‘They wanted it very controlled, and they were really concerned that it wasn’t going to be edited,’ Rogan says
Podcast host Joe Rogan said Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign was “really concerned” that a potential interview with the then-vice president wouldn’t be edited or time-limited.
“They wanted a stenographer in the room. They wanted staff in the room,” Rogan said Tuesday on the Joe Rogan Experience. “They wanted it very controlled, and they were really concerned that it wasn’t going to be edited.”
The podcast host also disputed claims that he canceled on Harris days before a scheduled interview during the presidential race, saying that her campaign never committed to a date, and contrasted the experience with his interview of Donald Trump.
“This is how it worked: Trump was really easy to book. Like, super easy. We offered one day. He said yes. That was it. It was no ‘What are we going to talk about? How long is it going to be? Is it going to be edited?’ There was nothing,” Rogan said.
But the Harris campaign “never committed to doing the show,” according to Rogan. Harris ended up not coming on Rogan’s show.
An excerpt published last month from Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes’s book Fight: Inside the Wildest Battle for the White House reported that Harris held a rally in Houston with Beyoncé so that the vice president could be in Texas to go on Rogan’s podcast.
“None of that’s true,” Rogan said. “No one ever committed to doing it. This is like really important because they keep pretending that I lied or I did this or I did that.”
“This whole idea that we fucked her over and that we fucked her over for Trump—incorrect,” he continued. “Just not true.”
Rogan said he even offered to record an interview with Harris on the same day as Trump, after she finished her Houston rally. He also noted that her campaign also wanted to limit the interview to 45 or 60 minutes. Harris’s staff also requested that Rogan record the show in Washington, D.C. But the podcast host wanted the interview to be held under the same conditions as with Trump.
Rogan also disputed Allen and Parnes’s claim that the podcast host lied about Trump’s appearance on the show.
“One of the things they said that weren’t true was that we lied about the day that Trump was coming on. No, we just didn’t tell you that Trump was coming on. He was already booked a long time ago,” Rogan said.
The Harris campaign also claimed, according to Allen and Parnes’s book, that they sent someone to Rogan’s studio to do a walkthrough of the set. Rogan said that, too, wasn’t true.
MSNBC host Stephanie Ruhle similarly said it was easy to work with Trump and his team but compared communicating with the Harris campaign to using the “Pony Express.”
“If I were to want to connect with VP Harris or President Biden, there’s 50 people between me and them. I could write a note that maybe could get to somebody to get somebody; then, through Pony Express and a pigeon, something might end up in a mailbox near them,” Ruhle said in December.
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