Why Hunter Biden thinks Democrats lost the 2024 election
Speaking on the At Our Table podcast, Hunter Biden argued that the party lost despite the advantages of incumbency and a successful administration.
Democrats chose to elevate Kamala Harris over Joe Biden for the presidential ticket after Joe Biden's disappointing debate performance against Donald Trump.
It took weeks for Joe Biden to agree to withdraw from the presidential race, during which time the Democratic Party experienced internal turmoil.
Hunter Biden believes that if the party had remained loyal to his father, the election outcome would have been different, even though Kamala Harris revitalized support among young voters.
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Times
an hour ago
- Times
‘I was the Trump team': how the Podcast Election was won
The president's social media strategist has had a busy morning stirring up online outrage. In the past few hours Alex Bruesewitz has condemned Democrats as a 'pathetic group of people', denounced critics of Jair Bolsonaro, the former president of Brazil, as 'far-left maniacs' and shared a post of the 'horrible' liberal podcast host Alex Cooper being booed at a baseball game. Bruesewitz, 28, has been starting arguments like this professionally for a decade but now, sipping a glass of water at the Waldorf Astoria in Washington, in a well-fitted navy blue suit, he is relaxed and even polite. He co-founded X Strategies, a company that counsels conservatives on how to win social media wars, when he was 19. Last year he was the architect of the podcast game plan credited with helping Donald Trump to win back the White House. Today he is at the heart of the administration's ultra-combative communications operation, working as a hired gun because he is planning to get married and thinks that it is 'a little bit difficult' to afford a wedding on a government salary. Often the best ideas are not his, he says. Take some of the viral memes — of Trump dressed as the Pope, or Gaza rendered as a holiday resort (Gaza-Lago), or the AI-generated cartoon of a crying migrant — that have driven huge clicks and controversy, amplified by the president's social platforms. Bruesewitz says they are generated by Trump 's fans, whom he calls 'really talented people'. 'These guys make some of the best memes, and they're bus drivers in small towns across the country,' he says. 'And they get off of work and they go home and they open their computer, they tell their wife they love them and they log on to X for the next five hours of their life. And they're making hilarious memes of the president or videos of the president.' But it was podcasts, not memes, that really sealed his reputation. During the 2024 campaign, which became known as the 'podcast election' because of the extent to which the format often seemed to usurp traditional media, Trump appeared on 20 episodes. Most were hosted by young men and popular with young men. These appearances reached 23.5 million Americans in an average week, compared with 6.4 million for his Democratic opponent, Kamala Harris. Subsequently 56 per cent of men aged 18 to 29 backed Trump in 2024, up from 41 per cent in 2020. Trump's podcast circuit has been depicted as a long pitch to the 'right-wing manosphere'. Bruesewitz thinks this is unfair. 'None of the podcasters we sat down with during that period were Trump lovers,' he says. Instead, he calls them 'equal-opportunity critics' — hosts who have been critical of Trump on certain issues, and critical of Democrats on others. He also notes that Trump saw a bounce among young women, up from 33 per cent in 2020 to 40 per cent in 2024. Podcasts worked for the candidate because they suited his unique political skills, he says. 'The greatness about President Trump is that he knows all the issues, and he also has charisma that is unrivalled in the political space,' Bruesewitz says. In general, little to no preparation was needed. 