The Influencer Administration
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The hey, it's lazy. Just a quick note before we get started. I'm nursing a little bit of a cold, so my voice is a bit scratchy. Alright.

here's the shall.

Jw w. Harwell is a great reporter. He covers tech for the washington post, and he spoken all kinds of interesting news.

So i'm willing to admit that my first question to him this week was a little random. Drew, what is box fAllen? Box fAllen .

is a game that quite popular on tiktok. Uh, you may have seen IT being played by Chloe cardamine bill gates. It's effectively advanced ball that you strap under your head and you can to stand in place and you box the ball back and forth and trying get a high scores recorded on your T.

V. It's a simple little goody game that you know you would probably I past a million times on tiktok and is also something that Robert Kennedy junior himself advertised yeah but his own video and did actually fairly well at boxed bAllen. So it's robot of kindness, junior, seventy year old guy standing in a room surrounded by a group that looks like maybe twenty and thirty year olds and he's doing the box ball, is standing in front of the TV boxing the little bouncy ball on his head. He gets a, he gets a high score and he just like a rob.

This is a box ball and the ideal stocking in the stuff for when i'm on the road. I try to use IT as often as I can, cause IT keeps, you know, IT. It's like influencer spon con, of which we all are a mercy on the internet.

And yeah, yeah, it's kind of Victory. Y, because this is not just any old influences. This is a guy who maybe running american health care in a couple weeks, advertising this product to all of us.

Yeah, when I saw the video OS like, no, you can do that. That's not allowed. But I guess those lines are blurred ring.

Yeah, it's so weird because, you know, we have these popular politicians who are also popular social media stars, and they are kind of like adopting these influencer tactics while still being the same politician.

R fk jr. Recorded the box boil in video a few weeks after dropping out of the presidential race, and for president elect trump announced him as his choice to run the department of health and human services. He wasn't in any official job. He wasn't breaking any laws, but still he was pretty weird.

When we think about politicians in our mind, they have a totally, they should have a totally different mission and goal, that is, divorce from selling us stuff. This should be like public service running a government agency, not getting us to buy thirty dollar goofy stocking stuff for, right? So just IT is such a strange thing to see and yet it's very emblematic of kind of the new trump era.

Today on the show, are you ready for the influence or administration unless you lary and you're listening to what next? T, V, D, A show about technology, power and how the future will be determined? Stick around.

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Donald trumps picks for his administration have always bung from a certain mold. They look apart. They're good on T, V.

The women have long hair. And where dresses and lashes, the men swagger and fit an exaggeration, ated version of masculinity. But in the first trump administration would be cabinet members were not regularly hawking products. In fact, there was a micro news cycle when something like that actually happened.

Kelly an conway who at the time was like one of his top advisers um he went on fox news and you know is a moment of kind of criticism and he said, go back about this stuff is always on yourself SHE was talking about the present trump's daughter of anka SHE had this fashion line, jewellery line a lot of IT made overseas um in here Kelly an was telling viewers so like go put your money where your mouth is if you support president trip, go buy his daughters swag and IT was a rare moment because, you know, traditionally we have seen there be a very clear firewall between private enterprise, the money we give to businesses and and the people we vote into office.

Flash forward to now. Trump spent his years out of office marketing various trump branded items, and the entire culture of digital self promotion has meta, ca, ized. And for a second term, trump has surrounded himself with people who were already bold face names.

A lot of them already have their own course of personality yeah no it's people like R F K who has three million tiktok followers who has this big you core of people who are willing health and fitness and some you know more kind of french health stuff like roman you know vaccine criticism, scepticism um and and then you have people like you know doctor oh right celebrity doctor known from T V who who trump name to be you know running medicare and medicaid.

So these are people who already have millions of followers in in in cases already have you know their own brand deals like sponsorship contracts where you can go into their social media and see them basically you know hawking products at you um and so you know that that personality has not changed. Debt like there there are being named to these public service rules, but there are still fulfilling those contracts. So you went from people, but who were kind of politicians first, uh, maybe business people, maybe you know maybe household names to people who are kind of influencers first and um are kind just tacking politics onto part of their personal brand.

