Neirin Gray Desai writes for DailyMail.com about an interesting piece of President Biden’s re-election strategy.
Joe Biden is planning to recruit an army of TikTok influencers to win over Gen Z voters during his 2024 reelection run.
The president’s digital strategy team is connecting with social media celebrities and offering them their own briefing room in the White House, Axios reports.
Among those recruited is Henry Sisson, a 20-year-old NYU student who runs a TikTok page with more than 600,000 followers. He offers commentary on US politics and regularly promotes the power of Gen Z to boost support for the Democrats.
Other recruits include Vivian Tu, 29, another TikTok influencer, and Heather Cox Richardson, 61, who writes a popular newsletter on the blogging platform Substack.
It comes as the Biden administration has endorsed the Restrict Act, a bill which proposes a total ban or severe restrictions to the reach and power of Chinese-owned TikTok.
As tensions with China have grown, an increasing number of Democrats have joined the Republicans in calling for such a law.
Biden’s plan to leverage social media to boost popularity was spearheaded by Rob Flaherty, who has been named assistant to the president – a testament to the emphasis the White House is placing on digital strategy.
‘We’re trying to reach young people, but also moms who use different platforms to get information and climate activists and people whose main way of getting information is digital,’ Jen O’Malley Dillon, White House deputy chief of staff, told Axios.
Plans to create a dedicated White House briefing space for influencers to meet is another sign that the new push is serious. It would mean the existing Press Briefing Room no longer would be the administration’s only messaging center.
‘We actually asked the White House, ‘When are we going to get press briefing passes?’ ‘ Sisson told Axios. ‘They were actually were very responsive to it,’ he added.
