Why I went to Washington, DC this week

I'm trying something new, and I think it'll pay off.

If you’ve tuned in to my YouTube channel lately, you’ve probably noticed that I’ve done a lot of interviews in person over the last month. That’s unorthodox for me; I live in Los Angeles, I shoot all my interviews remotely, and I rarely venture out of my house and into direct sunlight, much less across the country. But twice in the last month I traveled to Washington, DC. Here’s why.

On Tuesday, I helped organize a group of 50 content creators to go to DC to speak with Democratic elected officials before Trump’s presidential address. Over 160 members of Congress showed up to talk, meet, and shoot content with them. For a party that virtually ignored the existence of independent media, that’s an incredible first step.

Unlike the Democrats, Republicans have been supportive of their independent media ecosystem for the last decade because they weren’t getting from the mainstream media what they needed. And the benefits of this strategy have been undeniable; it’s clear by now just how influential the right’s creators have been (Ben Shapiro, Dan Bongino, Tucker Carlson, the Daily Wire, Alex Jones, Megyn Kelly, Matt Walsh). Their meteoric rise is largely owed to the fact that rightwing officials have helped bolster their independent media ecosystem. They’ve validated and legitimized them. We simply haven’t done that on the left. I wrote my book, Shameless, about this exact phenomenon: why it is so important that Democrats embrace independent media and the asymmetric advantage that Republicans gain by virtue of the fact that we don’t.

The difference now is that losing in November revealed an opportunity that doesn’t come around often: the Democrats finally recognize where we fell short and have been open to a solution. For an institution like Congress, which is about as nimble as a cruise ship, to suddenly turn on a dime and welcome these creators, is really encouraging. And let’s be clear, there are going to be speed bumps and people are gonna screw up and make mistakes; that’s okay. What’s important is that we’re trying. The reality is that if we don’t try, then we revert back to business-as-usual; business-as-usual lost us the House, Senate, and White House. We cannot sit idly by and do nothing; the future of our party relies on doing something different.

My hope now is that we see more Democrats embrace creators and independent media. My hope is that we see them let their guard down and go into uncomfortable spaces and take risks and forget about the polls and the consultants and be a lot more real so that we know who they are and what they’re doing and most importantly, how they’re fighting back.

A member of Congress came up to me while I was there and said something that stuck with me: that they’ve had a ton of people come and say that something should be done, but that this was the first time that someone actually showed up with a plan to do something. We came with 50 creators and told them, we’ve got people who want to talk to you, go meet them, go make the case to their audiences.

This was the first of what I hope will be a major shift toward the Democrats fully embracing independent media. It’s a move that should’ve happened ten years ago, but the next best time is right now. I’m grateful that we’re seeing buy-in from all sides, but this is just the beginning. Our plan, though, remains the same: do something because something needs to be done.