When Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. announced Nicole Shanahan as his running mate back in March, the 38-year-old California native was relatively unknown on the national political stage – but her work had already left a mark.
Shanahan is a Stanford-educated attorney, entrepreneur, and philanthropist, and she was also part of the team that produced Kennedy’s headline-making Super Bowl commercial. As it turns out, Shanahan has a knack for creating viral videos as evidenced by the steady stream of them she and her team have turned out in support of Donald Trump and the ‘Make America Healthy Again’ movement in recent weeks.
On Wednesday’s show, Shanahan joined Megyn to share the inside story of how she creates and distributes the content and why she believes it has been so successful.
Viral Videos
Back in February, Shanahan helped fund the Super Bowl commercial produced by American Values 2024 – the super PAC that supported Kennedy’s run – that was heavy on nostalgia. The 30-second spot mimicked ads run by his uncle, John F. Kennedy, during his 1960 presidential campaign.
Megyn praised the “throwback” nature of the ad at the time, and she has been similarly impressed with Shanahan’s more recent work.
Since Kennedy suspended his campaign last month and endorsed Trump, she and her team have been dropping short videos about ‘Trump Derangement Syndrome,’ ‘MAGA people,’ ‘Make America Healthy Again,’ and more that take on a life of their own.
While all successful in their own right, the TDS video, which satirizes the format of typical Big Pharma ads, became a viral sensation overnight. “TDS went super viral in the first 48 hours and has now been viewed close to 90 million times,” Shanahan said. “The intention of these short videos was just to create something that would really tickle people’s humor and curiosity and create a forum for having open conversation with one another.”
The Production Process
Megyn said she is impressed with Shanahan’s ability “to see the truth about the MAGA movement” despite being a Democrat-turned-independent. She believes the content is some of the best she has “seen about the MAGA movement since it was born.”
As Shanahan shared, the whole process has been an “organic” undertaking. “We didn’t hire a sophisticated team at all. We have one editor that we work with, and each of those films cost about $7,000 to produce,” she noted.
She said the concepts for the TDS and MAGA People videos came from her own experiences. “You have to understand, I was fully deep in the Kool Aid of the left wing media and believed everything they were telling me about MAGA being a domestic terrorist organization,” Shanahan shared. “And the programming was so deep that I would see someone with that MAGA cap on, and I would feel tension and fear inside.”
Those feelings, she said, are pervasive on the left. “This is very true for many of those who are still stuck in that mindset and stuck in that programming,” Shanahan added. “I needed something that was going to engage someone from my background and was going to deliver a gentle message… in a way that felt truthful.”
You can check out Megyn’s full interview with Shananhan by tuning in to episode 897 on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you like to listen. And don’t forget that you can catch The Megyn Kelly Show live on SiriusXM’s Triumph (channel 111) weekdays from 12pm to 2pm ET.