(Daily Signal)—President Donald Trump and Tesla CEO Elon Musk have proven they have a successful media strategy to make the case for a second round of DOGE, they just need to implement it.
A few weeks ago, it might have been inconceivable for the two to pair up again, but the president and the CEO seem to have mended their rift from the summer, and this may bode well for a second round of DOGE.
Americans broadly support rooting waste, fraud, and abuse out of the federal government, but the DOGE effort got an undeserved bad rap, and as a conservative journalist, I have some advice on how to revitalize the image and promote a potential second round.
First, the good news: Americans support DOGE’s goal. A February Harvard-Harris poll found that 70% of voters said that government expenditures are “filled with waste, fraud, and inefficiency,” and 69% supported the goal of “cutting $1 trillion of government expenditures.”
Yet, after Trump and Musk implemented DOGE, Americans seemed to sour on the effort.
Only 35% of respondents approved of Musk’s job in the administration, according to a Washington Post-ABC News-Ipsos poll in April. A poll from the Center Square that same month found independents souring on DOGE. Almost half (47%) of registered voters said DOGE had been cutting “too much,” while only 28% said DOGE had been “getting it right,” and another 12% said, “DOGE is not cutting enough.” (To be fair, DOGE only cut a few billion dollars, far short of the $1 trillion goal.)
So, what went wrong?
It should come as no surprise that the Media Research Center’s analysis found that ABC News, CBS News, and NBC News gave DOGE 97% negative spin, but Donald Trump and Elon Musk have proven they can beat the legacy media at its own game.
The Trump-Musk Media Strategy
In the 2024 election, Trump embraced new media, helping his message reach more voices. He has also opened the White House up to new media outlets and conservative journalists, empowering them to share his news. Musk, for his part, not only purchased a major social media platform for news, but also pulled off a PR coup in the Twitter Files.
When Musk bought Twitter, he gave independent journalists access to the company’s internal files, allowing them to reveal just how bad the platform’s previous liberal bias had been. Musk allowed influential journalists such as Bari Weiss, Matt Taibbi, and Michael Shellenberger to tell the story, and this worked like a megaphone, giving each reporter an incentive to share the news and show the public how much Musk’s takeover was necessary.
Why Didn’t DOGE Do This?
For some reason, DOGE did not employ this kind of strategy.
To be sure, DOGE needed some insulation to carry out the mission. DOGE didn’t just trust heads of federal agencies to cut waste, fraud, and abuse—it worked across agencies to identify duplicative programs and ask, “do we really need this?”
This outsider perspective was vital to the mission, especially in a Washington where “good governance” often amounts to extra layers of red tape that makes common sense cost-cutting increasingly hard to come by.
While DOGE could have gotten more of its reforms into law by working with Congress from the beginning (and it should partner with Congress more going forward), many members of Congress would have balked at cutting federal contracts that sent money to their districts. Some insulation from Congress makes sense, at least at first.
However, the insulation from conservative media made no sense.
Secrecy Backfires
DOGE cut contract after contract, and it didn’t give conservative reporters the scoop. It left the story to liberal outlets that presented each severed contract as an open wound, rather than a positive step toward fiscal sanity.
Rather than a tour-de-force through the media like the Twitter Files, DOGE appeared to be a secretive effort, which inspired left-leaning journalists to search for a hidden scandal.
Rather than “why was our government wasting so much money?” the main takeaway became “What is Elon Musk doing behind the scenes?”
Laws like the Freedom of Information Act allow the public to access key government documents. This means that whatever DOGE did would always become public, eventually. Sure, DOGE didn’t want to tip off some people about what cuts were coming, but it could have strategically given friendly journalists key information to help shape the narrative.
The Twitter Files worked because Musk enlisted many journalists to tell the story. Different reporters could focus on different aspects of the company’s corruption, and each of those journalists owned the story—it was in their interest to share it far and wide. This approach drew more attention to each new revelation, and gave Musk far more PR power than a mere press release or Fox News hit.
The next round of DOGE should approach media more like the Trump White House and the Twitter Files.
Conservative journalists like me are eager to go through government documents, to follow the money, and to support rooting out waste, fraud, and abuse. I’m sure many liberal journalists would also love to expose when big corporations receive far too much taxpayer dough.
With the right messaging, DOGE could get buy-in from conservatives who are anxious to support it; independents who oppose waste but may be apprehensive at first; and liberals who might begrudgingly admit that at least a few of the contracts that fell under Elon Musk’s chainsaw deserved to die an ignominious death.
I think DOGE’s work is far from over, and I’d be eager to work with DOGE to highlight its successes and the need for its continued operation. I can also recommend a team of my fellow conservative reporters who would love to jump into the fray.
Throw me in, coach!
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