(Julianna Frieman, Headline USA) CNN’s Van Jones criticized the Democrat Party for underestimating Republican President-elect Donald Trump’s digital campaign strategy Thursday on Erin Burnett Outfront.
Trump defeated Vice President Kamala Harris early Wednesday following a campaign packed with podcast appearances, most notably a three-hour conversation on The Joe Rogan Experience days before Election Day.
Jones reflected on Democrats who scoffed at the Trump campaign’s online appeal, saying his party should not have mocked the Republican president-elect’s digital strategy.
“And here’s how we got beat. We got beat because the Republicans and the conservatives built a different media system that had to do with online, it had to do with podcasts, it had to do with streaming platforms,” Jones pointed out. “They were spending their money there.”
Jones said Democrats underestimated the impact of Trump’s digital campaign.
“We were laughing at them! And knocking on doors in Philadelphia and Detroit, ‘There’s no Trump people! They’re not dropping literature. But knocking on doors… ha ha ha!’” he said.
Van Jones admits Democrats were whooped by the MAGA online conservative media ecosystem.
Door-knocking is for clowns and fools.
Trump had a different approach to get out the vote.pic.twitter.com/bPQiDP7lms
— Citizen Free Press (@CitizenFreePres) November 8, 2024
CNN host Erin Burnett agreed that Democrats were laughing at Trump for relying on billionaire Elon Musk, who helms the social media platform X and Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk.
The Trump campaign took on a new life on popular Gen Z social media platform TikTok, where he accumulated millions more followers and views than Harris.
Musk’s ownership of X also allowed for Trump campaign content to thrive online.
“We were making fun of Donald Trump for having thrown away his ground game and doing some weird stuff online. We thought that they were idiots,” Jones said. “It turned out we were the idiots.”
“We woke up in a body bag because while we were knocking on doors, they were making these phones into 24-hour-a-day political weapons for themselves,” the CNN commentator said.
Jones acknowledged that Republicans did a better job campaigning.
“We got outflanked, outplayed, out-beat by people who told us the whole time that they knew what they were doing,” Jones said.
Julianna Frieman is a freelance writer published by the Daily Caller, Headline USA, The Federalist, and The American Spectator. Follow her on Twitter at @JuliannaFrieman.