'I think over-prepping your candidates is what kind of trips you up.' Underpreparing has its pitfalls too. Rapid rise In the last few days of the election The Atlantic described Bruesewitz as a 'terminally online troll and perpetual devil on the campaign's shoulder' who had urged JD Vance to amplify the lie that illegal Haitian immigrants were stealing and eating pets. The magazine also reported that it was Bruesewitz who had personally advocated for the comedian Tony Hinchcliffe to appear at a Trump rally days before the election, at which he then called Puerto Rico a 'floating island of garbage' (Bruesewitz says both claims are untrue.) But Trump's subsequent victory cast him in a much more favourable light and Axios hailed him as 'one of the most influential political strategists in the US'. In February the Trump family appointed him senior adviser to the political action committee Never Surrender, entrusting him with running two of the president's social media accounts. His team of five, based in Florida, manage the @TrumpWarRoom and @TeamTrump handles, which are followed by millions (although the president still posts his own messages on Truth Social). Bruesewitz has also found time to meet some British conservatives. He met Kemi Badenoch, the leader of the Conservative Party, in London. 'I think she's a good person,' he says, adding that she's got the issues right but is in a tough position. 'The party that she leads now was led by imbeciles before.' On the Reform leader Nigel Farage, he says: 'He's probably the best in the UK and my advice to him has been to make sure you use your momentum and your platform to build up the voices of the next generation because he's not going to be hot for ever.' It all started with a tweet Bruesewitz's career started in April 2015 when he was 18 years old. He was sitting at his high school desk in the Wisconsin town of Ripon (population 7,900), 'and I posted a picture of the Trump Hotel in Chicago,' he says. 'And I said, 'the sign on Trump Chicago would look just as good on the White House'. And the president, then businessman Donald Trump, retweeted me.' Two months later, Trump announced his candidacy. 'And when he announced that he was running, I was sold already. I wanted to be like Donald Trump.' After high school, Bruesewitz skipped college and tried his hand at real estate, having admired the empire Trump had built. 'I didn't do so well in that,' he concedes. Trump's election in 2016 inspired Bruesewitz and his business partner Derek Utley to form X Strategies a year later. Their early clients included FreedomProject Academy, a Christian conservative homeschooling academy in central Wisconsin, and a father who lost his daughter in the Parkland school shooting in 2018. Utley and Bruesewitz represented the latter pro bono as he argued for more school security rather than fewer guns. Then came the 2020 election and Trump's claims of election fraud. Bruesewitz leapt to his defence on social media and made a speech in Washington's Freedom Plaza. When the BBC invited Bruesewitz on air, he argued with the presenter. 'Thank you for having me on,' he said, 'and I just want to make one thing very clear … your country's opinion stopped mattering in our country in 1776.' His sparring eventually got Donald Trump Jr's attention. 'He liked my tenacity online,' Bruesewitz says. 'He found me to be quite entertaining.' The two became friends and Don Jr introduced Bruesewitz to his father. 'I got to spend quality time with the president for the first time at a live golf tournament at his club in New Jersey,' he tells me. 'I ended up spending four and a half hours with the president that day.' They spoke about 'all things' — not just politics. 'And we've had a great relationship ever since.' After that, Bruesewitz poured his energy into attacking Republicans who had backed Trump's impeachment — not as an official Trump appointee but out of 'sheer patriotism and love of nation'. Eight out of ten of those Republicans either declined to stand in 2022 or lost their primary. 'We travelled [around] their campaign districts,' Bruesewitz says. 'I personally picked fights with Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger,' he says of the two anti-Trump Republican members of Congress, 'which was also great entertainment. I found great joy in that'. In November 2022, the Trump family finally hired Bruesewitz. His mission? To help beat Ron DeSantis, governor of Florida, to the Republican presidential nomination. That worked — and then came the general election. The podcast plan It was Trump's youngest son Barron, not Bruesewitz, who set up the first big podcast interview — with the 24-year-old online streamer and influencer Adin Ross — which proved the power of the format before the election. Bruesewitz calculated that clips from Trump's appearance were seen by 113 million people in the first 24 hours. When Bruesewitz presented the numbers to Trump, 'he flipped through it, and he was like, 'these numbers are massive''. Trump also thanked his 19-year-old son in a Truth Social post. 