The popular podcast host Joe Rogan has revealed that his interview with Kamala Harris is still under consideration, but he had refused terms placed on the conversation by the vice-president’s White House campaign.
“They offered a date for Tuesday, but I would have had to travel to her and they only wanted to do an hour,” Rogan wrote late on Monday on X. “I strongly feel the best way to do it is in the studio in Austin. My sincere wish is to just have a nice conversation and get to know her as a human being.”
His Joe Rogan Experience has proved itself an important stop for political candidates seeking to reach voters, particularly the young men that both Harris and Donald Trump need for the 5 November election and who have – in many cases – rejected traditional media. On Tuesday, the Guardian reported that Trump’s running mate, JD Vance, had agreed to record an interview with Rogan the following day.
Trump registered about 36m views on YouTube when he visited Rogan at his Texas studio on Friday for a three-hour sit-down during which topics included eliminating income tax, mixed martial arts, life on other planets and praise for Robert E Lee, the Confederate military general who commanded the white supremacist losing side of the US civil war.
The Harris campaign said previously that she would not be able to appear for an interview with Rogan “because of the scheduling of this period” in the election.
Rogan and Trump discussed the possibility of Harris being on the podcast after the former president.
“She was supposed to do it. And she might still do it. I hope she does,” said Rogan, whose show continually tops the global charts on both Apple and Spotify. “I will talk to her like a human being. I would try to have a conversation with her. I think we’d have a fine conversation.”
An appearance on the Rogan podcast had been seen as an opportunity for Harris after Democrats had been polling surprisingly poorly with young men compared with previous election cycles. But it remains to be seen whether the Harris campaign feels it still needs Rogan – who describes himself generally as libertarian – after the furore ignited by a comedian’s insults about Puerto Rico being “a floating island of garbage” at Trump’s New York City rally on Friday continue to dominate the headlines.
That insult has also threatened his support in the crucial 222 Latino corridor in Pennsylvania, so called because of the area code there.
Trump on Tuesday was headed to Pennsylvania’s Allentown, a majority-Latino city home to tens of thousands of Puerto Ricans.
Meanwhile, Harris had five interviews planned on Tuesday ahead of a speech in Washington DC. They were television interviews meant to reach battleground voters in Detroit, Milwaukee, Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, as well as an appearance on a Spanish-language Pennsylvania radio station to reach Puerto Ricans and other Latinos, according to her campaign.
“She should just let Trump whirl in his own juices for the time being and keep moving ahead,” the Democrat strategist Hank Sheinkopf said of Harris on Tuesday. “She doesn’t gain anything talking with people on the right. There’s nothing to be gained.”
