The Awkward Donut Shop Guy vs. The Midwest Dad
Content contrasting the two VP candidates received millions of views on TikTok last week
This week, the political vibes on TikTok were all about contrasts - primarily between vice presidential candidates JD Vance and Tim Walz.
Walz, as previously reported, joined the platform less than two weeks ago, already accumulating 1.3 million followers and 3.2 million likes. Walz sat down for a brief interview with @subwaytakes - a popular account that - you guessed it - interviews celebs on the subway. While it appears they’re not actually on the NYC subway, Walz’s @subwaytakes interview avoided going off the rails - with the Minnesota Governor going deep on the need to clean gutters and how to make the perfect cheeseburger. He even joined the host in singing the Menards theme song:
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As of yesterday afternoon, the interview had only received around 100,000 views on the @subwaytakes account, but it was reshared by progressive news account @couriernewsroom and racked up over 1.5 million views. Off TikTok, the cheeky interview was written about dozens of times in the mainstream political press.
That was just one of several viral moments featuring “TimTok” this week. His son Gus’s emotional moment at the DNC was criticized by right-wingers trying to make it a show of weakness…and it blew up in their faces. TikTok is awash with content of people showing their love to the Walz family.
Here’s an emotional montage from @dailymail with 7.7 million views and over 900K likes. Here’s @abc7la declaring Gus’s reaction “one of the most emotional moments of the night” to 8.1 million viewers with 892K likes. Here’s @dailymail showing a Michelle Obama tweet defending Gus to 1.5 million views and over 50K likes. The list goes on and on.
And then we have JD Vance, who just can’t seem to catch a break on TikTok.
Despite joining the platform on August 1st, he only has 526K followers and 717K likes. While the content he’s sharing isn’t exactly going viral, mostly negative user-generated content about him is everywhere.
He had a viral moment (in the worst possible way) this week when he went into a donut shop and interacted with the people working there like it was the first time he’d ever interacted with other humans.
Here’s @samcahntent roasting his inability to have a normal conversation (4 million views and 458K likes). Here’s @henrikontheweb doing the same (3 million views and 326K likes). And @thegingerbeerd getting in on the fun (1.3 million views and 105K likes).
Those were three of the top five posts mentioning JD on TikTok this week! In fact, of the top ten most popular TikTok posts about Vance this week, six were about this terrible campaign interaction. Two more were about his “childless cat ladies” comment (see those here and here), and the final two were both clips of Secretary Pete Buttigieg doing his Secretary Pete thing and roasting Vance (see those here and here).
Top posts: Kamala Harris
According to social analytics platform Zelf, there were 26,100 posts mentioning Harris on TikTok last week, receiving a collective 583 million views.
~26% of the top-performing TikTok posts last week mentioning Harris were negative, 5% were neutral, and 68% were positive. These were some of the most viewed:
The top post mentioning Harris – by far – was from @msnbc of the clip of Kerry Washington with VP Harris’s nieces teaching Trump how to pronounce their Auntie’s name. This video has received 20.2 million views and 2.2 million likes. @cbsnews also got 4.8 million views and 283.7K likes sharing the same clip.
This video from @yapybara contrasting the different vibes at the RNC convention and the DNC convention got 7.3 million views and 1 million likes.
Eight of the top ten posts about Harris were unquestionably positive. One was neutral, which was a clip of Gov. Tim Walz pulling Gus’s arm on stage at the DNC. This moment was quite clearly Tim trying to help his son not walk into a teleprompter but has been widely shared by those on the right to make Walz seem like he’s an abusive dad.
And one was negative: a video from @thetrumpshow pushing the GOP narrative that Harris failed to appear to honor veterans at an Arlington ceremony (where it seems Trump’s staff appeared to overshadow the event by getting into a fight with the cemetery staff).
Top posts: Donald Trump
According to social analytics platform Zelf, there were 50,900 posts mentioning Trump on TikTok last week, receiving a collective 881 million views.
~63% of the top-performing TikTok posts last week mentioning Trump were negative, 4% were neutral, and 34% were positive. These were some of the most-viewed:
The most-viewed video mentioning Trump was also that massive @msnbc post of Kerry Washington we mentioned above.
