue bubbling up that cuts across party lines where there's such genuine authentic anger around it that Democrats and Republicans too just could be sort of missing out on maybe one of the most important issues to most people in the country or to at least a lot of people in the country.
- [57:35]
Kyle Tharp
Absolutely. I mean I've saw like posts from like right, right wing chambers of commerce and rural counties opposing these things. I mean it's, it's really across the partisan divide and it's going to be really interesting to see like how folks adapt to it, particularly in the midterms. Like it's it's right in front of us.
- [57:51]
Jon Favreau
Kyle Tharp, thank you so much for for joining.
- [57:54]
Tommy Vietor
This was. This was really fun. Everyone go subscribe to the Chaotic Era. It's a fantastic newsletter and and thanks
- [58:00]
Jon Favreau
for all you're doing.
- [58:01]
Kyle Tharp
Thanks for having me.
- [58:02]
Tommy Vietor
Take of care.
- [58:02]
Jon Favreau
Take care. Offline is a crooked media production. It's written and hosted by me, Jon Favreau. It's produced by Emma Ilech Frank. Austin Fisher is our senior producer and Anisha Banerjee is our associate producer. Audio support from Charlotte Landis. Adrian Hill is our head of news and politics. Matt De Groat is our VP of production. Jordan Katz and Kenny Siegel take care of our music. Thanks to Delon Villanueva, Eric Schutt, and our digital team who film and share our episodes as videos. Every week, our production staff is proudly unionized with the Writers Guild of America.