“Hot Ones,” the popular YouTube show hosted by Sean Evans, has reached viral status since its debut in 2015, snagging bigger and bigger celebrity guests to publicly suffer through tiny bites of chicken (or cauliflower, if they’re vegetarian) slathered with some of the hottest hot sauces on the market. Now on its 25th season, recent guests have included Jimmy Fallon, Paul Mescal, Bowen Yang, with even Demi Moore signing on for a special Thanksgiving appearance, but there’s one very notable figure who was shut out from the opportunity to prove that they can withstand the “hot seat,” Kamala Harris.
During an election post-mortem episode of the “Pod Save America” podcast, Jen O’Malley Dillon, the Harris-Walz campaign chair, Quentin Fulks, deputy campaign manager, and senior advisors Stephanie Cutter and David Plouffe revealed that they reached out to “Hot Ones” about having their candidate on during a point in Harris’ campaign where she was angling for appearances on non-political shows, in an effort to appeal to young voters, but the creators of the show declined the request.
According to Stephanie Cutter, who ran messaging and media strategy for Harris, the show “didn’t want to delve into politics.”
Per The Daily Beast’s coverage of the Harris campaign team’s remarks on the rejection, Cutter said they “got that reaction nearly ‘across the board’ when trying to book the Democratic nominee on the same types of non-political media that happily welcomed Trump.”
“I don’t think he had the same problem,” Harris campaign manager Jen O’Malley Dillon chimed in, adding that Trump “certainly was able to tap into some cultural elements in ways that we couldn’t.”
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