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If 2024 did nothing else, it showed candidates and others involved in politics that podcasts can be important.

It was his push for his dad to appear on podcasts like Joe Rogan’s that 18-year-old Barron Trump may have played a decisive role in his father’s amazingly successful campaign. 

Kudos, too, to The Donald for listening to his son.

Arguably, these two men – generations apart – demonstrated how podcasts can be decisive in political campaigns. 

This was not always so, of course, but it is now, and will be for at least the next two or three presidential election cycles. 

By 2032, this may have all changed – technology is changing fast, and nothing is likely to remain the same – but for 2026 and 2028, for sure, podcasts can and will prove decisive.

For now, I’d like to look at the “theory” of how podcasts work and how they can work for any specific candidate. 

In a future piece, I hope to focus on “practice” in terms of campaigns largely at the state level – candidates for Congress and the Senate, for governorships and other state and local campaigns – to lay out some important ways of leveraging podcasts. 

If you’re going to be a part of a campaign in 2026 or 2028, be sure and save these pieces and start applying their lessons as soon as you can.

President Reagan led the way in speaking directly to his voters, but I think that President Trump in his first term went further with this concept, advancing it out of necessity: He had a relentlessly hostile press and demonstrated ways to work around it by reaching out directly to voters in multiple ways, among them, podcast, doing so in the digital age. 

In 2016-20, Trump did this via Twitter and via his willingness to conduct live press conferences and press briefings, reaching over the heads of a room full of reporters to speak directly to voters. 

More recently, he and other candidates for other positions have found that they can do this by making use of podcasts.  But it’s not enough to be on a podcast – any candidate must promote the appearance to ensure that his or her voters see, hear and absorb the information provided in a podcast.

As soon as the 2024 elections were “called” by the news media – not just the presidential campaign, but Senate, House and state positions, from governor to school board chair – the media also began speculating about who would be running in two or four years. 

This, along with our 24/7/365 constant news cycle all but demands that everybody who plans to run for election or re-election in 2026 or 2028 should already be lining up resources to help make the next election cycle a success. 

Some of the tools needed include traditional and non-traditional news media interviews, as well as blogs, position papers and, as 2024 showed us, podcasts. 

Links to this ever-growing content platform should be posted on the candidate’s website as well as on his or her social media platforms, newsletters and other communications platforms.

If it taught us nothing else, the 2024 presidential campaign demonstrated that appearing on podcasts can be decisive in winning a political campaign – be it a run for the local school board or a successful campaign for the presidency.  However, too many candidates running for office in this election cycle found their appearances on podcasts did little or no good for their campaigns, primarily for two reasons: 

First, because they confuse being on a podcast with giving a one-on-one interview to a news reporter.  The traditional media “trusts” an interview between a reporter with a decent reputation and a candidate.  But they do not, as yet, trust podcasters in the same way.  This is unimportant for a Joe Rogan or a Megyn Kelly – podcasters with established reputations who other reporters can trust at face value.

But for your average podcaster, they get no more ascribed credibility than would a talk show host in a minor media market.  It’s up to the candidate, as much as the podcaster, to create a credible experience in a podcast interview.

The other reason why so many podcast interviews didn’t deliver on the hopes of the candidate is simple: The podcast guests expect the podcaster to “do it all.”  The more successful podcasts have their own promotion plans in place, but those may not meet their guests’ needs for widespread or targeted distribution of the conversation.  In short, it’s up to the interviewee to not only make sure they podcast addresses their key issues, but also that it’s digital distribution happens via an aggressive distribution of the URL.

Unlike many podcasters, political reporters have one goal – to create news regarding elections and candidates. 

To do that, at least the professional (are there any left?) among these reporters ask pointed questions and, if they’re any good at being reporters, they follow up those questions if the answers deflect instead of enlighten. 

Also, as noted, not all useful podcasts have extensive audiences or major-league distribution deals. 

Unless you’re on Joe Rogan’s podcast for the full three hours, getting the word out is up to you, the candidate – or to your team. Whenever a candidate appears on a podcast, he or she should turn over the URL of each successful podcast experience – not all are successful, at least in campaign terms – to their campaign social media coordinator and their webmaster.  This will serve to ensure that each appearance is promoted as a source of valuable information, even if the podcasts themselves don’t do a particularly good job of reaching out to targeted audiences.

In short, it’s not enough to score a successful podcast experience – you’ve got to then promote it widely to both your political base and your targeted audiences.  Also, it doesn’t hurt to “feed” successful podcasts to the reporters who are following a candidate’s campaign.  It’s one more source of information, “grist for the mill,” if you will, that is essential in any political campaign.

