We support our Publishers and Content Creators. You can view this story on their website by CLICKING HERE.
Vice President Kamala Harris’ failed presidential campaign reportedly wasted six figures just to build a set for a barely seen podcast appearance.
Recall that last month, Harris appeared on the salacious “Call Her Daddy” sex podcast where she received fewer than one million views on YouTube.
Contrast that with the 47 million views minimum that President-elect Donald Trump’s appearance on Joe Rogan’s podcast received on YouTube.
Regardless, it turns out that Harris’ campaign spent six figures just to build a set for her podcast appearance, according to reporting from the Washington Examiner.
“Money can’t buy you love or a good candidate,” a Trump campaign adviser quipped to the Examiner.
Republican political strategist Brad Todd, meanwhile, argued that Harris’ loss isn’t a lesson on money being irrelevant in elections. It’s instead an indictment of the vice president’s bad messaging.
“Advertising is a pretty important source of information for swing voters,” he said. “It no doubt matters, but it’s not enough.”
“It doesn’t matter if you have the wrong message and it’s not delivered in a compelling way. What her campaign was missing was any effort to break with the unpopular administration she has been a part of,” he added.
True.
Still, there’s no doubt that Harris wasted a lot of money — up to $1 billion, in fact, as previously reported. She spent so much that by the end of the election, her campaign was reportedly $20 million in debt:
Kamala Harris’s campaign ended with at least $20 million in debt, per two sources familiar. Harris raised over $1 billion and had $118 million in the bank as of Oct. 16.
— Christopher Cadelago (@ccadelago) November 7, 2024
How did this happen? Because Harris’ campaign chair Jen O’Malley Dillon wasted oodles of money hosting lavish concerts with the vice president’s celebrity allies.
“Jen blew through a billion dollars in a few months, and it was all Jen’s idea to do all the concerts,” a campaign staffer told Breitbart’s Matthew Boyle earlier this week.
They added that Dillon pursued these “concerts” with the likes of Eminem, Katy Perry, Lizzo, and more at the expense of “prioritizing and spending money on social media and other campaign priorities.”
There were also traveling expenses, advertising expenses, payroll expenses, and consultant expenses.
“Much of the Harris campaign’s spending was allocated for digital media advertising, polling, and travel from state to state, including to a private jet company called Advanced Aviation,” the Examiner notes. “Payroll and the taxes that accompanied it accounted for $56.6 million of the Harris campaign’s spending.”
“In comparison, the Trump campaign reported spending $9 million on payroll — employing hundreds fewer staff members. There was also the army of political, digital, and media consultants who were paid over $12.8 million by the Harris campaign, filings show,” the reporting continues.
One vendor, Village Marketing Agency, was paid $3.9 million to recruit popular social media influencers to promote Harris. Another company, Oprah Winfrey’s Harpo Productions, was paid $1 million.
Meanwhile, the campaign still has bills to pay.
“Apparently a group in Georgia had to lay off 100 people because they couldn’t pay them,” Boyle reported on Twitter/X. “It’s unclear at this time if the campaign PAID the talent to perform but the cost of production for the events was ‘immense.’”
“What’s more, this Kamala campaign staffer said several people who were working for the Kamala Harris for President campaign are still awaiting several overdue payments they were promised for their work. IE, they didn’t pay the staff,” he added.
‘Explosive’ scandal brewing inside Kamala campaign proves America ‘dodged a bullet’ https://t.co/F2I5SFScys
— BPR (@BIZPACReview) November 7, 2024
Some staffers are now even blaming Dillon for Harris’ loss.
“People didn’t like working with her,” Boyle’s source said. “Many people on the campaign felt like we lost because Kamala wasn’t allowed to run her campaign. They were running Joe Biden’s campaign instead of a Kamala campaign.”
The source added that Dillon was “obnoxious and very much a gatekeeper and [kept] interfering with the vice president’s people who were trying to do their job.”
The money situation is so bad that deputy campaign manager Rob Flaherty “is currently shopping around the Kamala fundraising email list to anyone who wants it to try to raise the money back,” according to Boyle.
We have no tolerance for comments containing violence, racism, profanity, vulgarity, doxing, or discourteous behavior. If a comment is spam, instead of replying to it please click the ∨ icon below and to the right of that comment. Thank you for partnering with us to maintain fruitful conversation.