CV NEWS FEED // Former President Donald Trump sat down for a nearly three-hour interview with podcaster Joe Rogan on Friday.
“The Joe Rogan Experience” is the number one podcast on Spotify and currently boasts 14.5 million followers on the app and 17.5 subscribers on YouTube. The podcast is known to be especially popular among young American men.
At the beginning of the interview, Rogan asked Trump how he felt when he began his first term as president in 2017 and first “got inside” the White House.
“It was really a hallowed place to me,” Trump said. “It was a surreal experience.”
“I had two things I was really focused on,” the former president indicated. “Governing the country and survival.”
“Because from the moment I won,” he recounted,
before I got to office, all of a sudden, they came down. I mean, nobody has ever been treated that way. You see that. You see where The Washington Post very early on they said, ‘Well, now the impeachment stuff starts.’ And it did.
A builder in the White House
Trump implied that as the first president to not have prior political or military experience, there was a learning curve when it came to staffing his first administration.
“I wasn’t a Washington guy. I was a New York guy,” he said. “I was a New York builder. I built buildings in New York and I knew that whole world, but I didn’t know the Washington world too well.”
Given this, Trump explained that when it came to appointments he “had to rely on people that I respected or liked but that I didn’t know that well.” As an outsider president himself, he conceded that “picking people that are outside of politics is somewhat dangerous.”
“So, you’re kind of stuck in a position where you have to pick established people,” Rogan replied. “And the problem with established people is established people are already indoctrinated into the system.”
“And they’re stiffs in many cases,” Trump added. “Stiffs and survivors.”
After Trump explained some of his experiences with members of Congress, Rogan characterized politics as “a good way for non-exceptional people to survive.”
“Well it is,” Trump said. “It certainly is.”
‘The biggest mistake I made’
Trump said that the “biggest mistake” he made while president was that “I picked some people that I shouldn’t have picked.”
He singled out his former White House Chief of Staff and Secretary of Homeland Security John Kelly, whom the former president called a “bully but a weak person.”
Since leaving the Trump administration in 2019, Kelly has emerged as a major political opponent of Trump’s. The former administration official and general made headlines earlier this week when Democratic nominee Kamala Harris cited his comments to attack Trump as a “fascist.”
Kamala Harris’ far-left history
“People are starting to get to know” Harris, Trump pointed out. “She was ‘defund-the-police,’ she was all these transgender operations, you know, if you wanted a sex-change and you were in detention.”
“The wildest one,” Rogan said, “is this idea of giving free sex-change to illegal immigrants.”
“In detention,” Trump added.
“That’s the wildest thing,” Rogan said. “Like, is that the biggest problem you have? You just walked here from Guatemala, you need to become a girl?”
“She was in favor of it,” Trump emphasized. “Now, she changed. She changed 15 policies.”
“In fact, I’m going to send her a MAGA cap,” the former president joked.
Rogan noted that Harris stole Trump’s “idea for no tax on tips.”
Trump agreed: “I came up with this idea that honestly no one ever heard of. Now, it took [Harris] two months.”
“Well, it caught fire,” Rogan said.
“And she just put it into a little speech,” Trump remarked. “But, I think we still have that issue. I think that issue is a good one for us.”
Joe Biden
Soon, the topic of the conversation turned to President Joe Biden. Rogan asked Trump if he thought Democrats knew the sitting president “couldn’t keep it together.”
“I think so,” Trump answered.
Referring to the June 27 debate between Trump and Biden – which many observers agreed was the event that led to Biden’s withdrawal from the race less than a month later – Rogan pointed out, “historically, that debate was earlier than they’ve been in the past.”
“There are a lot of theories,” said Trump. “A lot of people said, ‘Do the debate now and we’ll get [Biden] out.’”
“Well, that is what happened,” Rogan interjected.
“I think they also said, ‘Do the debate now and get it over with’,” Trump continued. “I don’t think anybody thought he was going to get out, really.”
JD Vance
Later, Trump praised his running mate, Sen. JD Vance, R-OH: “I think he was a great pick.”