'And then about four or five days passed, and he kept texting me or calling me about how great that interview was.' Not long afterwards, Bruesewitz was called into the office of Susie Wiles, who helped manage Trump's election campaign and is now White House chief of staff. 'She's like, 'Alex, we've got to get him to do more of these.'' After that, they went all in. 'We lined them up, one major podcast a week, up until we did Rogan, which was like a week before the election,' Bruesewitz says. The appearance on The Joe Rogan Experience, the most popular podcast in the US, garnered more than 44 million views on YouTube by election day, allowing Trump to reach young, predominantly male voters, opining on topics such as martial arts, the possibility of life on Mars, and his admiration for William McKinley, the president who was assassinated in 1901. When I ask how Bruesewitz decided which podcasts Trump should do, he shrugs. 'I mean, I just went through something called Spotify and Spotify rankings. And I think we did eight of the ten podcasts on Spotify that were popular.' There was one conspicuous exception, however. Trump avoided Alex Cooper's Call Her Daddy, one of the most popular podcasts among young American women. Cooper, the 30-year-old host of the show, is beloved by her 'Daddy Gang' — some 70 per cent of whom are female, with 76 per cent under 35. In October Kamala Harris appeared on the podcast, discussing women's rights and abortion. Cooper later said her team had a Zoom call with Trump's team about the possibility of him appearing. Bruesewitz says that's not true. 'I was President Trump's team,' Bruesewitz says. 'I never had a conversation with Alex Cooper about going on the podcast. Her team reached out to me. We never responded. I would never put the president on Call Her Daddy.' Why not? 'Because one, she's terrible, she's terrible at what she does. I think personally. I think she's been a detriment to society with the content that she talks about.' And she's 'regressive', he says, 'when it comes to starting families and having happy, healthy relationships'. A source close to the Call Her Daddy team confirmed that a call about the president coming on the show occurred before the election in November 2024 with members of his campaign team, including discussing a suggestion by his staff that they film the episode at Mar-a-Lago. Unexpected love story Instead, looking for a female-friendly podcast to counter Harris's appearance on Call Her Daddy, he landed on a show called Girls Gone Bible. 'It's the No 2 religious podcast on Spotify,' he says. 'Massive following. They do these in-person shows where they get 1,000 young girls at each tour stop. They talk about Jesus and they pray over them. And it's actually really beautiful.' Bruesewitz organised a meeting between Trump and the hosts of Girls Gone Bible in Las Vegas. The night before, one of the hosts brought a glamorous friend to dinner. It was Carolina Urrea, the former Miss Nevada. 'Carolina walked in. I'm like, wow, who's that girl?' The following day, Carolina took a picture with Trump, who gave Bruesewitz a 'thumbs up'. The pair got engaged eight months later. Bruesewitz says his fiancée has 'strengthened my relationship with the Lord'. ALEX BRUESEWITZ/INSTAGRAM He sees his experience as part of a larger shift toward Christianity in America in recent years. 'Another trend is moving away from the girl boss attitude to the trad wife,' he says. 'I don't know if it was Covid that kind of made that switch where people were spending more time at home and they were, you know, learning to cook more and doing more things. But that trad culture started taking off big time.' • My day with the trad wife queen and what it taught me While podcasts helped Trump to reclaim the White House, the president has rarely appeared on them in his second term. Though he showed up last month on the New York Post's Pod Force One, Trump is spending most of his time these days on Truth Social and his old favourite: TV news. Bruesewitz, who describes Trump as 'a good friend of mine' thinks this could change. 'I think he'll eventually do some. You know, he's been very busy running the free world.' As for his own future, he says that Trump would have endorsed him to run for office if he had wanted to, but he didn't. 'I think Congress would be a little too boring for me.'
