Vice presidential candidate Tim Walz and Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez streamed themselves playing an American football video game against each other on Sunday, as the two Democrats continued their party’s efforts to secure young men’s votes just nine days before the election at the White House.

During their showdown on the latest edition of the Madden game series, Ocasio-Cortez and Walz emphasized the importance of regaining Democratic control of the US House of Representatives, retaining a majority in the Senate and ensuring Kamala Harris wins the presidential election of November 5 wins. Donald Trump.

“We don’t all share the same politics, we don’t all share the same views, but the need to defeat Trump this year has been my number one priority,” Ocasio-Cortez said.

She echoed others who have called Trump an aspiring authoritarian ruler and fascist backed by special interests who are worsening the ongoing climate crisis. She also discussed how the billionaire owners of the Los Angeles Times and Washington Post prevented their editors from endorsing Harris over Trump, calling it “a plutocracy mask-off moment.”

During the stream, Ocasio-Cortez also lambasted comedian Tony Hinchcliffe for calling Puerto Rico a “floating island of trash” during Trump’s rally on Sunday at Madison Square Garden in New York City.

Ocasio-Cortez – who is from the Bronx and of Puerto Rican descent – ​​called Hinchcliffe an “a-hole.”

“Know that’s how they feel about you… (and) about anyone who makes less money than them,” Ocasio-Cortez said.

Ocasio-Cortez said she had spoken to Walz a few weeks earlier when he expressed interest in doing a game stream with her. They agreed to play Madden because he was a football coach and he was familiar with the series from playing with his children.

Walz attended the stream before a campaign rally in Nevada, logging in at about 3:30 PM ET before laying out a history of gaming dating back to the original Pac Man, which hit arcades in the 1980s. He played with the Minnesota Vikings and Ocasio-Cortez with the Buffalo Bills while about 12,000 users watched.

Walz — the governor of Minnesota — and Ocasio-Cortez took to Twitch after a recent NBC News survey found that Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris had a two percentage point lead over Donald Trump among young male registered voters.

Despite the lead, Democrats have done better among the demographic in previous election cycles, raising concerns among the party. And on Friday, Trump’s campaign seemingly tried to heighten concern by having the former president spend three hours on the podcast of Joe Rogan, whose audience is mostly young men and whose show often tops global charts, both on Apple like on Spotify.

Harris was rumored to appear with Rogan at some point, but the sit-down never materialized. And instead, it was Trump who took the spot to make his case for replacing the income tax with tariffs and to reminisce about the “genius” of Robert E Lee, the slave-owning Confederate military general who commanded waged on the white supremacist, causing him to lose the side of power. American Civil War.

Sunday’s event with Ocasio-Cortez came after her first appearance on the Twitch platform in 2020 was one of the most watched events on the platform at the time. Trump lost the presidency to Joe Biden weeks later.

Sunday’s session also came after the Harris campaign live-streamed a Walz rally on Twitch in addition to live play of the World of Warcraft game earlier in October.

Another Harris campaign strategy aimed at galvanizing support from young men focused on a series of ads on the sports gambling platform DraftKings, Yahoo Sports and on websites such as IGN (short for Imagine Games Network) and Fandom.