Kamala Harris ran the Fyre Festival of campaigns

As the finger-pointing begins, and the autopsy of the Kamala Harris campaign continues, financial details are being released on how the Harris campaign managed to blow more than $1 billion in war-chest funds — and not only lose, but get wiped off the electoral map by Donald Trump, who ended his campaign with roughly $488 million. That’s not a Dr. Evil typo: Kamala Harris not only blew a billion dollars, but actually ended up $20 million in debt. Where did the money all go? To celebrities mostly, and elaborate sets and stages.

As it turns out, not all of those celebrity “activists” appeared with Kamala Harris because they believed in her or were doing their civic duty by getting engaged. They charged fees — and some were astronomical. Harris made elaborate promises to her crowds about celebrity performances. Crowds were brought in with the promise of seeing Beyoncé perform, only to leave disappointed. It was all a financial ruse, much like the infamous Fyre Festival of 2017. For the uninitiated, Fyre Festival was sold as a high-end island music festival and was promoted on Instagram by celebrities such as Kendall Jenner and Bella Hadid. Attendees were promised luxurious accommodations, airline transportation to and from the island and expensive food and alcohol. What followed, however, was mass confusion, unfulfilled promises, stranded and hungry people and vendors left unpaid. The lead promoter went to prison on fraud charges.

As it turns out, the Harris campaign wasn’t run much differently. As reported in the Washington Examiner, the Harris campaign spent upwards of six figures to build a custom set for her appearance on the Call Me Daddy podcast, which only netted about 800,000 downloads. Meanwhile, Donald Trump appeared on Joe Rogan’s podcast — and his interview has got more than 47 million views on YouTube.

There were seven swing-state concerts that involved high-priced performers — Katy Perry, Lady Gaga, Jon Bon Jovi, Ricky Martin and more — who seemingly ended up costing the Harris campaign more than $20 million on event production alone, and reportedly even more on paying the celebrities to appear. Even Oprah Winfrey charged the campaign $1 million to show up. The campaign went so far into debt that the campaign was reportedly forced to scrap Canadian Nineties indie-pop singer Alanis Morissette to save money. The pop concert campaign strategy is said to have been the brainchild of former Obama advisors on the campaign.

What do they have to show for all of it? The Blue Wall is gone — and Harris suffered the worst political defeat since John McCain in 2008. The goal was to make Kamala Harris the smallest part of her own campaign and buoy it with millionaire celebrities, at a time when ordinary Americans were being crushed by inflation at the grocery store.

Now campaign staff and vendors are leaking to media outlets that they are not being paid — and even Donald Trump is now offering to step in and pay them in the kind of brilliant troll move that Trump’s campaign was built upon. While Harris was going broke paying movie stars and pop singers, Trump got more campaign leverage out of three hours on Joe Rogan and thirty minutes at McDonald’s.

Kamala Harris will fade into the dustbin of presidential candidates, excommunicated from the party and likely never to be heard from seriously again. Her campaign, however, will go down in American history as the stuff of legend. Enjoy the show!