The box bone got taken down um from ark junior social media not long after I was first posted.

why? Yes so right after they posted IT was a little bizarre and part of what was problematic about IT was when you looked in the caption there was nothing that said like hashtag ad um part of the the federal trade commissions rules for social media influencers and there are not a lot of rules um for this industries very but one of the few regulations is that if you are an influencer of which R F K qualifies just by virtue of his his number of followers and you endorse a product and are paid for IT, you've you've got to mark that so people are just calling pass and thinking it's just your personal love for for the vann ti ball game and and his that add didn't have hashtag adding IT which you know it's it's not extremely egregious you know these these things happen quite often um whether that was kind of part of why they took IT down.

They haven't said I talk to the box bAllen people who said after they posted IT that r fk people told them yeah we had signed this contract before we realize he was going to, you know, potential going to washington for this public power. And basically, I just wasn't a good luck. We just didn't want to keep you up. So there was some recognition there that IT was a little IT was a little bit of an awkward fit um but you know box more they had no problem read repost the video even after I talk to them they posted on tiktok and instagram so you can still you know go on to their facebook page and see ah you know americans potentially next health zar, you know we using this using this private companies products. So so IT was a weird situation all way around.

There was also a weird and obviously calculated moment on R F K juniors wife's instagram. He is married to the actress shero height, and he tried to sell her followers on her skin care label while he was behind her, seemingly naked in the shower.

You can take a shower. I'm doing a video. No, no, no. I'm doing and you got to give me a, i'm doing a video from, hi, honey.

Next we have doctor met oz, trump s nominee to leave the centers for medicare and medicate services. Doctor s, thanks to Opera needs no introduction. Oz has promoted olympic and collagen products and is also an adviser for the supplement company. I erb.

hi, erb is basically just a big online supplement story. You can go on there, find whatever supplements you want to buy, have them ship directly to your home. So doctor s, you know, he has A A very big, you know, tiktok, following almost a million followers.

His on most of the platforms, including instagram and ex, and a lot of what he talks about is, you know, hey, are you feeling stressed about thankful to giving go on the iron and buy this special, you know, asian supplement to make yourself feel Better is a lot of tRicky. I die. I get.

So that happened. There are multiple era supplements that can dish up the goodness. And he is, you need, like, goes off her from the trust source iron, which is, again, especially weird, because this is somebody who trump his name to run medicare and medicare. You know, these are programs that are extremely influential and important to america's health, and these are agencies that you know get involved in the the purchasing decisions of financial decisions of how our country spends our money.

So you know, if this is a guy who's telling you to take these specific supplemental through this one specific store, are these really the right decisions for all american health care, for all our financial spin, you know? And the thing about these conflicts of interest is that even the perception of a conflict is problematic, even if, you know, he he goes into office and never tells anybody to buy supplements of irr because now he's a public figure like IT. Just if IT works, our ability is like american citizens, consumers to, you know, appreciate is he is he giving IT to me straight? Or he just going along with IT because I, you know is is paying him as as an a celebrity endorser.

We should be clear that federal employees are banned from doing this kind of thing when they are in office. They are not supposed to use their office to endorse products. But we're in this weird place now.

And I guess i'm trying to pass out what the end goal might be here. Is IT to make some money now in this period before let's assume their confirmed that they are confirmed or is IT I have these partnerships, then maybe I device. And then at the end of the administration, they come back to me and I even more powerful .

yeah I think that's a big question. And I think a lot of this hinges on, like you said, we are just in this liminal space where a lot is happening very quickly. You know, these names are being thrown out very quickly. Um you know the inauguration isn't for more than a month and these people have a level of fame to where they already have these months long, sometimes years long promotional relationships that they are just fulfilling because they were filling, fulfilling those beforehand. But you also, like you said, you have to play this out um in the long term.

