A senior advisor to Vice President Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign suggested that she didn’t appear on The Joe Rogan Experience because the popular host was using her as “leverage” to get President Donald Trump as a guest.
Four staffers from Harris’ campaign appeared on the podcast Pod Save America on Tuesday. Stephanie Cutter, the campaign’s senior advisor for strategy messaging, said that Harris wanted to appear on the show, but the timing didn’t work out.
Since Rogan refused to travel, Harris had to appear in person at his Austin, Texas studio. The campaign hoped that Harris could do The Joe Rogan Experience while she was in Houston for a rally with Beyoncé, Mediaite reported. However, that was also the day that Trump was taping his episode.
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“We were hoping to fit it in around that ultimately weren’t able to do it. As it turns out, that was the day that Trump was taping his Joe Rogan, which they had never confirmed to us, we just kind of figured that out in the lead up to it,” Cutter said.
Another campaign staffer, senior advisor David Plouffe, President Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign manager, suggested that the attempts to set up an interview with Harris may have been intended to convince Trump to appear on the show instead.
“Yeah, Dan, so what’s clear is we offered to do it in Austin, people should know that. It didn’t work out. Maybe they leveraged that to get Trump in studio, I don’t know, and then, you know, we were obviously not going to be back in Texas, but offered to do it on the road,” Plouffe said.
Rogan himself said when the Trump interview was released that a Harris interview was still a possibility, and confirmed that he insisted that she come to his studio.
“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. 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,” Rogan said at the time.
Though Rogan ultimately endorsed Trump the day before the election, in the months leading up to it, he praised Harris. In September, Rogan said “she’s nailing it,” referring to her campaign and debate performance. Rogan was also briefly on the outs with Trump after endorsing his one-time third party opponent Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
The Joe Rogan Experience has 14.5 million followers on Spotify, according to Bloomberg, and another 18 million on YouTube. Trump’s interview with Rogan currently has 50 million views, Mediaite reported. Many pundits have suggested that not appearing on the show cost Harris the election.
Some have placed blame on staffers uncomfortable with her appearing on Rogan’s show after Jennifer Palmieri, one of second gentleman Doug Emhoff’s senior advisors, told Financial Times that there were worries about a Democratic Party backlash. Rogan is a controversial figure who spread COVID-19 misinformation during the pandemic. He’s also used his show to platform conspiracy theorists like Alex Jones.
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