“I like him a lot,” Rogan agreed. “I think he’s a brilliant guy.”
The podcast host went on to commend Vance’s “ability to talk like a normal human being.”
Rogan pointed to the vice presidential nominee’s recent appearance on “This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von.”
“He just talks like a normal human being,” Rogan repeated.
July 13: The fateful day
Rogan said he had wanted to have Trump on the show since he narrowly survived the July 13 attempt on his life: “Once they shot you, I was like, ‘He’s got to come in here.’”
The host asked the 45th president about his bullet wound from the Butler, Pennsylvania, shooting: “Do you even have a scar on your ear? You got anything on there?”
“I do,” Trump said, showing Rogan his right ear, saying the bullet “zicked [sic] right there.”
When Rogan, an Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) color commentator, observed that the wound “healed up pretty good,” Trump joked, “It’s not like some of the wrestlers, some of the UFC fighters. But, it makes me a tougher guy.”
Also in the interview, Rogan called attention to the relative lack of media coverage of both the July 13 and September 15 assassination attempts on Trump.
“And they’ve brushed those out of the news like it was nothing,” the host said.
“Yeah, they’d rather not talk about them,” Trump agreed.
“Imagine if there were assassination attempts on Biden, how hard people would be attacking the right.” Rogan said. “They would be trying to get guns taken away from people.”
“They would try to figure out some way to blame you,” the podcaster told Trump. “If Biden got shot in the ear we would have never heard the end of it.”
Something off with Harris
Later on in the interview, Rogan said that he thinks the “pressure and the scrutiny” is getting to Harris.
“You’ve been a celebrity for a long time and you understand what this is like,” he told Trump.
“You either have it or you don’t,” Trump stated:
Look, this is an interview. We’ve cover a lot of territory … I want to, I think it’s much more interesting.
She, to do an interview with Anderson Cooper, a softball, crazy softball interview, she took two days off and she studied and studied all day long, and then she comes out with the result – it was a real embarrassment. That was a really bad interview. She couldn’t answer a question.
“There’s something off with her,” Trump emphasized.
The border crisis
“When you look at what’s happening at our border, Joe,” Trump said: “When other countries are allowed to empty their prisons into our country with murderers…. We had 13,099 murderers dropped in our country over the last three years.”
“And 15,000 rapists, convicted,” Rogan added. Both Rogan and Trump were referring to data from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
Staying on the topic of the border, Rogan highlighted Harris’ frequent talking point that Trump stopped a border bill “from being passed.”
“But didn’t that bill also include amnesty for the people that are already here?” Rogan asked.
The bill would have “allowed two million people in,” Trump said. “They were going to get amnesty. It was a horrible bill. It didn’t protect us at all.”
Republicans had also criticized the bill for allocating substantially more taxpayer funding toward Ukraine and other foreign interests than toward the U.S. border.
Healthcare and RFK
Presenting Rogan with a chart that plotted life expectancy against health expenditure, Trump said, “These are healthier countries, look where the United States is.”
The chart showed the United States as having both a lower life expectancy and a higher health expenditure than over a dozen other industrialized nations.
“Look where the USA is,” both men said, almost in unison.
“Not good,” Rogan weighed in. “That’s sedentary lifestyle, that’s our diet, that’s the chemicals we ingest.”
Trump mentioned his work with former independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a well-known critic of the country’s current healthcare policy.
“I was actually talking to RFK today,” Rogan noted. “And he told me that more than 70% of young men are ineligible for the military because of their health. That’s crazy.”
“I could see it,” Trump replied.
Rogan said that he “loves the fact” that Trump and Kennedy “teamed up,” when Kennedy exited the race and endorsed the former president two months ago.
Rogan asked Trump if he is “completely committed” to having Kennedy a part of his next administration.
“Oh, I am,” Trump said.
He later acknowledged that some people are pressuring him not to work with Kennedy: “I would say that big pharma wasn’t thrilled.”
No days off
“I’m running for president of the United States,” Trump emphasized. “To me, it’s such a big deal.”
“It’s the biggest deal in the free world,” Rogan agreed.