Are they going to go in office and potentially still be fulfilling these relationships and in a way that could could break the law? Or you know after they leave office, could they go right back to those companies or other companies and utilize the stature and then promoter that they gained from being a washington to, you know, play out even more enormous relationships, just IT really fulfill that influence. Our dream.

When we come back, will they die best? Won't they die best? If the boss doesn't do IT, why should they? underlines.

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Reserve your ride as soon as you book your flights tell all the planners now you can reserve your grade up to ninety days in advance see him go after details in the first trip administration, trump initially promised to diva's from his companies, then said he wouldn't, then said he'd hand over her ownership to his sons. I think we still don't know what happens in this coming administration. And IT seems like official washington is in many ways cleaning to precedents from a different eura, a gentile era where people followed the, you know, ways in mores of what was done before. We're not in that era anymore. So do we have any sense that actually these guys might divest and stop doing, you know, two camera ads after january twenty eighth?

One thing I think we learned from the first uh, trump administration, uh, first trump term was that a lot of these rules are norms. They're very kind of a more face norms that you've never really been tested, very rarely been enforced. Um they've just kind of been what's been expected.

And you know we've had a long history of um politicians who have not ever had never had kind of that influential sight to them really pulling them in that way. But you know trump is obviously a different character and I know he somebody he has he has always really been this way um he has been a self promoter, self brander of license for many decades. You know in new york way before the presidency, he was putting his name on stakes, universities, hotels, golf courses like that is completely natural behavior for him.

And and it's still, you know, and he has been somebody who has been very skilled at adapting his bryant to the medium of the time. We saw how Vicky was on twitter in the first administration in during his first term and in his first campaign. And this campaign we saw that he was actually all over tiktok, right? He had fifteen million followers on tiktok.

He was still truth up the storm on truth SE social and um and you know he he was very prolific on these on these kind of brawly podcast. He got millions of views on on this podcast. There were not traditional media, but that had huge audience.

And you know, he even called themselves the biggest influence in the world. He really does see himself as not just a politician, but as a celebrity entertainer influencing. So I think he has really kind of shifted the overton window of acceptability around this kind of behavior.

And everybody in an administration takes their cues from the person at the top.

you know, the people in his administration there. They're kind of doing a fraction of what he's doing. And there's not really a lot of backlash about IT, right? Like there.

You know when when Maggie step down from consideration for attorney general and within hours started selling videos on camo for five hundred dollars upon what a deb and Terry this is mates, I wanted to wish you a very special happy thanksgiving. You've got a terrific sun and law, eric. And I know there was some, you know, kind of giggling about IT, but there wasn't really a big like, no republicans were coming out and saying, this is odd.

This is trading on your political fame. You know stop doing this. Just kind of like, okay, well, that's just that's that's the way of the world so yeah, I think, you know, from the first trump term, I still remember there was all of these kind of mini drama at the time around the emoluments clause, right?

These like very old constitutional uh, edicts about, you know, how politicians could get money and the the potentials for conflicts of influence. And there were all these years to, as we saw during the trump term, there were all these little scandals that were raise as things that would really torpedo president trump this time, right? Like this.

This law is so clear that this one is the final. And of course, you know he escaped all of them. You know we saw that with the monuments um specifically, you know around the time of his his involvement in the big D C hotel, where there were all these business and figures and diplomats coming in spending know a lot of money at the hotel to, as critics would say, curry influence.

There was a lot of talk about IT. There were democratic to reports written about IT and there were to pieces of paper handed around, but there was really never any kind of big punishment and there was never any clear enforcement that change the behavior. And so the behavior really didn't change um and this time, you know I think IT IT could be IT could be the same.

You know we still have these institutions and these agencies that look at things like this. We still have the federal trade commission again like that, that looks at um how influences support themselves online. We still have of the office of government effects, right? That requires certain disclosures. So I don't think that stuff is going away.

