On a Friday afternoon in late April, President Biden gathered celebrities and elite social media influencers for a White House reception. Fran Drescher and David Cross mingled with rugby star Ilona Maher and V of @underthedesknews for a meet-and-greet aimed at generating warm feelings and much-needed pro-Biden content.
Jonathan M. Katz, an independent journalist and harsh critic of the administration, was surprised to receive the invitation. During the meeting with Biden, Katz pointedly questioned him about military aid to Israel, suggesting that Biden supported “genocide.” Biden responded politely, but then grew annoyed. “I know you're a typical press person,” Katz said. “I trust you enough to throw your phone.” Aides then escorted Katz out.
The episode, which Katz recorded on video and shared with his roughly 100,000 followers, was one in a series of awkward attempts by Biden to whip up online enthusiasm for his candidacy.
The presidential campaign has watched for months as his rival, Donald J. Trump, ignited an online frenzy, with his supporters churning out a flurry of memes, videos and impassioned posts — all essentially free advertising that appeals to an increasingly important segment of the electorate.
As Mr. Biden and his allies work desperately to build a similar online army, convincing and in some cases paying legions of supporters to praise him, they are finding social media feeds tricky territory for the 81-year-old president whose policies on Gaza and immigration have made him unpopular with the left.
“It's clear that we need to use influencers and creators to influence the future of the progressive movement,” said Brian Rawlings, co-founder of MarMar Impact, a group that works with liberal causes and has mobilized Gen Z voters. “But when you talk to a lot of young people, they don't support Biden.”
The president's campaign is working to change that: While he has often eschewed interviews with traditional media, he has opened doors for meet-and-greet social media personalities like Daniel Mack, who has amassed more than 20 million online followers by asking people, “What do you do for a living?”
(The video with Biden, filmed at the Detroit Auto Show, went viral and has been viewed 40 million times on TikTok, but it's still not close to the 60 million views that Mack got for interacting with the founder of an Italian supercar manufacturer who doesn't speak English.)
The influencers have been given special tours of the White House and campaign headquarters, invited to briefings with policy advisers, and been treated to food and drink at lavish parties in New York and a State of the Union viewing party at the White House. They've also been promised special access to party leaders at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago in August, and for the first time, will be given a special room with a quiet space to film videos.
At least one person said they had been offered an interview with the president at the convention but were asked not to mention Gaza.
Priorities USA, a super PAC backing Mr Biden's campaign, has pledged to spend at least $1 million on influencers, some of whom will be paid to share talking points online, and the Democratic National Committee is training thousands of volunteers how to use smartphone apps to share content on social networks.
The Democratic House Campaign Committee spent $150,000 to hire an influencer marketing firm in March, and in late April, the Biden campaign, which has said it won't pay influencers for content, paid about $2 million to hire influencer firm Village Marketing to help run its social media outreach program.
The amount is tiny compared with the tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars the campaign is spending on traditional TV ads and direct mail, but it is widely seen as crucial to Biden's chances of reelection.
According to the Pew Research Center, half of American adults say they get some or all of their news from platforms like YouTube, Instagram, Snapchat and TikTok. Among younger people, the statistics are even more shocking, with almost a third of 18-29 year olds getting their news from TikTok.
Polls suggest Biden is struggling with these voters: A recent NBC poll showed Biden leading by a large margin among voters who regularly consume traditional news, but Trump had a commanding lead among those who say they rely primarily on social media for information and a lead of more than 25 points among those who don't follow political news at all.
“We'd be remiss if we didn't know where the voters are,” said Jennifer Fernandez Ancona, co-founder and vice president of Way to Win, a group that connects Democratic donors with political strategists and has begun investing heavily in influential outreach.
The Biden campaign began working with influencers late last year and said its efforts began to bear fruit over the summer. “We're significantly expanding our partnership program for 2024, starting earlier than ever before and dedicating more staff to this work,” campaign spokeswoman Mia Ellenberg said.
But the project has proved difficult for Biden.
While the White House has hired several former Instagram employees, the campaign's most senior social media position, which oversees the hiring and placement of influencers, has remained vacant for five months.
Biden's Gaza war policies have eroded support not only from Palestinian supporters but also from pro-Israel opponents who oppose his calls for a ceasefire, and he has also faced fierce criticism over legislation he signed in April that would have banned TikTok in the US if it wasn't sold there – a bill first proposed by Trump (Biden has since reversed course).
And attempts by allies to tout successes like capping insulin prices or forgiving some student loan debt have been drowned out by liberals focused on the administration's drilling and pipeline decisions or its increasingly hardline stance on immigration.
On TikTok specifically, the enthusiasm gap is measurable.
Since the Biden campaign officially joined TikTok in February, it has posted more than 200 times and has just over 375,000 followers. Trump joined the app less than two weeks ago but has already amassed 6.2 million followers.
“They're inviting a few people to the White House and having dinner,” said Grace Murray Vasquez, vice president of strategy at social media marketing firm Four, which worked with the Biden campaign in 2020 but said it hasn't received any such contact this year. “It's just a small amount.”
The event took place last month at the Eaton, a four-star hotel in downtown Washington. Way to Win, Future Forward, Biden's primary super PAC, and the Hub Project, another progressive group, brought about 140 influencers to Washington for a three-day event called Trending Up.
Attendees were treated to a rooftop sushi banquet, an open bar and a tour of the National Diet Building.
But the mood soured, at least for some people, after about a dozen attendees suddenly received email invitations to the White House, and accusations continued online for weeks that they and other pro-Biden creatives were “federal government employees” hired to promote Biden.
“There was a deep distrust of authority that permeated the conference,” said Sean Sorek-VanValkenburgh, who has 1.6 million followers on TikTok, where he flocks to posts about arcane legal terms of service. (That's more than double The New York Times's following on the site.) Mr. Sorek-VanValkenburgh said he didn't receive an invitation, and even if he had, he wouldn't have accepted it.
Julian Sarafian, a lawyer who represents influencers and posts about their legal issues, was invited to attend. He then made a video of himself dancing to a Kendrick Lamar song outside the White House, with a “Biden Wins the White House” listing on the screen.
“They want someone who's not going to rock the boat and who's going to walk the walk on their message,” said Sarafian, who has 320,000 followers on TikTok.
Finding those people will be a challenge for Biden. Joshua Doss, a Chicago-based political pollster who writes about politics, race and basketball, was recently contacted by Village Marketing, a firm hired by the Biden campaign, about the possibility of interviewing the president at the Democratic National Convention.
But Doss was reluctant because the station had specifically asked him to avoid talking about the Middle East war. “Given the outrage his audience has had about his handling of the Gaza issue, I can't imagine coming on stage without talking about Gaza,” Doss said.
He initially refused, but later said he would agree on the condition that he be allowed to ask “tough questions” about how the economy was affecting black people.
Village Marketing did not respond to a request for comment, and the Biden campaign declined to comment on the discussions.
Ryan Davis, co-founder of People First, an influencer agency that works with liberal causes, said Democrats should seek out micro-influencers with around 2,000 followers and ask them to post about the issues rather than mentioning Biden by name.
This “soft messaging” requires little disclosure under federal rules and feels more authentic, even if the influencer is following scripted talking points, he noted. Micro-influencers often cost a few hundred dollars and can gather dozens or even hundreds of well-wishers for a single messaging campaign, essentially paying to appear as if they have a mass following.
That's more powerful than a $300,000 contract with one superstar, Davis said.
“This isn't like a Greek god coming down and Taylor Swift is going to save us,” Davis said. “It's going to be a very uphill battle.”