Notably, the next most popular post, with 15 million views and 1.1 million likes, was a @cbsnews clip of RFK Jr formally endorsing Trump.
It’s worth noting that there were only three positive videos about Trump in the top ten this week. In general terms, it was another not-so-great week for Team Trump on TikTok.
Here’s a clip from @msnbc of Rachel Maddow unpacking a behind-the-scenes view of Kari Lake being asked, in ever-increasing terms, to please vacate the stage.
Here’s a clip from @cnn of VP Harris calling Trump an unserious man but warning that “the consequences of putting him back in the White House are extremely serious.” It got 3.4 million views and 161.3K likes.
…and this post from @thegoodliars with 3.3 million views and 262.5K likes reshared an old video featuring a woman who believes that Trump is currently President. But so is Obama. But also, neither are, but kinda both. But… yeah. It’s worth a watch.
On the issues…
Out of 15 major political issues that we’re tracking each week with the help of Zelf’s tracking tools, the political topic receiving the most engagement last week was the Democratic National Convention.
Note: For purposes of this newsletter, “Top-Performing Posts” can be defined as any posts that TikTok displays in its search functionality. Many posts that receive very few views are not distributed widely and are excluded from search.
As we wrote last Thursday, the DNC Convention in Chicago really has driven the conversation about politics on TikTok in the past week. When it came to DNC trending content, it was just good vibe after good vibe.
Kerry Washington and the nieces were the top hit. There were several other posts comparing the energy of the DNC with that of the RNC. We’ve already shared a few of those above. Here’s a good one from @msnbc specifically focused on the musical differences.
Here’s an “unpatriotic white Australian watching the DNC convention” and getting into the vibe with 818.2K views and 194.5K likes. And here’s a post from @msnbc of a Republican strategist sharing that what really makes Trump angry is how many celebrities were involved in the DNC. (1.6 million views and 116.1K likes).
From the campaign trail…
Here’s how many total views each campaign’s videos have received since the start of the campaign:
This week, Harris’s combined accounts gained 98.2 million new views and posted 39 videos.
Their top performing post is just an AI image of dolphins jumping out of the water, with the text “Donald Trump’s Project 2025 is a threat to our democracy.” It has 7.2 million views. At the risk of repeating ourselves, if you’re not experimenting with images/carousels on TikTok, you’re missing out.
As you can imagine, most of the campaign’s other top posts were footage from the DNC.
Over on Team Trump, they gained 25.9 million new views and posted two new videos.
One was of Tulsi Gabbard endorsing him, and the other was of his extremely controversial photo op at Arlington National Cemetary that we mentioned above.
Creator Spotlight: @terrencekwilliams
Terrance is a Black MAGA conservative actor and comedian who goes after Democrats to his 428K TikTok followers.
He is a big fan of Donald Trump, and he is most certainly not a fan of Kamala Harris. Here’s an example of typical content, in which he calls Harris a Phonyyy for the way she speaks to Black crowds. He often shares kind of bizarre clips asking if she’s drunk. Here’s one. Here’s another.
He also does things like this: An emotional video where he sobbingly tells a story about being abused… by Kamala Harris. He’s at least a full minute into the video before it becomes clear that it’s satire. He holds the bit until the end.
News & platform updates
A TikTok craze in Iceland has led to a nationwide cucumber shortage.
A TikTok trend leads to a trademark battle. This is the opposite of demure.
A new trend has folks focused on underconsumption.
A 10-year-old died after taking part in a viral “blackout challenge.” Is TikTok to blame? That’s up to the courts.
If your For You page is flooded with Korean Cheerleaders, you are not alone.
That’s it for this week. We’ll be back in your inboxes next Thursday with more charts, data, and insights. If you enjoyed today’s newsletter, would you mind forwarding it to a colleague or sharing it on Twitter or Threads?
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The #FYP newsletter is a product of FWIW and produced by Josh Klemons, Kyle Tharp, and Lucy Ritzmann. Most data included in this newsletter is provided by Zelf, an AI-powered social analytics platform.
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