“You’re down to two people,” the Republican nominee said. “It’s the biggest thing in the world.”
Trump said that when he heard Harris “took off yesterday, and she took the day before, and she’s going to take off tomorrow, or the next day – I haven’t taken a day off in 56 days.”
“I haven’t taken one day off,” repeated Trump. “I don’t want to play golf.”
“Golf is great, but this is too exciting,” he said, adding that running for president “is more exciting than anything you can do.”
“It’s the home stretch, who would take a day off?” Trump asked.
‘A lot easier if you’re a Democrat’
Trump noted that during the three consecutive times he was the Republican nominee for president, “I never get a good story. I only get bad press.”
“I will say this,” he added. “It’s a lot easier if you’re a Democrat. If I were a Democrat, I would get a lot of positive press.”
Rogan concurred: “The media to a large extent acts as a propaganda arm for the Democratic Party.”
The podcast host referred to multiple false stories the media “tried to pin on” Trump. “the ‘very fine people’ hoax, the Russiagate hoax … it’s a clear distortion of what you actually said.”
“The ‘bloodbath’ hoax,” Trump added, giving another example.
“That’s the problem with propagandists,” Rogan noted, “because they take things out of context, and ultimately what they do is they diminish their own credibility, because people don’t want to listen to them anymore.”
‘The rebels are Republicans now’
“The rebels are Republicans now,” Rogan pointed out:
You want to be a rebel? You want to be punk rock? You want to, like, buck the system? You’re a conservative now. And then the liberals are now pro-silencing criticism. They’re pro-censorship online. They’re talking about regulating free speech, and regulating the First Amendment. It’s bananas to watch.
“Joe, they come after their political opponent,” Trump said, referring to the multiple deeply controversial legal accusations levied against him. “I’ve been under investigation more than Alphonse Capone.”
Rogan added: “Not only that, but they’re weaponizing it by saying that that’s what you’re going to do once you get into office – by ignoring what they’re doing now.”
Tim Walz
Towards the end of the interview, the two men had an exchange about Democratic vice presidential nominee Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz.
“How did I do at the Al Smith Dinner?” Trump asked Rogan.
“That was great,” Rogan answered. “Very funny stuff. That Tim Walz stuff was very funny.”
“That’s a real beauty,” Trump remarked.
Harris “said she was suffering from sleep deprivation when she picked him,” Rogan said before laughing. “Maybe take a nap!”
“Let’s see how it all turns out,” Trump responded. “I think we’re going to win. I think we’re way ahead now.”
The 45th president predicted two things will happen if the Harris-Walz ticket loses, as the leading betting website indicates is the overwhelming likelihood.
“They’re going to say they should’ve had a primary, even if it was a short primary,” Trump predicted, referring to Harris’ controversial selection as the Democratic nominee after Biden dropped out of the race. “And then she’s going to say she shouldn’t have picked this guy,” Trump added, referring to Walz.
“She shouldn’t have picked that guy,” Rogan agreed. “The lying about Tiananmen Square … the military record.”
McDonald’s
“So, I did McDonalds last week. And I actually got a call from your friends at Google, from Sundar,” Trump noted, referring to Sundar Pichai, the CEO of Google’s parent company Alphabet Inc. “He said, ‘This is the biggest thing we’ve had in years.’”
Trump recounted that the tech executive had told him that the former president’s move of working at McDonalds for a day was “one of the biggest things we’ve ever had on Google. It just hit.”
“You never know about that stuff,” Trump remarked. “I thought it was a throwaway.”
‘Do it again’
After talking to Rogan for just shy of three hours, Trump had to leave to deliver a speech. However, he expressed interest in appearing on the host’s popular podcast again.
“I want to do it again with you,” Trump said. “You are something.”
Rogan seemed to agree, stating that the much-anticipated interview was “great” and “a lot of fun.”
“You are a fascinating guy,” Trump told Rogan, “and you’ve done a great job. I’m a big fan, thank you very much and it’s been an honor.”
“It’s been an honor to have you on as well,” the host told the presidential candidate.