Transcript: How Corporate America Learned to Navigate Trump 2.0

Welcome to the Campaign Trend Podcast, where you are joining in on a conversation with the entrepreneurs, operatives, and experts who make professional politics happen. I'm your host, Eric Wilson. Our guest today is Alex Conant. I. and co-founder of Firehouse Strategies, a Washington DC based public affairs agency that supports companies and organizations across the economy.

They've got clients from energy and finance to manufacturing and even sports. So before shifting to public affairs, Alex worked on a number of high profile campaigns across the country and up and down the ballot, including the 2016 Rubio Presidential Campaign with me. In our conversation, we discussed the changing public affairs landscape in Washington in the first few months of this second Trump administration, and what that means for people trying to shape the conversation in Washington. Alex, has been the most significant change in how the corporate world engages with Washington between first and now second Trump administrations?

Yeah. Good good question, Eric. The world's changed a lot in the last eight years, obviously. I look back at eight years ago, my firm was brand new. We were founded in 2016. We had a couple clients ready to go when for the inevitable Hillary Clinton victory. And then and then, being a, at the time now we're bipartisan, but at the time we were center, right firm we were pretty well positioned to help a lot of people 'cause there was like real scrambling after Trump won.

I don't think a lot of people expected it in 2016. Some people dove right in trying to engage with them and then would get burned by their own stakeholders. Which kind of ultimately led a lot of people to shy away from dc Of course then when the pandemic hit, they needed DC more than ever.

So it was a bit of a just. Whiplash and people really trying to make it up as they go. And frankly, the entire administration was rather chaotic the first time around too. Now, look, I don't think anyone was surprised when Trump won this time around. I think every company, all of our clients had plans ready to go for what they would do if Trump won.

And you've seen a much more strategic engagement of the administration this time. There's a real open door, like I've had more CEOs. And clients go to the White House in the last six months than I had in the previous six years. Literally. Like they there's just, there's a lot more engagement.

I think people recognize that to be successful, you can't just hire a lobbyist. You have to have a public affairs component to your campaigns, your advocacy. And so that's why firms like mine have had a really busy six months so far.

Yeah. I think that's been the biggest, it just, it was from day one, it was clearly different. Like the fact that you had all those. CEOs at the inauguration was a huge contrast to 2017. When and again, I think people who don't really remember that time there, there was a lot of backlash from customers and employees if they engaged

That right.

Trump.

And there was uncertainty too that, I was on a campaign at the time and there was constantly headlines of Trump's gonna get impeached in the first. Three months or he's gonna resign or, it was just, it was this craziness of we, people just had not acclimatized the idea that Trump would be in the White House for four years and we've now seen what that's like.

And I think that's adjusted the worldview for the current term, her

Yeah, I think that's exactly. I think eight years ago people really wanted to hide behind their trade associations keep DCN arm's length even though a lot happened between the tax reform and 17 and then all the pandemic relief in 2020. This time around, look, people are still using their trade associations, but you're seeing a lot more direct engagement.

You're seeing just a much more sophisticated public engagement by corporate America with, with this White House and I think the, this White House is far more receptive to it than it was eight years ago.

Yeah. And so you mentioned lobbying and public affairs being a both and kind of strategy. I think some of our listeners may be surprised that there are people who thought that they could get away with just lobbying. But how does that interplay work? How do they compliment each other?

Look, I think the influence industry has changed a lot over, the last 20, 30 years. I think, before I was, when I was selling government, I think, lobbyists, I. We're a lot more effective than they are now. That's not to say they're not effective now, I think, there was a day when a lobbyists could actually get a provision put into a big tax bill moving through Congress, and nobody would really notice it.

And, the client would be really happy. Those days are over, like lo like lobbyists now. Primarily educating staff. They're arranging meetings they're gathering intel. They're, in certain cases they're using their expertise to help, staffers, craft legislation. I. But what they're not doing is shaping public opinion.

Get building third party allies, finding grassroots supporters, any of the earned media stuff. And when you look at what politicians care about, they care a lot about the media. They care a lot about what their voters back home are thinking. Saying they care a lot about, if you're a Republican, you care a lot about conservative primary voters and conservative media.

They care about their donors. There's so much stuff that that actually drives the decision making that lobbyists don't do. And I think as any successful advocacy campaign right now, you need to have the GR support 'cause that drives the intel. That's educating members. It's is critical.

