Why TikTok Dominated 2024 Campaigns | Alex Bruesewitz DSH #1132

I'm in favor of TikTok.

TikTok was a great platform for us this campaign cycle.

I don't necessarily believe the narratives being spun up about

the dangers of it, if you will,

because I know how the city works.

The TikTok is a threat narrative came out just two weeks after, two weeks before Instagram launches, Instagram reels.

All right, guys, we got Alex here, advisor to President Trump and CEO of X Strategies.

Thanks for hopping on, man.

We're in D.C.

Thanks for having me on, man.

It's great to be with you.

Is this home for you?

It's not home, fortunately.

Yes, you can call it that.

But yeah, I live in Palm Beach, Florida now, and I've been down there for about five years.

I love it, man.

You've had a busy four years, this campaign.

Yeah, actually, busy eight years.

But I mean, the four years have been pretty crazy, but I feel like they kind of flew by in a way.

Yeah, this one felt like there was a lot of momentum the whole way through.

100%.

100%.

I think this was the first time in decades that the American people got to choose between two presidents running against each other that they both lived under.

So the decision was very simple.

Was life better under Donald Trump or under Joe Biden and Kamala Harris?

And everybody with a functioning brain said it was better under Donald Trump, and that's why he's back.

I mean, you saw it with the results.

The left would make these nuanced debates of random stuff, but overall, was your life better or not?

Yeah, and they also have terrible like salespeople.

Like

the Democrats who's selling their vision.

Have you ever looked at these people?

I mean, have you ever looked at Tim Walls, for example, and thought, wow, that guy's inspiring?

It's not me.

I don't get the inspirational feel from Tim Walls.

I feel like I probably wouldn't leave, if I had kids, I wouldn't leave my kids with Tim Walls.

That's like my personal feeling.

But their people are very bizarre.

And I talked about this a couple of days ago, that their candidate quality is probably the worst it's ever been.

And I look at their bench and who's their talent?

I don't think they have any talent.

They thought AOC was going to be

their rising star.

She's totally fizzled out.

She has no sway the way she used to.

Obama has almost no poll.

And we saw that he was out there every day campaigning against Trump and he did.

absolutely nothing to help Kamala, maybe even hurt Kamala because he went and lectured black men and said, you have to vote for Kamala because she's black.

So he's totally obsolete.

So I look at the Democrat Party right now.

They have no talent.

And we have a lot of talent.

I think that's your next guest after me, she's very talented.

Exactly.

And

you even got Newsom struggling.

His leadership is being questioned, especially with how he handled the flyer situation, right?

Yeah.

And the idea that Newsom was ever a contender to begin with is beyond me.

I love California.

I love Los Angeles.

I spent a lot of time in Los Angeles.

Even after the campaign, I spent like 40 days straight in L.A.

I love it out there.

It's the most beautiful place, maybe even in our entire country.

But the way that state's been run under Newsom is a travesty.

They are so blessed with natural resources, natural beauty, the ocean.

And they totally took that

state and ran into the ground with insane taxes,

insane woke policies.

They spent billions of dollars building homeless shelters and housing, and homelessness in California has only gotten worse.

These people are totally incompetent, and this fire has just put that on national display.

I think it's the final straw for a lot of people.

I think a lot of people are going to move out.

I mean, no water in the fire hydrants.

How can that be?

Yeah, it blows my mind.

It's just sheer incompetence.

You know, something that I question is, you know, there's something called the Pacific Ocean at your doorstep.

And so when you have these reporters and you have these politicians saying that California is out of water, and then you look out your window and there's the most beautiful ocean you'll ever see,

there's been no creativity or ingenuity in how to desalinate the water that's in the Pacific and build reserves.

It blows my mind that we are in such a blessed country and we have such blessed resources and our politicians know how to use them.

So I'm hopeful that we can figure out how we can

better take care of

California moving forward.

I mean if I'm paying that 15% state tax I want the best government stuff at my disposal.

And you know, on your rate, you're going to make a lot more money and you're going to be paying a lot more in taxes.

But, you know, some people, I think, 30%

in some situations

are even higher.

So it's terrible how that state's been managed and run.