For “small” campaigns – school boards, apolitical judgeships, university regents and other second-tier campaigns – lively and successful podcast appearances, widely distributed to reporters, to other podcasters, to bloggers and even to potential voters – can elevate minor campaigns to, if not the big leagues, then at least to the AAA minor league competitions.  

However, podcasts can work best for dark-horse candidates for more-or-less major political positions – Congress, Senate, governor, state house and state senate – positions with real power in terms of governing, but generally overlooked by the national, and even state and local news media.  A successful podcast appearance can trigger a dozen effective articles or reports on the news media.  Yes, we have all heard that legacy media is dying – and, they are if not dying, then at least in intensive care.  

A useful adjunct to the campaign podcast – one that works well in boosting interest in a political episode of a generically non-political podcast – is the campaign bio (Writing a Book to Facilitate Winning a Political Campaign -American Thinker). 

On a podcast, be sure to have a copy of this book – or at least a mock-up of the cover pasted on a book of the same size, usually ‘trade paperback’ of 5×7 or 6×9 inch format.  During the podcast, show the book cover at least three times – the podcaster should know this, but do not expect them to “carry water” for you.  Make sure you show it, three times.  If the podcast is recorded in person, give an autographed copy to the host.  I know podcasters who have whole walls lining their studio with shelves of books given by guests and autographed to the host.

Why? At least two reasons. First, if you show the book, and if you impress the audience, you will sell a lot of copies of your book, and that will help fund your campaign.  And second, “authors” are considered “experts.”  Show the book and you’ll cement your status with the audience members as an expert.  See the URL, as above, to link to my article on why a campaign needs a campaign bio, published in American Thinker on Nov. 14, 2024.

But considering CNN and MSNBC, the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times and the other “mainstream” – now “lamestream” – media, getting their favorable attention isn’t a bad idea, especially if a conservative candidate can be interviewed by a neutral or conservative reporter – if any still exist.  It is more likely that a conservative candidate will be able to find a conservative podcaster.

Coverage among the lamestream media may not be the show-stopper it was in Reagan’s era, but it still has some residual value. 

Of course, this value is primarily in and among the Democrat candidates for major offices.  Republicans – especially conservatives – have learned not to trust the lamestream media, so coverage, even favorable coverage, is less than useful. 

Consider all the praise the lamestream heaped upon Liz Cheney in the aftermath of the not-really-an-insurrection on Jan. 6.  She was praised to high heaven but remains powerless and despised among conservatives and even more centrist Republicans. 

In her home state of Wyoming, she is now so despised that she couldn’t win an election if she was the only person running. 

So much for all that media praise.

For younger readers, it may be hard to believe that the internet didn’t exist until 1994, and it was only when the Monica Lewinsky scandal broke, on Jan. 17, 1998, on the Drudge Report, after Newsweek editors decided to “kill” the Lewinsky story. 

It made its way into the lamestream big leagues on Jan. 21, when the Washington Post reported it. 

Five days later, President Clinton issued his famous “all-the-lies-that-fit” denial, issued with his wife standing by his side:

I want to say one thing to the American people. I want you to listen to me. I’m going to say this again: I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky. I never told anybody to lie, not a single time; never. These allegations are false.

Writer Michael Isikoff may or may not have leaked the story to Drudge after Newsweek put the kibosh on it, but one way or another, it became the first internet national scandal, the first Internet news story that could have changed an election’s result.  Only, of course, Clinton couldn’t run again.  Still, the Internet is still maturing as a means of political discourse, and podcasts are the latest variation on the theme of candidates communicating more-or-less directly to the electorate.

Recall, it was not until Clinton’s second term that the Internet even existed; and it was during Clinton’s sex scandal with Monica Lewinsky that took news away from the editors and other gatekeepers and gave it, first, to Matt Drudge.

Remarkably, the Drudge Report is still out there, and its numbers remain remarkable.  For instance, 21.9 million visits in the past 24 hours, over a weekend right before Christmas.  And 643 million visits in the past 31 days, all of it post-election, and 7.0 billion visits over the past year, which included a hotly-contested presidential election. 

But Drudge will never recapture its central place in politics that it had in 1998.  That place is now held by podcasts.

Ned Barnett, a conservative political activist and lifelong public relations professional with a focus on causes and candidates.  He has been effective in helping candidates secure interviews with news media, and more recently, with podcast media and bloggers.  Having managed media and strategy for three Presidential candidates – at the state level – he is used to “playing in the big leagues.”  He is also known as a professional ghostwriter, website content writer, blogger and speechwriter for campaigns.  Beginning as a speechwriter, he moved into campaign bio mode in the 1976 campaign for President Ford in South Carolina, and continues to help clients with their campaign bios, their podcast appearances and other campaign strategies and tactics.  He can be reached at nedbarnett51@gmail.com or 702-561-1167.

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