But. If you're in a fight or you have an adv, if you have advocacy priorities, you have to have the public affairs component too, to shape all those other inputs that actually drive the decision making makers of policies. So we don't lobby, like I've never talked to a government official on behalf of a client, nor is anyone here.

Like we're not lobbyists. But we work very closely with lobbyists on just about every. Every policy campaign that we're working on because we're doing the media, we're doing, and then there's a whole paid component if you're running paid advertising to try to shape public opinion. We're doing the grassroots work.

We're working with third we're trying to recruit third party allies, which I think is more important than ever. You do have sort of a. In, in these very sophisticated policy fights, you do have a very comprehensive strategic approach right now, of which lobbying and public affairs are two, I think, distinct offerings.

That's fascinating. I hadn't really thought about that in the context of this being a mirror for some of the changes that we are seeing on the political side. I was listening to

recently with some, former eds of party committees back in the 1990s, and they were mentioning that the biggest change that they've seen is the, that McCain Finegold campaign finance reform, which led to Citizens United and Super pacs and things like that. And and so you have seen that shift away from the party to kinda more outside groups. Another thing that we've talked about on this show before is that the limit on contributions from. Pax has stayed at $5,000 while, an individual couple could give more than that.

And so it's interesting to hear some of that power has shifted from the lobbyists and the tools that are in their toolbox to now public opinion. What do your voters think about, where are your grassroots.

No that's exactly right. I think a lot of voters continue to have this image of, lobbyists. Writing big checks to politicians, and as a result, the politicians are doing what the lobbyists want. And like maybe it worked like that before my time, but that's not the case now.

that big anymore.

Yeah, in part 'cause the checks aren't big enough. You're just like, if you're a politician who's dependent on corporate pacs and lobbyist donations for your campaign, it's like you're gonna be severely underfunded. Compared to the candidate who can raise money online or has giant super PAC backers.

Yeah. Speaking of the campaign side in 2024, we saw a big shift to influencers and podcasts. I think I. Listeners of this show know that I think that was overblown in terms of its impact, but significant and more of a symptom of the overall media and platform fragmentation. are we seeing the adjustment on the public affairs side because I have to imagine it's even a little bit slower than it is on the political campaign side to, to adopting this new model where we may have to give up a little bit of control to content creators and influencers and things like that.

Yeah. Look, I think every politician wants to go on Joe Rogan's show now and

Who

so do all my, so do all my corporate clients, right? It is that's not how it works. I actually agree with you. I think a lot of what the podcasters say and the influencers are talking about is, continues to be downstream from what mainstream media is the agenda that mainstream media is setting.

And so I. I, that's I just don't think you can adjust. I don't think you're.

to it.

Yeah,

yeah.

I don't think your strategy can just be, we just need to, talk to influencers and podcast and go on a bunch of podcasts. I think that's I think that's time well spent, but I don't think you can ignore the mainstream media 'cause that's setting the agenda and what the podcasters and what the influencers end up reacting to and what a lot of their content about is what they saw in the mainstream media and what the mainstream media the news that the mainstream media is driving.

And so I think it's very important to. They like, get your messaging on those mainstream platforms. And when I say mainstream, I use that broadly. Yes, obviously the Legacy Network media, the New York Times and the Journal, but also Conservative Media Center, left Media.

I just think anyone who's actually like generating original content about. World events, is somebody who a reporter in the classic sense of it. It's like somebody somebody that, that is, is gonna be important because what's on, you can draw a straight line from what's in the Wall Street Journal is, ends up being on Fox News, which ends up being whatever conservative podcasters talking about.

And that. What's in the journal is still super important and a big focus for mine. I think the second part of that is sure, like you need to generate more content now to break through than ever before. I. Simply because, it's so hard to reach people so hard to reach your target audiences.

And there's so many different mediums and so you have to generate content on all sorts of mediums. And I think we're a long gone, the days of you just get an op-ed in the journal and your problem solves itself like that. An op-ed in the journal is still super important.

But that can't that's not gonna be a silver bullet.

off point.

Exactly.

Thinking back to Trump 1.0. everyone had his tweets on alert, so I got the push notification on my phone anytime Trump tweeted because that was what our day was gonna be about. He's not using that channel as much anymore. We're still seeing some true social. What, the intel that decision makers need to navigate the Trump 2.0 landscape?