But if the guy at the top is you know, adopting these behaviors and a lot of people are are following him and there is no clear you know, stead of rules to define, you know, the tiktok, instagram, spd, kon, all of these concepts weren't obviously never in the constitution. You know, these are, things were just kind of making up. We go along.

But even beyond things like burn khan, the idea of influencing has always been about connecting with audiences, whether you're a direct consumer brand or a politician, which is why IT makes sense that the trump campaign relied so heavily on podcasts this year that might continue in the administration. Elon marasquin verveer ramos', I have promised doge cast a podcast that is allegedly gona chronicle to do slashing of the government budget.

So vivid rma swam, you know, very popular right wing bomb through a former pharmacist, al executive. He runs his own podcast right now called the truth podcast, and both room saw me and must have talked about, you know, they really want to savage the government bug. They want to, they want to trim whole agencies.

They want to flash spending by a third. You know they won a cut, trillions dollars of the government spending. You know the idea that those would be kind of played out and you know grazy detail on a uh, weekly podcast is just, again, it's something we have never seen before. I think part of that is interesting from a rama swami kind of self promotional aspect.

But too, we also have to realize that this is this is great political messaging potentially for the White house, right? The White house, you know, the trump White house, the trump administration, they do want to be seen as being tough on the budget you know they their feeling is they were voted in with these promises of restraining the the the deep state really pulling in um of the spending. And here are going to be these two, you know, very vocal warriors laying out exactly how there fulfilling that man.

This political evolution isn't solely on the right. A O, C, and berny standards. For example, i've gotten very good at social media and the whole new media thing. But to be clear, they are not shelling .

for companies. Yeah I think that's the biggest difference. They're not making bank companies attention so far. Yeah you have a you know streaming herself playing started valley, playing video games while also talking about, you know, medicare policy. You have berny Sanders out there to posting a lot.

I guess he did advertise his book.

That's true. Yes, that's true. They do do have books. They do have riled speeches. Um but you haven't seen A L C you know um shilling for iron， i'll say so so that's the big that's the big change.

I mean and again, like it's it's natural to expect these political figures to be using social media because we are all using social media because that's where the people are right. And and I don't think there's anything wrong with that. Um but it's when you get to the point where there's a private player involved whose goal is to sell square to the same audience. Um so yeah, I think that I think that's the biggest change.

Where does this end? You know is there some future where it's like, hey, it's my mom's birthday. I'm gonna buy a camo from the president united states, that feels so deeply wrong, but I wonder if it's out of the realm of possibility.

I don't know where he does. And then actually one of the interviews I did for this that I found really interesting was um this professor who is talking about this idea of influencer creep like no in the old times of only a couple years ago, we we saw influencers as this kind of niche group who was all about online cloud who did all this kind of like self promotional cringe stuff and we all kind of laugh about IT.

But they were really good at building an audience, getting attention, promoting themselves. And those tactics have sort of move to expand traditional media players, like people who never had to do those influence or tactics before but now are starting to adopt them because that's just the way of the world and because IT works, it's possible that we just reach a point where this all just feels very crude and off putting. Um you know there as you can see from magazine cameo page, there are a lot of people who paid him five hundred dollars for a two minute video saying to asking for happy birthday um but these things have peaks and valleys too and some of these, I expect, is kind of the novelty factor and whether will still be running a bat level of intimacy and promotional sponsorship from our politicians. I I don't think that's really settle either. We may you know, I think some of this Operates as a sign wave and sometimes are are our our taste as a as an elector kind of shift to a point where it's like, okay, maybe just go handle medicare right now p selling fish well and just like go back to doing your job.

To how well it's always such a pleasure to talk to you.

Thank you. yeah.

Drew harwell is a tech reporter for the washington post, and that's IT for our show today. What next? T V D is produced, evan cambell, patric ford, shana roth and ethon overman. Our show is edited by page oxford. Alesha guy is vice president of video for state and tb d is part of the larger what next family.

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