Key Moments From Donald Trump In His Oh So Friendly Conversation With Joe Rogan

In a three-hour long podcast episode posted on Friday night, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump and entertainer Joe Rogan spent a lot of time agreeing with one another. While there were points in the interview where Rogan pushed back on Trump’s claims, in total, the episode—with topics ranging from how the wind impacts whales to jailing Hillary Clinton to the media being corrupt—held a friendly tone.

“You cannot be voting for Kamala,” Trump said after noting that Rogan should endorse him, a thing he hasn’t formally done. The host laughs. The two share a love for Ultimate Fighting Championship, an organization that came up several times throughout the interview. “I know you. I’ve watched you. I know you better than, you know, without speaking to you, I think I know you almost as well as your wife. I have watched you for so many years, you’re not a Kamala person.”

The interview, which was filmed in Austin, Texas, made it so Trump was late to his own rally in Traverse City, Michigan. People, per NBC News, began to leave.

Episodes of The Joe Rogan Experience, which is currently the top podcast on Spotify, typically go this long. The show, which began in 2009, has an overwhelmingly male audience—as of last year, 81% of viewers were male, and more than half of those who tuned in were under the age of 35.

Trump’s appearance on Rogan’s show fits squarely into an election that has been, in large part, defined by a historic gendered gap in how women and men view the state of the nation, the issues at hand, and the two candidates. If current margins hold, according to the latest USA Today/Suffolk University national poll, this election will have the biggest gendered voting disparity in over four decades.

In the past, Rogan, who has 14.5 million followers on Spotify and 17.6 million on YouTube, has claimed he refused to host Trump as a guest several times. “I’ve had the opportunity to have him on my show more than once. I’ve said no every time,” Rogan said in 2022.

“I don’t want to help him,” he added, describing the former president as “a polarizing figure” and “an existential threat to democracy.”

On Friday, Rogan critiqued those who say Trump threatens democracy, questioning the validity of how journalists and government officials have talked about the 2020 election. “Anyone who considers himself a legitimate objective observer of American politics, if you really want the best person to win, you would want people to not lie,” he said. “And the only reason why they got away with this lie was because they continually labeled you as this horrible threat to democracy.”

With millions of Americans already voting, and just over a week until Election Day, here’s a snapshot of what Rogan and Trump covered on Friday:

Rogan Says Trump Has Been Attacked More Than Anyone In History

Rogan started the interview by talking about Trump’s appearance on The View when running for president for the first time. Back then, the crowd cheered as Trump received a warm welcome on the show.

“They all loved you,” Rogan began. “And then you actually started winning in the polls and then the machine started working towards you—there’s probably no one in history that I’ve ever seen that’s been attacked the way you’ve been attacked.”

Trump responded by discussing his work on The Apprentice, later denigrating the all-female cast of The View, “I was very popular, and all those people loved me. I mean this, some of these women, they’re so, they’re so stupid.”

Election Denialism

Throughout the entire interview, Trump continued to bring up the 2020 election, reiterating his Big Lie—that he won despite an alleged coordinated effort against him. At one point, Rogan bemoans that people always “cut off” Trump when he talks about how he won four years ago—something he wouldn’t do.

“I did great the second time. I did much better. I don’t want to get you in any disputes, but I won that second election so easy,” Trump said. The two also discussed how supposed censorship against Trump on social media and Hunter Biden’s laptop led to election interference.

“I won by like, I lost by like—I didn’t lose,” Trump said later. Rogan laughed again.

The host also compared questioning the election results and being labeled an election denier to questioning Covid-19 vaccinations and being branded anti-vax.

In 2022, Rogan was “criticized for spreading what was widely seen as misinformation about the coronavirus,” the New York Times reported.

Trump Again Goes After Harris’s Intelligence

“Can you imagine Kamala doing this show?” Trump asked.

“She was supposed to do it, and she might do it, and I hope she does. I will talk to her like a human being,” Rogan responded.

Vice President Kamala Harris had been in talks to do a spot with Rogan, but it “didn’t pan out,” according to NBC News. Campaign spokesperson Ian Sams told MSNBC on Thursday that they “talked with Rogan and his team about the podcast, unfortunately, it isn’t going to work out right now because of the scheduling of this period of the campaign.”

Trump kept going.

“I hope she does because it would be a mess. She’d be laying on the floor comatose. You’d be saying, ‘call in the medics,’” Trump said. “I think we’d have a fine conversation,” Rogan replied.

Earlier on in their discussion, Trump told Rogan, “You know, Kamala is a very low IQ person. She’s a very low IQ person.”

Trump On Immigrants In Springfield, OH: “Bring Them Back To Their Country.”

Rogan suggested, without evidence, that Democrats sift immigrants into swing states to sway the vote left in elections.

“But we should just tell people what the strategy is,” Rogan began. “One of the things that’s been very clear is that they’ve moved a large percentage of these migrants that are coming across the border illegally, they’ve moved them to swing states. This is what’s going on with Springfield, Ohio,” he continued, bringing up the city that has been subject to bomb threats after Trump, his running mate JD Vance, and others spread the conspiracy that Haitian migrants there were eating pets.