Podcast host Joe Rogan went into further detail on his show Wednesday about why an interview with Vice President Kamala Harris was eventually scrapped.
Joe Rogan revealed it was the Harris campaign that reached out to get their candidate on his show before declining his “open invitation” to come on at any time, even at midnight when she was in Texas last week.
“The Joe Rogan Experience” host spoke with satirist and podcast host Konstantin Kisin, who brought up Rogan’s original plan to sit down with Harris. Rogan had said earlier this week it was scrapped because the campaign demanded the interview only be an hour and that he travel to meet her, instead of recording at his podcasting studio in Austin, Tex.
“She had an opportunity to come,” Rogan said in the episode released Wednesday.
He added of not agreeing to the campaign’s conditions, “You could look at this and you can say, ‘Oh, you’re being a diva,’ but she had an opportunity to come here when she was in Texas, and I literally gave them an open invitation. I said anytime. I said if she’s done at 10, we’ll come back here at 10. I go, I’ll do it at nine in the morning, I’ll do it at 10 p.m. I’ll do it at midnight if she’s up, if she wants to, you know, drink a Red Bull.”
Kisin called out accusations that Rogan was a “diva” if he was willing to give her an opportunity to speak.
“She actually reached out when she found out that [Trump] was coming on. So their camp reached out to me. So I said, ‘Great, I would love to talk to her.’ But it was very difficult to tie it down. They wanted to travel and see the thing is…if I go somewhere then there’s going to be other people in the room. And they want to control a lot of things, I’m sure,” Rogan said, referencing staff trying to interfere with the interview.
He continued, “My whole goal with her and with him is just talk. Just sit and have a conversation like a human being. You find out things about people. You get a sense of them, at least, a real sense. That was it. I don’t give a f— what we talk about. I really don’t. I just want to talk to you. Who the f— are you?”
Kisin asked if perhaps the Harris campaign were “wary” of him and believed he was on Trump’s side.
“I don’t know, I mean…just because of my appearance there’s always been this assumption that I’m some right-wing MAGA guy. I was a Bernie supporter you know,” Rogan said. “I’m a politically homeless person for sure. You know, I always considered myself a left-wing person. I never thought I would ever vote right-wing, but then the tides of culture shifted in a very bizarre way. And it just made me over time much more aware of what this stuff is really all about.”
He then denounced extremists on both sides of the political aisle but specifically attacked liberals for no longer appearing to defend free speech.
“The only solution to bad speech is better speech. We’ve always known that. But they had the power over social media and these collective groups of people that all had the same ideology. And then that tribal mentality kicks in and you lose the perspective that you should have as an educated person that recognizes that everyone has to be able to talk and we have to figure out who’s right. And you might be wrong. You might be wrong, and you might be clinging to this idea that you’re right and you’re going to do the whole thing a terrible disservice,” Rogan said.
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Rogan first explained why the interview was scrapped in an X post Monday, writing, “Also, for the record, the Harris campaign has not passed on doing the podcast.”
“They offered a date for Tuesday, but I would have had to travel to her and they only wanted to do an hour. I strongly feel the best way to do it is in the studio in Austin,” he added. “My sincere wish is to just have a nice conversation and get to know her as a human being. I really hope we can make it happen.”
Shortly after the post, it was announced that Ohio Sen. JD Vance would appear on the podcast.
The vice presidential candidate sat down with Rogan in his Austin studio Wednesday morning to record an interview. Vance told rally attendees in Pennsylvania later that day, it went “almost 4 hours, so I’ve officially done more interview time than Kamala Harris has the entire campaign, just today.”
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