How Kennedy’s presence on the favored social media platform will have an effect on the November election is not possible to say. However there’s little doubt who’s accountable for Kennedy’s rise there: Hyperlink Lauren, 25, a politically eclectic content material creator who has shot to fame over the previous yr by protecting and collaborating with long-shot presidential candidates.
Lauren has amassed greater than 455,400 followers on his private TikTok account and practically 20 million likes. In contrast, the Biden marketing campaign has simply 274,000 followers, and Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee, has no official TikTok presence.
With 170 million customers in america, TikTok is taken into account elementary to reaching younger voters, who have been key to Biden’s 2020 overcome Trump. Kennedy employed Lauren as a paid senior adviser in November in hopes of reaching this essential demographic — although there’s debate over whether or not his marketing campaign is extra more likely to attraction to Biden or Trump supporters. Final week, the bipartisan No Labels group introduced it received’t discipline a presidential candidate, leaving Kennedy as probably the most outstanding impartial candidate within the race.
Since becoming a member of the marketing campaign, Lauren has performed a key function in designing a few of Kennedy’s most profitable on-line initiatives, together with drafting the script for a latest video geared toward voters below 30 who, as Kennedy says within the spot, “most likely know my identify however not a lot about me.”
Within the video, Kennedy describes the political historical past of his storied clan, talks about his document as an environmental and antiwar activist and lays out positions supposed to attraction to voters beset by excessive rents and low charges of homeownership. It has been considered greater than 1.5 million instances on Instagram and has drawn hundreds of feedback.
Final month, in a separate video criticizing a measure transferring by way of Congress that might result in a ban on TikTok, Kennedy referred to Lauren as one in every of his marketing campaign’s key staffers. “Individuals love TikTok,” Kennedy mentioned within the video. “It’s the digital public sq..”
Lauren is “a really, superb communicator,” mentioned Olivia Nuzzi, a political reporter for New York Journal, who mentioned she thinks of Lauren as “a political influencer — someplace between an activist and a reporter and an operative.” At a time when polling reveals that many younger voters are skeptical of establishments and “not enthusiastic about both main get together’s candidate,” she mentioned, “Hyperlink understands the way to make complicated points and sophisticated people palatable on the web.”
Lauren mentioned he was drawn to the Kennedy marketing campaign — his first official job in politics — for the skilled alternative and to grow to be concerned within the political course of. He has not expressed help for Kennedy’s extra unorthodox views. Kennedy, whose marketing campaign is managed by his daughter-in-law, Amaryllis Fox Kennedy, a former CIA officer, and consists of communications director Del Bigtree, the CEO of an anti-vaccine advocacy group, has promoted false claims, excessive positions and shifting postures on a wide range of points. Kennedy has lengthy confronted condemnation for spreading falsehoods concerning the security of vaccines — claims debunked by main well being and science organizations and ones that Lauren doesn’t amplify.
Lauren mentioned he hopes to make use of the expertise to grow to be an influential commentator — and maybe run for workplace himself. A lot of his heroes have additionally blurred the road between political operative and media persona — an rising phenomenon on-line, the place many younger individuals spurn conventional information sources in favor of social media content material creators.
“I really feel like the best political figures in the present day are media figures,” Lauren mentioned. “I take a look at somebody like George Stephanopoulos who was Invoice Clinton’s communications director within the 90s. He used that information to go grow to be an anchor and a journalist and report the information. For me, it’s being a social media persona and protecting the information whereas doing a marketing campaign.”
Whereas Lauren describes his personal political philosophy as anti-establishment, he cites conservative influencers — Tucker Carlson, Glenn Greenwald, Tulsi Gabbard — as inspirations due to their sturdy private manufacturers and skill to construct profitable impartial media companies. He just lately slammed conventional cable information retailers on X as “filled with hypocrites who’ve bought their souls to hawk DNC speaking factors” and says “I like Fox Information as a result of they’ve the very best rankings.”
Lauren grew up in Dallas, the place he presently lives, and attended New York College. He opened his TikTok account when the pandemic hit, however didn’t start posting in a big method till after he graduated in 2022 with a level in music enterprise and leisure.