Look, we're six months into it and I think still trying to figure it out. I think, I. Look, the, his truth posts still move markets, and we are monitoring them in real time for several clients. If you care about tariffs, but you don't pay attention to his truth posts, then you're, you're, yeah, you're missing it.

So people care about that, but I also think people realize that that it's just a, it's a fluid environment and that he. Is apt to change his mind that, this is all one big negotiation. And and so I think people are taking a little bit of a longer term view on some of these issues and that, and, including tariffs and and it's less of a, it, people just seem to have calmed down a little bit compared to where they were, eight years ago or, even eight weeks ago.

You're listening to the Campaign Trend Podcast. I'm speaking with Alex Conant from, I'm speaking with Alex Conant from Firehouse Public Affairs. Strategies about the Trump 2.0 landscape and its effect on corporate America. Alex, I wanna talk about this dynamic now with Trump and his team.

You don't wanna get on the wrong side but you've got to get your side of the story or opinion out there. How are you balancing this kind of unpredictable nature of the public affairs conversation where, we, you don't necessarily know what his position on something is because as you mentioned, it is subject to. Kind of he posts on truth. I guess I'm how do you advise clients on how do you position yourself?

Yeah the number one thing I tell clients is like, you need friends. Like this is an environment where you don't wanna be the only one taking, you, you can't be the only one fighting your fight. You need allies, you need friends. And so we spend a ton of time recruiting allies and they can be third party groups.

They can be. They can be influencers, as you mentioned. They can be just, important voices, stakeholders media figures. And more often than not, they're not national people that you and I have heard of, but they're people in the states, they're in key districts, or they're on niche platforms or they're on social media.

And, a lot of people have a million followers on Twitter all of a sudden. And I think you need to. You need to have, you need to have as, as big an army as you can when you go into a policy fight. And so I tell all my clients a big part of what we need to do is.

Be recruiting friends and recruiting allies and supporters on our positions. Because that's what the, that's what the administration cares about. And, they care about they don't wanna just hear from one company or one, one perspective. Like they want to hear from lots of different people.

And that it's, it's a recognition that the administration itself doesn't agree on anything. We're talking about tariffs a minute ago. There's clearly big fights happening inside the administration about what their tariff position should be.

Yeah.

And and I think it's not just finding advocates for yourselves on the outside, but also finding the advocates for your positions on the inside of the administration and trying to empower them and work with them as closely as possible.

Recognizing that like you wanna be constructive in your messaging. And you wanna talk about things that have, you, you wanna make sure that your goals are ultimately aligned with the president's goals, making good deals, which is growing the, bringing jobs back to the US and bringing investment to the us.

And we work with, US companies and. F for the most part, those goals align with our companies. Now, they don't like the tariffs and they don't like, they, they don't like some of the policies. But, they emphasize their shared alignment on the goals. And then, find advocates to help them make the cases for why the policies that they want that, that, Trump might disagree with, are actually going to help advance his overall goal, the overall goals for his administration.

Yeah, and it's all it seems like it all comes down to that, that framing your issue to get an alignment with the president and his priorities. So you get into that win-win where Trump gets a win, your side gets a win. I.

Yeah, exactly.

Going back to Trump 1.0 or the first Trump administration I remember there were lots of different kind of tactics, like you would wanna buy Fox News in the DC market during certain hours when it was known that the president was having executive time and watching tv.

Is there a tactic that was effective back then that's not working as well now?

I don't think that effect, that tactic was ever very effective to me.

of TV spots. Yeah.

Yeah. I sold a lot of TV spots. Look, I think, here's the deal. Trump 1.0, nobody knew what was effective. And I think people. We're trying every type of tactic in including the paid, which, while expensive is also pretty easy, right?

It, it doesn't take a lot of work to create a TV spot and put it on Fox News. I think now it's a much more systemic approach. It's a lot more behind the scenes advocacy. It's a lot more fundraising or, building allies and recruiting third party supporters, the kind of work we just talked about.

It's just in many ways the camp the advocacy campaigns I'm seeing now just feel much more traditional than they did the first time around where really it was like, can we get a donor to go talk to the president and Mario Lago? Because, then that could result in a tweet that night that would result, that would, effectively be a policy win for our client.

