Kamala Harris' media project goes after Jake Tapper: 'Cosplaying' Gen Z creators with podcast mic stunt
Former Vice President Kamala Harris’ Headquarters is accusing CNN’s Jake Tapper of "cosplaying" Gen Z content creators in a desperate attempt to lure a younger audience.
Headquarters had only posted one piece of content in over a month, a story about "How MAGA lost Gen Z." The outlet dropped its second article, "Jake Tapper got a podcast mic," on Tuesday and the scathing piece takes several shots at CNN and its top anchor.
Last month, Harris relaunched her Kamala HQ social media presence used during her 2024 White House run as "an online organizing project for next-generation campaigning." She said it would be rebranded as "Headquarters," and would be used as a "youth mobilization organization" ahead of this year's midterm elections, in a partnership with the left-leaning group People for the American Way.
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Tapper anchored the first hour of "The Lead" from his office on Friday, accompanied by a large microphone on his desk. CNN anchor Anderson Cooper had tried a similar approach earlier in the week as the struggling network attempts to shake things up.
Headquarters took a direct jab at Tapper, who co-authored "Original Sin: President Biden's Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again," about the cognitive regression of Harris’ former boss, President Joe Biden.
"In case you missed it, which you probably did, because cable news is dead, Jake Tapper is now broadcasting his hour-long slot on CNN from his office. With a podcast mic," Headquarters wrote in an unbylined column.
Tapper called the move an "experiment," and it was swiftly roasted across social media. It appears the team behind Headquarters didn't appreciate the stunt, either.
"What this signifies is clear: cable news has decided that the solution to losing an entire generation of viewers is to cosplay as the thing that replaced them," Headquarters wrote.
"The problem is that the cable executives fundamentally don’t understand why podcasters beat them," the piece continued. "You can put Jake Tapper behind a microphone in a cluttered office over and over again, but it won’t make him feel like Joe Rogan, or Alex Cooper, or Carlos Eduardo Espina, or literally anyone else Gen Z actually watches."
Harris’ project declared that successful content creators offer "an unfiltered, unscripted version of what someone actually believes," and noted that cable news outlets such as CNN are "the opposite of that."
"The podcast mic behind the desk is not a format change. It’s a costume," it wrote. "Progressives and media figures alike will have to do a lot more to win this generation. That includes genuinely investing time and energy into online-first strategies, not just putting a bow on a legacy format and hoping nobody looks closely enough to tell."
While Tapper's experiment lasted only the first hour of Friday's show, Cooper's is ongoing — carrying over into this week. But the Headquarters piece made no mention of Cooper.
Headquarters hadn't posted any new content in six weeks until its new article.
Harris is the chair emerita of Headquarters in an honorary role, with some of the staff behind Kamala HQ reuniting on the new project. The former vice president does not have editorial control over the posts.
People for the American Way and Headquarters did not respond to a series of questions, including who wrote the piece and whether Harris endorses the criticism of CNN.
CNN declined comment.
Fox News Digital’s Paul Steinhauser and Joseph A. Wulfsohn contributed to this report.