And when all these people lose their homes

in this fire and they pay all of these taxes and then the taxes, what do they go for?

And then you see the fire,

the fire chief in LA County, no experience in combating fire.

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But she's like the first lesbian to ever hold the position, so she gets paid $800,000 a year as like a, you know, a token.

But is that what she makes?

Something along those lines.

It's insane.

And she does such a terrible job combating fire.

That's nuts.

So I think a lot lot of people in California are waking up, and this is certainly the final blow to whatever political ambition Gavin Newsom has.

I don't think he recovers from this.

Yeah, and I think that might have been the final straw for DEI, too.

You had Elon on X saying DEI means die.

I mean, lives were lost, right?

And Don Jr.'s been saying that for a long time as well.

And I think it needs to go.

I think it was a failed experiment.

This whole presidential administration was a failed DEI

experiment, you know, from having the first dementia patient as president to, you know, picking Kamala Harris simply due to her ethnicity rather than credentials,

to Mayor Pete, the worst transportation secretary in the history of the world.

He only got that job because of his sexual orientation.

And, you know, look what happened under him.

He was touting his successes as transportation secretary, but he oversaw the East Palestine train disaster.

He oversaw the cargo ship crisis or, you know, that we couldn't even get our shipments in.

He oversaw the worst airports in the history of the we have the worst airports in the entire world, and that's on Mayor Pete's back.

So, and what is that based off wait times?

Wait times, cancellations.

It's insane what Mayor Pete's done as transportation secretary.

But again, another DEI hire.

Yeah, I remember my flights were delayed for probably two years straight.

I was like, all right, I'm just going to show up late at this point because it's not on time anymore.

Well, you start making some more money off these Instagram reels.

You start flying Python.

Instagram reels, man.

I mean, with Dana White joining Meta, I'm actually a little excited about Instagram.

Yeah, we'll see what happens.

You know, they're certainly singing a different tune now.

And I've had some conversations and some meetings with their senior team.

Dana's obviously, you know,

Dana's one of the most solid guys out there.

And

he was incredibly helpful to the president in so many different ways.

And I'm excited that his voice is now going to be heard on that board.

And

he is not shy about making his voice heard.

So I'm grateful that he's in there.

But yeah, maybe Instagram takes it up a notch.

But the platform for a long time, I felt, has been, at least for conservatives, has been totally dead.

Oh, yeah.

And I was early on in building Facebook platforms and invested hundreds of thousands, if not well over a million dollars in building up Facebook pages.

And then all of a sudden they kill your pages.

You can't reach anybody.

So I post something, I get nine likes.

And then I was like, screw that.

I don't really want to be part of it anymore.

So it was a great platform.

It used to be a great platform.

Maybe it can return to being a great platform, but they certainly need to shake up what they were doing.

Absolutely.

I definitely agree with that.

TikTok, where are you at with that?

That's a controversial one.

I just got banned on it again.

I get banned every week on TikTok.

Are your dance moves not that good?

Or what's the deal?

I can't dance.

So maybe that's it.

They want to get quality over quantity, maybe dancing.

But no, with all jokes aside,

I'm in favor of TikTok.

TikTok was a great platform for us in this campaign cycle.

I don't necessarily believe the narratives being spun up about

the dangers of it, if you will,

because I know how the city works.

The TikTok is a threat narrative came out just two weeks after, or two weeks before Instagram launched its Instagram reels.

And then it comes out in 2022 that Meta paid a Republican advocacy firm nearly $50 million

to spread anti-TikTok

issues.

So

I'm hesitant to just buy that narrative personally,

but it was also a great platform for us.

We reached billions and billions of eyeballs on TikTok and for like no spend.

So

it's a great platform.

The youth loves it.

And, you know, Biden also loved it up until he did it.

So he was on TikTok.

If he thought it was a threat.

If he thought it was a threat, why was he on the platform?

Yeah.

So it doesn't make sense to me.

Yeah.

Yeah.

You guys took advantage.

Charlie Kirk did really well on TikTok, too.

He's a great dancer.

Yeah.

He could dance, man.

His debates, those clips are so viral.