There's not a ton of policy by Tweet in this administration where you get the sense that the tweet was generated by something he just saw on TV or something. A donor had just told 'em.

Yeah.

At dinner at RAA Lago, I think now they're, and they give full credit, not just, to, to his te the team that he's placed around him that he clearly has more confidence in now than he did eight years ago.

But they're just, there is much more of a system and, and then I think the other issue that we haven't talked about at all is Congress. Where when you talk about like the tax bill, sure. Like the White House has some of, has their own priorities, but this bill is being written by Congress.

And the advocacy campaigns that people run on, on, on members of Congress, are largely unchanged over the last 10 years. With the exception of some of the things we're talking about, like podcasts and influencers.

We're still buying metro ads and of, lots of cable news in the DC media market.

Yeah, look, it's a re I think, and I think that's a reflection that like, in a lot of these policy fights, there's literally. Billions, if not tens of billions of dollars at stake. So if you're a company, you can rent out the DC Metro Billboards for less than a million bucks.

Like it's a drop in the bucket. So if it moves the needle a little bit, that's a pretty good ROI. But like I only, didn't anyone ever want a policy fight because they put signs on buses.

exactly. There's a little bit of boxing out your competition too. Is there a new public affairs technology or strategy that's matured since that, that first Trump administration that we're seeing used in this second iteration?

AI is the first thing that comes to mind. Didn't exist eight years ago, at least not, the sort of gender generative AI that we're seeing now. I think people are still figuring out how to use it. But I can tell you firsthand, like it is a huge time saver and a cost saver. You look at, not so much on the earned media side, like AI is not very good at pitching a story to a reporter like that, that's relationship driven.

So I think anything in politics that. Is relationship driven like media. A lot of the stuff on the GR side, a lot of the ally recruitment and finding grassroots supporters, tactics we were talking about earlier. That's all relationship driven by definition.

You need real people to do it. But when it comes to paid advertising, I've already seen. AI being incorporated into that is just a huge time saver. It, literally we have a cam a client right now who is looking to run some spots and, a couple years ago I would've had to go out and hire graphic designers and, we would've had multiple durations and it would've cost thousands of dollars just to produce, some ads.

AI can do that. Better in seconds. And if I've figured that out, I guarantee every other, anyone else who's in the creative space is also figuring out as I get pitches from creative firms, I can see that, it's ai is heavily being incorporated in that. I, I think it'll be interesting to see how that continues to evolve and as the technology improves.

Yeah.

I would expect to see very different looking paid campaigns in the near future than we are used to. Simply because what's possible with ai is, is, you're just gonna see much more, much better looking advocacy campaigns now than you used to because AI.

it's just easier.

Nobody used to spend a million dollars producing a spot for an advocacy campaign, but now, we're pretty close to where AI's gonna produce some, Hollywood quality ads that are basically free to produce.

And so I would, if nothing else, if you watch a lot of Fox News, you know the ads should be getting better.

Yeah. And that's another really interesting with the political world. We, unfortunately, because of different state and platform regulations are being shut out from a lot of this generative AI creative and things like that. So I think we're gonna have to. keep an eye on what our colleagues on the public affairs side of the house are doing. And because you're gonna have so much more exposure to this than we are, it's gonna be really interesting. And just more of that just really good tools that we are just not allowed to access right now, unfortunately.

I will say, like on the, the work, I feel like the work I do now is much more substantive than the work I did when I was actually in politics. Where, you've rarely got beyond the talking points and it was a lot of personality driven. Of and stuff, now, I'm deep in the weeds on some really sophisticated policy fights and and AI I think can be helpful in when you're, when you know, not so much in generating content, but just, basic research helping under, I sit through a lot of meetings like, I don't do it now, but.

When people do use AI to record the meetings and give notes, like it's really impressive stuff. And I, I'm excited about the AI as a, as as a, as my firm's able to incorporate into more and more or what we do mostly. 'cause I just think it's gonna unleash a lot of productivity.

What I tell everyone is that you gotta be a good writer. You need, if you wanna be a good communicator, that starts with being a good writer. And if you're a good writer, you will always be employable in the PR space because it is, it's just a critical skill. And so I, I.

Become a good writer. If you're not a good writer, take lessons. We have a writing coach come in and work with our team here. And I have, we, everyone that we hire takes a writing test, so they're good writers when they start and we're done. We wanna make them better writers because the better writer they're gonna be, the better communicator they're gonna be.

