‘Read the room girl’: Running influencer Kate Mackz faces backlash over her White House interview

Wake up, the running influencers are fighting again. 

In the hot seat this week is popular running influencer Kate Mackz, facing heavy backlash over the latest guest on her running interview series: White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt.

Mackz, who has nearly 800,000 followers on TikTok, has previously featured notable figures such as political commentator Dana Perino and biohacker-in-chief Bryan Johnson. On Wednesday, she released her newest interview with Leavitt, who declined to run any miles but did give Mackz a tour of the White House.

“I can’t believe you get to wake up and be here every single day,” Mackz said as she and Leavitt took a stroll through the James S. Brady Press Briefing Room, and Leavitt’s office. Notably absent is the mention of policy or actual politics. 

The interview—filmed for both TikTok and Mackz’s podcast—comes as the White House intensifies its outreach to nontraditional media, including influencers and podcasters, whose impact on the 2020 election hasn’t gone unnoticed.

While some view this as a savvy response to a shifting media landscape, critics note that the influencers being granted access tend to lean pro-Trump—or at least avoid asking hard questions.

“Truly surreal to walk through a place with so much history and meaning,” Mackz wrote in the video’s caption.

Like much of American politics today, the comments section was deeply divided. Some followers praised the video. Others were less impressed.

“Oh Kate, this is disappointing,” one wrote. “Read the room girl,” added another. “’The fact she wasn’t even running – you put a torch to your platform for a video that doesn’t even fit your own brand,’ a third commented. (Fast Company has reached out to Mackz for comment.)

One particularly pointed comment reportedly came from Hope Walz, daughter of Democratic vice presidential candidate Tim Walz, who asked Mackz to unpin her earlier interview with her father—posted in the lead-up to the election—from the top of her page. As of this writing, the video remains pinned and has over 4.4 million views.

While the comment is no longer visible, Walz posted her own video yesterday in response, where she discusses running as a political act. “You know who taught me that,” she says. “Tim Walz.”

In her video, Walz highlights the privilege embedded in the running world—access to safe spaces, healthcare, and climate protections—and criticizes the current administration’s cuts to mental health funding, food banks, and environmental programs.

“We should not be normalizing these people,” she says. “I’m not going to tell anyone what to do with their page, but I think it is insulting to my dad to leave a certain video pinned, especially when he stands for quite literally the opposite of what this administration is doing. You do not get to both-sides this.”