I mean, he was probably getting billions of views as well.

Yeah, it's fun seeing that.

Charlie's been a longtime friend of mine and he crushes it on TikTok because he's really good at those sound bites.

You know, he's really good at those 10-second, 30-second hits that get a ton of play, and he's perfected.

He's been doing it for a long time, and he's probably the best in the game at that.

Yeah.

What did you think of Zuck throwing the Biden administration under the bus on Rogan's podcast?

Well, I wish you would name names.

But Zuck's certainly pivoting in the right direction.

I hope it's a genuine pivot.

I hope it's something that stays far past Republicans in Power Stay.

We really need to have trust in our great companies.

Facebook was a great company.

It is a great company.

It's one of the giants in our country.

And we need people who love our country running these companies.

So Zuck obviously put

a big role in Biden's victory in 2020, $500 million with Zuckerbucks, a lot of suppression of conservative content and voices.

And now he's taking tampons out of boys' bathrooms and singing the right song.

So I hope it's genuine, but we will see.

Yeah, it takes a big man in Trump, like repairing these relationships.

You saw him getting along with Obama, with Zach now, and these people did some pretty crazy things in the past to him.

Yeah, and that's something that I think the media has failed to explain about Donald Trump.

It's like Donald Trump loves people.

Like, he is a people person he's one of the most genuine people you'll ever meet he's very real

you know what you see is what you get what he talks about like but but he doesn't switch up the people around him switch up he released a book in

this past year called letters to trump it's all a bunch of celebrity letters from over the years that people like Alec Baldwin or Oprah or

different people like that that wrote to him talking about how wonderful you are, sir.

You're such a great blessing to my life.

You helped me with all these different things.

And then all of a sudden, you know, he runs for president and they switch up on him.

Right.

And so he's never changed.

But

now a lot of people are kind of coming back.

But he's always stayed the same.

And that's something I admire about him.

I love that.

Yeah.

You got Snoop Dogg at the crypto ball last night.

You got Mike Tyson coming up.

Rick Ross was there, too.

Rick Ross.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I'm a big Rick Ross fan.

Yeah.

A lot of people don't know that about me.

They see Alex.

They probably think like, you know, I like...

smooth jazz or something, but I'm a Rick Ross fan.

Yeah, pop guy.

Oh, yeah, that guy's a boss.

I love him, man.

How's your your health dude because that stage incident was pretty wild seeing that all over x yeah no i'm uh i'm good thank you for asking and and that was kind of a crazy moment obviously yeah you're so young too yeah i'm not vaxed for the people and the conspiracy theorists out there uh that was just something that uh you know severely dehydrated uh the lights were really hot and uh it was a recipe for for disaster um but you know uh i was overwhelmed with the outpouring support and love and messages i received after that.

And

yeah, I'm going to drink a lot more water now.

Yeah, and you're working non-stop, too.

You think it was some stress?

I don't know about that.

I think we handled stress pretty well.

And I think it was just

more lack of water.

You know, water is important.

These are things you don't know.

Growing up, you don't know water is important.

But when you fall off of stage and you look cool doing so, but when you fall off stage, while giving a speech and then you find out that it's because you don't drink enough water, you start drinking water and understanding its importance.

There's memes of Trump only drinking like Coke, like no one's ever seen him with water.

Yeah, see, I always try to do the Trump diet, but it only works for him.

Some of these things only work for him.

And

I've been blessed to get to spend a ton of time with him, so I try to pick up on, you know, some of his habits I can't pick up on.

But

you're not on the McDonald's bandwagon?

I can't do it anymore.

You know, there's a I have a metabolism that slows down.

And so if I eat a couple McDonald's burgers, I get fat right away.

And I want to look appealing for the ladies.

So,

I got to slow down the McDonald's.

Makes sense, dude.

Yeah, I had to give up fast food, too.

I feel you on that.

Well, Alex, it's been fun.

Anything you want to close off with here?

No, man, it's been great.

And I'm proud of all your success.

It's exciting times ahead.

It's been a great four years, and I think you're going to have a lot of fun this four years.

So

look forward to it.

Yup.

Yep.

See you guys.