And that's at the end of the day, what we're doing. We're communications firm first and, and people have to have those hard communication skills, I think is really important. The second thing I'd say is, and this gets back to why AI won't replace us, is it's a relationship driven industry.

I. Media relations. I tell people, the key word there is relations. Like you need to have good relationships with reporters know how to build relationships maintain them, use them and keep them fresh. And people that are naturally good networkers, people who, have, have demonstrated an ability to work well with reporters, to work well with allies, third party groups to work well within an, even within an office setting.

That, this the PR industry is very collaborative. You do very little stuff by yourself. It's, you're working in team environments at any agency. And so you know, someone who is able to navigate, build, and keep relationships is going to succeed as well.

So look, if you're a good writer and you're good at building and maintaining relationships, like you're somebody who might fit into my firm, I.

Great. Thanks to Alex Conant for a great conversation. I'll include a link to Firehouse Strategies in the show notes so you can keep up with Alex and the work that he and his team are doing. If this episode made you a little bit smarter, you know that all we ask is that you share it with a friend or colleague.

You look smarter in the process and more people find out about the show. So it's a win-win all around. sure to subscribe to the podcast wherever you get your shows and visit campaign trend.com for even more newsletters and articles. With that, I'll say thanks for listening. We'll see you next time. All.

Alex, has been the most significant change in how the corporate world engages with Washington between first and now second Trump administrations?

And I think that's adjusted the worldview for the current term, her

That's fascinating. I hadn't really thought about that in the context of this being a mirror for some of the changes that we are seeing on the political side. I was listening to recently with some, former eds of party committees back in the 1990s, and they were mentioning that the biggest change that they've seen is the, that McCain Finegold campaign finance reform, which led to Citizens United and Super pacs and things like that.

And and so you have seen that shift away from the party to kinda more outside groups. Another thing that we've talked about on this show before is that the limit on contributions from. Pax has stayed at $5,000 while, an individual couple could give more than that.

that big anymore. Yeah.

Speaking of the campaign side in 2024, we saw a big shift to influencers and podcasts. I think I. Listeners of this show know that I think that was overblown in terms of its impact, but significant and more of a symptom of the overall media and platform fragmentation.

are we seeing the adjustment on the public affairs side because I have to imagine it's even a little bit slower than it is on the political campaign side to, to adopting this new model where we may have to give up a little bit of control to content creators and influencers and things like that.

Who to it. Yeah.

off point. Thinking back to Trump 1.0. everyone had his tweets on alert, so I got the push notification on my phone anytime Trump tweeted because that was what our day was gonna be about. He's not using that channel as much anymore. We're still seeing some true social.

What, the intel that decision makers need to navigate the Trump 2.0 landscape?

Kind of he posts on truth. I guess I'm how do you advise clients on how do you position yourself?

Yeah.

and it's all it seems like it all comes down to that, that framing your issue to get an alignment with the president and his priorities. So you get into that win-win where Trump gets a win, your side gets a win. I. Going back to Trump 1.0 or the first Trump administration I remember there were lots of different kind of tactics, like you would wanna buy Fox News in the DC market during certain hours when it was known that the president was having executive time and watching tv.

is there a tactic that was effective back then that's not working as well now?

of TV spots. Yeah.

Yeah.

We're still buying metro ads and of, lots of cable news in the DC media market.

Yeah.

it's, just easier. Yeah. And that's another really interesting with the political world. We, unfortunately, because of different state and platform regulations are being shut out from a lot of this generative AI creative and things like that. So I think we're gonna have to. keep an eye on what our colleagues on the public affairs side of the house are doing.

And because you're gonna have so much more exposure to this than we are, it's gonna be really interesting. And just more of that just really good tools that we are just not allowed to access right now, unfortunately.

Yeah, I agree. So before we wrap up what's the most important skillset that professional in the public affairs space or looking to make that transition? What's the skillset that they need to be developing to, to be effective in our current environment? I. Great. Thanks to Alex Conant for a great conversation. I'll include a link to Firehouse Strategies in the show notes so you can keep up with Alex and the work that he and his team are doing. If this episode made you a little bit smarter, you know that all we ask is that you share it with a friend or colleague.

How Corporate America Learned to Navigate Trump 2.0 - Alex Conant

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