DEEP IMPACT

Charlamagne Explains How He Inadvertently Helped Trump Win

“That’s the guy who cost Kamala Harris her campaign,” the “Breakfast Club” host said he imagines people saying about him everywhere he goes.

Charlamagne Tha God feels like people are “whispering” about him, after a clip from his show was used to attack Kamala Harris in what became the most “impactful” ad of Trump’s campaign.

“It’s not a good feeling,” the host said in the latest episode of On With Kara Swisher. “It’s one of those things where like, you get around people and you think that they’re whispering about you: ‘That’s the guy who cost Kamala Harris her campaign.’”

Charlamagne also accused the Trump campaign of taking his quote—“Kamala supports tax payer-funded sex changes for prisoners”—out of context, explaining that he was actually reacting to a separate attack ad on his Breakfast Club radio show.

“What I was explaining to my listeners was what I saw that weekend,” Charlamagne told Swisher. “I was like, ‘Yo, did y’all see that commercial that came on during the football game that said Kamala Harris wants to support, you know, whatever with your taxpayer dollars.’ I was repeating what I saw in the commercial.”

“I was like, ‘Yo, if you’re sitting there watching that when, you’re sitting back watching football, the first thing you’re gonna think is, ‘hell no.’ I don’t want my taxpayer dollars going to that,” he said, explaining the context of the clip used in the ad. “It wasn’t like we were saying Kamala Harris supports gender reassignment surgery or wants to use your taxpayer dollars for gender reassignment surgery.”

But the way Charlamagne repeated what he saw in Trump’s ad made it seem as though he was supporting the former president, which reinforced earlier ads against Harris on the issue. And though Charlamagne sent a cease and desist over his image use, the ad continued to run. As a vocal supporter of Harris, who even hosted a town hall for her to reach listeners of his popular radio show, he now worries that he may have inadvertently helped Trump win.

“They took it and they ran with it,” he said. “And you know, from what they said, it was the most impactful commercial of his campaign.”

The podcast host shared his thoughts about critics who say he “cost” Harris the campaign. “That’s literally what people are saying, even though that’s—I don’t, that’s not true. There’s no one thing that cost her her campaign.”

What bothered him the most, however, was that Harris’ camp didn’t fight back as the ad gathered sway with voters. “They didn’t do anything to combat it,” he explained. “To me, it wasn’t a hard thing to combat because that piece of legislation was also legislation under Donald Trump.”

The Harris camp should have mirrored the move in two big ways, the host explained. For one, “I would’ve ran the same commercial. I would’ve just flipped it on Donald Trump, if I was them.” He added that he and Harris almost discussed the issue during one of their interviews, but decided against it. “I guess it was still kind of early and people didn’t realize how big that commercial would end up being,” he said. “So when she called in to The Breakfast Club, I asked her about it and she just was like, shrugging it off as just misinformation. But I think that was a mistake. It should have been really combative.”

Finally, Charlamagne said the campaign missed a major opportunity to highlight Joe Rogan’s on-air criticisms of Trump.

“The same way Donald Trump manipulated me and used me in his ads, they could’ve did the same thing with Joe Rogan,” he said. “Joe Rogan said that Trump was a threat to democracy. Joe Rogan said he felt like Trump might be unstable, and like, why didn’t you use that?”

See more of our coverage in your search results.

ADD THE DAILY BEAST ON GOOGLE

Eboni Boykin-PattersonEntertainment Reporter

Got a tip? Send it to The Daily Beast here.