BBC News
an hour ago
- BBC News
Japan heads to polls in key test for Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba
Japanese voters headed to the polls on Sunday in a tightly contested election amid public frustration over rising prices and the imminent threat of US tariffs. The ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and its junior coalition partner Komeito need to secure a combined 50 seats to retain an overall majority in the upper house but the latest polling shows they might fall short. This election comes at a difficult time for Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba and his ruling coalition as US President Donald Trump ramps up pressure on Tokyo during tense tariff massive auto industry, which accounts for eight percent of the country's jobs, is reeling from painful levies already in place. Weak export data last week stoked fears that the world's fourth-largest economy could tip into a technical Ishiba securing an early meeting with Trump in February, and sending his trade envoy to Washington seven times, no agreement has been reached. For voters, tackling rising prices is a also a central cost of rice, a staple food for Japanese households, has nearly doubled since last year. For the past few months, the government has had to tap into its emergency stockpiles to tackle the shortage. Since last year's lower house election, which saw the coalition fall short of a majority, the LDP has not been able to regain the trust of voters who are disgruntled with stagnant wages and relentless inflation. Meanwhile, the populist Sanseito party, which has been using social media to attract younger voters, has seen a surge in popularity. Polls show its "Japanese First" slogan has struck a chord with some conservatives, although its hardline stance on foreigners has drawn party wants "stricter rules and limits" on immigration, opposes "globalism" and "radical" gender policies, and wants a re-think on decarbonisation and Ishiba's ruling coalition fails to secure 50 seats, it will have lost majority in both chambers of parliament, which could threaten his leadership and lead to political instability. Ishiba's centre-right party has governed Japan almost continuously since 1955, albeit with frequent changes of last time the LDP and Komeito failed to win a majority in the upper house was in 2010, having already fallen below the threshold in was followed by a rare change of government in 2009, when the now-defunct Democratic Party of Japan governed for a rocky three years.
The Guardian
3 hours ago
- The Guardian
Liberal and Labor leaders court crossbench after snap Tasmanian election delivers another hung parliament
Tasmania's premier and opposition leader have both reached out to independent MPs in the hope of forming government, after the Labor party lost ground in an early election it brought on. Saturday's snap poll, 16 months after the last election, returned another hung parliament with the Liberals so far securing 14 seats and Labor nine, as counting continued. Both parties will be short of the 18 seats required for majority, with the Liberal premier, Jeremy Rockliff, declaring victory on election night and saying he would try to form a minority government. Rockliff on Sunday told reporters he'd reached out to potential crossbench collaborators. 'My view is that the crossbench, in the cold, hard light of day, will recognise the party – being the Liberal party – with the most number of seats are able to, of course, form a cabinet,' the premier said. 'What Tasmanians clearly voted for yesterday was an end to the political games. They expect a parliament to work together and they expect the parliament to last four years.' Labor under Dean Winter suffered a 3% swing against it to the Liberals. It was Labor's worst vote in Tasmania in more than a century with the party securing 26% of the vote with three-quarters of the ballots counted. However, Winter hasn't ruled out trying to form government if the Liberals are unable to get a left-leaning independent crossbench onside. 'I've spoken to a number of members of the crossbench and offered Labor will try and work differently and collaboratively,' the opposition leader said. 'I won't go into the details of any of the conversations but we'll treat people with respect. I think that's what the crossbench is looking for and it's also what Tasmanians are looking for.' Winter reiterated on Sunday that he would not 'do a deal' with the Greens. Labor would need support from the minor party, which holds five seats, to govern. Winter said he would not compromise on Labor policy, including support for a $945m stadium which is opposed by the Greens and three crossbench independents. One of those independents, a re-elected Kristie Johnston, said she wouldn't enter into a formal deal for confidence and supply with either major party and would provide support on merit. 'They need to negotiate and respect the views of parliament,' she said. Sign up to Morning Mail Our Australian morning briefing breaks down the key stories of the day, telling you what's happening and why it matters after newsletter promotion It could take weeks for the final outcome in four remaining undecided seats, meaning a formal minority agreement might take even longer. Rockliff would need to work with independents to govern, including two, Johnston and the re-elected Craig Garland, who voted for June's no-confidence motion against him. The June vote, which triggered the election, lashed ballooning debt under the Liberals and a bungled Bass Strait ferry delivery. The state Greens leader, Rosalie Woodruff, kept the door ajar for a Labor alliance, calling on Winter to 'have a conversation'. A drawn-out post-election scenario would delay the parliamentary approval process for the new stadium, a condition of Tasmania's AFL licence. The project is supported by the Liberals and Labor but opposed by the Greens, Garland, Johnston and the third elected independent Peter George. The new parliament will be very similar to the previous one that included 14 Liberals, 10 Labor MPS, five Greens, five independents and one Jacqui Lambie Network member.
