The Scoop: Musk, Ramaswamy bypass media with DOGE podcast

Vivek Ramaswamy and Elon Musk plan to star in a new podcast to highlight their work as co-leaders of a new non-governmental agency – the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) – focused on drastically slashing government spending over the next two years.

Ramaswamy posted a three-minute YouTube video late Wednesday saying he and Musk will discuss their efforts on the “DOGE-cast” to explain “exactly what we’re doing to the public to provide transparency.”

The former presidential candidate noted that the goal is to continue these podcasts about the “downsized American government” through the conclusion of the taskforce by July 4, 2026, coinciding with the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.

Why it matters: Podcasts offer a wide-reaching digital soapbox, including unfettered access between a spokesperson and a target audience in a way that traditional earned media can’t.

Through this platform, PR professionals can control the entire message while coming across to their audience as being transparent and unfiltered.

More people than ever are listening to podcasts: 47% of the 12-and-over population are monthly podcast listeners and 34% are weekly listeners, according to Edison Research. About 23% of weekly listeners spend 10 or more hours each week listening to the medium. The media strategies of both presidential candidates this go around leaned heavily into the power of the pod. 

Ramaswamy is no stranger to podcasts. He has hosted “The Truth Podcast” on YouTube for the past year, discussing a range of conservative topics  ranging from “Uncle Sam’s Welfare Trap” to debates about immigration.

In announcing his new podcast, Ramaswamy sprinkled in popular political cliches related to transparency and decision making: “We want to bring the public along with us to lift the curtain, take us behind the scenes of what actually that waste, fraud and abuse in government looks like.”

Those comments promise the prospective audience members the ability to hear about the situation firsthand. Rather than relying on a journalist to tell the story, they’re able to deliver a message with a specific goal in mind with no outside interpreter needed.

Developing an audience for a podcast isn’t easy. The value of earned media is the ability to lean into a proven platform with an established audience. But if the content is good and it’s positioned in a way that the audience wants, there’s clearly a market for organizations going directly to the public with their own podcasts. Expect this trend to only continue to grow.

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• As part of its effort to capitalize on growing dissatisfaction with X under Musk, the head of upstart Bluesky is calling her platform “billionaire proof.” CEO Jay Graber used this phrasing during a CNBC interview to set Bluesky’s decentralized, open source social platform apart from X. Bluesky backend development allows a user to create a standard digital identity that they can carry across various apps. “What happened to Twitter couldn’t happen to us in the same ways, because you would always have the option to immediately move without having to start over,” Graber said. Graber is sending a clear message to current and future users: Bluesky won’t become X but instead will become a better version of Twitter. Graber leans into the fact Bluesky began as a Twitter project during Dorsey’s second stint as CEO of Twitter. Bluesky is promises to put “much more control” in the hands of users and add more transparency, Graber told CNBC. Her media blitz around the fast-growing social network fascinatingly puts both a love and hate of the same platform at the center of its pitch. Bluesky wants to be the Twitter you loved in 2015, not the X you hate in 2024. It’s a risky strategy, and one certain to alienate some customers. But it’s obviously working for the millions of people who have joined the platform since the U.S. presidential election. 
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• A group of athletes attended the United Nations’ climate summit in Azerbaijan to discuss the threat that climate change poses to sports. “In the future, if climate change is not addressed and is not thoughtfully handled, triathlons can cease to exist,” triathlete Pragnya Mohan said. She noted delays of some events at the Paris Olympics because of heavy rains — caused by a warming atmosphere — that contributed to high bacteria levels in the Seine River, according to the Associated Press. The AP report also noted that climate change is making sports more expensive and widening disparities. Putting athletes front-and-center is a brilliant PR move that represents the real-world implications of climate change. Getting caught up in facts and figures, rainfall totals and temperature changes won’t resonate with broader audiences. By being able to say “this will affect that and here’s how” makes the content more relatable. While individual athletes may not be enough to create change, grouping them together may have the power to inspire organizations such as the Olympics, FIFA and the companies that sponsor those events to be more receptive to calls for changes related to climate impacts.

Casey Weldon is a reporter for PR Daily. Follow him on LinkedIn.