He began by protecting not politics, however popular culture. His breakout second got here final Might with King Charles’s coronation. Lauren did hours of stay streams, amassing greater than 32 million views on TikTok that month alone.
That very same month, Trump did a city corridor on CNN, and “CNN viewers have been apoplectic,” Lauren mentioned. “They have been melting down. They have been upset that Donald Trump was on their community. And so I acquired on TikTok and mentioned, ‘These viewers must relax. You possibly can’t stay in your little silos … Trump has each proper as a former president to go on any community.’”
His submit, he mentioned, was “very surprising to individuals as a result of TikTok was such a left-leaning surroundings at that time.” However his stance earned him credibility with conservatives and independents, and his following started rising by the hundreds.
Inside a month, Lauren was creating political content material recurrently on TikTok, constructing a big following primarily by protecting minor presidential candidates. He interviewed self-help writer Marianne Williamson shortly after her on-again, off-again marketing campaign for the Democratic nomination kicked off final yr. He traveled to New Hampshire to movie with Minnesota congressman Dean Phillips (D), who later suspended his personal problem to Biden. And in January, he traveled to Iowa to cowl the Republican caucuses, the place he filmed content material with pharmaceutical entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, who has since ended his marketing campaign for the GOP nomination.
In particular person, Lauren can converse as authoritatively about Gen Z YouTubers and actuality TV as he can the nuances of the electoral system. Ramaswamy’s marketing campaign says Lauren gave it recommendation on the way to succeed on-line.
“He has a high quality that I believe is more and more absent in politics, which is that he genuinely desires to assist individuals,” mentioned Tricia McLaughlin, Ramaswamy’s former communications director. “He’d give us recommendation, and be like, ‘Right here’s what works for me.’ He wasn’t essentially a Vivek fan, however we struck up a friendship.”
Lauren says his politics have developed since he was a university pupil. “Once I was residing in New York going to NYU, my political opinions have been a bit extra a technique. Then as you develop, you evolve, meet extra individuals and also you journey, your political beliefs shift. I contemplate myself simply an impartial thinker, as a result of I’m gonna name it like I see it, whether or not you’re Republican or Democrat.”
He mentioned his protection of right-wing candidates is a mirrored image of alternative reasonably than ideology, including: “I by no means wish to simply cowl one facet of the aisle.” However, he mentioned, “Once I began protecting politics, the DNC didn’t wish to have a major, they have been pushing different Democratic major challengers off the ballots. So I used to be left to cowl conservative politics. They have been having debates.”
For now, Lauren sees a chance in talking to youthful voters disaffected from the two-party system. “I’m like, let me get on right here …,” he mentioned of his TikTok account, “since you’re not going to listen to this on NBC or MSNBC. They’re going to gaslight you and say every thing’s higher below Joe Biden and every thing’s superb, and that’s not the case in any respect.”
Many younger individuals at a latest Kennedy marketing campaign occasion in Los Angeles agreed with these sentiments. Phoebe Cutler, a 21-year-old faculty pupil attending along with her father, mentioned she voted for Biden in 2020, however received’t once more as a result of Biden has not “improved the socioeconomic panorama” for younger individuals. She mentioned she can be appalled by his stance on Gaza.
Although she reads the Economist, Cutler mentioned she will get a lot of her information from different sources like Russell Model’s podcast and “citizen journalism.” “I attempt to take opinions from either side and attempt to decipher my very own,” she mentioned.
Lauren thinks legacy media has deserted younger individuals like Cutler by being sluggish to undertake new codecs like TikTok.
“You possibly can both resist TikTok or you should use it to succeed in individuals,” he mentioned. “Gen Z usually are not going to see the nightly information, so if you wish to attain individuals you’ve acquired to get on these platforms and converse to them.”
No matter occurs to Kennedy’s candidacy, Lauren mentioned he plans to proceed to create content material concerning the 2024 election. Whilst he helps RFK flourish on TikTok, Lauren is working to construct his personal following throughout platforms, networking with leaders in politics and media and contemplating launching a publication on the platform Substack.
Not way back, Lauren mentioned, he was approached about staging his personal run for workplace in his house state of Texas — a prospect he finds interesting.
“I believe when you actually wish to get issues finished,” he mentioned, “you need to be able to get your fingers soiled, get within the ring, and get to work.”
