The Politician-to-Podcaster Pipeline Is Getting Crowded
Everyone wants to be a podcaster. Politicians are no different.
Did you catch the latest episode of Inside CentCom? What about This is Gavin Newsom? Did you listen to Hold These Truths with Dan Crenshaw? Well, if you've somehow run out of pod content by politicians, you will soon be able to tune into World War Chi, a podcast by 28-year-old New York City Councilmember Chi Ossé.
Ossé, a member of the Democratic Socialists of America, will be hosting a show for Crooked Media, the media company founded by the Pod Save America hosts, Vulture reported last week. Ossé told Vulture he would squeeze in recording sessions on Saturday or Sunday evenings and that the show will mostly cover cultural topics. Still, there will "be a slow IV drip of socialism throughout each episode," he told Vulture.
If a "slow IV drip of socialism" is not your speed, you can listen to outgoing Rep. Nancy Mace (R–S.C.) talk about the Lindsay Clancy case, the WNBA, and Sharia law on her show, Get Maced. The tatted congresswoman launched her podcast back in August on YouTube, and she has over 100,000 subscribers.
And if none of these podcasts sound appealing to you, you are not alone. As Reason's Robby Soave pointed out in April after Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. launched his own pod, "There are just too many podcasts."
It makes sense why so many politicians are hopping behind the mic. The 2024 election has been called "the podcast election," as both Donald Trump and Kamala Harris went on podcasts with large audiences to win support (obviously with varying degrees of success). And in 2025, when establishment Democrats realized they were losing their grip on the podcasting world, they desperately set out on a quixotic quest to find the "Joe Rogan of the left" to win back voters. That same summer, former Democratic National Committee chair Jaime Harrison even launched a podcast called At Our Table in a pathetic attempt to rebrand the Democratic Party. (In case you were wondering, his last episode has just cracked 100 views on YouTube). And political operatives know the power of podcasts is not going away. During the 2026 midterms, successful congressional candidates "made nearly three times as many podcast appearances as their losing opponents, according to Spotify data," reported Axios.
The democratization of the media via podcasting or platforms like Substack is a good thing, as major networks no longer control political narratives. But if politicians only appear on podcasts with politically aligned hosts or launch their own shows, they can evade tough questions while appearing transparent. And, as Soave noted in April, we may occasionally need our leaders to step away from the podcasting set to do their taxpayer-funded jobs.
Maybe the podcast market will soon be oversaturated, if it isn't already, and most of these podcasts will go the way of At Our Table. Not everyone has the podcasting magic in them. Plus, boring politicians will have to compete with hypnotizing AI fruit videos for the masses' attention. To win over 2028 voters, politicians may have to start thinking more about policies that will improve constituents' lives and less about their next MrBeast-style thumbnail.
