Joe Rogan has responded to a newly released book that made numerous claims about former vice president Kamala Harris and the opportunity to appear on his popular podcast.
Back in October, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump conducted a wide-ranging three-hour interview with Rogan that rocketed to over 20 million views on YouTube in just 20 hours.
It was regarded by many as a masterstroke by Trump, who would go on to be elected the 47th president of the United States, winning both the Electoral College and the popular vote.
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Kamala Harris, meanwhile, did not appear on The Joe Rogan Experience podcast – a decision that was seen by many as a campaign misstep given how popular the show is, with 14.5 million followers on Spotify.
Shortly after Trump's appearance on the show, it emerged that Harris' team had been in touch with Rogan's show about a possible appearance, but scheduling did not line up, according to campaign spokesperson Ian Sams.
"We talked with Rogan and his team about the podcast," Sams said. "Unfortunately it isn't going to work out right now because of the scheduling of this ... period of the campaign."
Amid talk around the presidential campaign, a new book by journalists Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes entitled "FIGHT: Inside the Wildest Battle for the Whitehouse" made some bold claims, including the so-called demands Rogan's representatives make of guests.
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"On October 11, Harris deputy campaign manager Rob Flaherty, the aide in charge of digital strategy, made the first Zoom call to start negotiating with Rogan’s reps," reads an excerpt featured by NBC News.
"He did not know what to expect. These might be juiced-up, UFC-looking supplement people, he thought. He was surprised—perhaps a tad disappointed—to find out that Rogan’s associates were more like Hollywood agents.
"In that vein, they outlined the podcaster’s conditions for an interview: no staff in the studio, no topic restrictions, and Harris would have to sign a waiver.
"There was one more item in the small print: Harris would have to come to Austin, Texas. Rogan’s reps said that might be negotiable, but he had only once done an interview with an out-of-studio guest. That was leaker Edward Snowden, who was wanted in the United States at the time."
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Now, Rogan himself has responded to the contents of the book that delves into Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign.
“They said a bunch of things that weren’t true,” Rogan said in the latest episode with guest Dan Richards. “They supposedly talked to like 150 different people about her … but they didn’t talk to us, which is kind of crazy. Like, they didn’t even ask.”
He continued: “One of the things they said that wasn’t true was that we lied about the day that Trump was coming on.
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“No, we just didn’t tell you that Trump was coming on. He was already booked a long time ago. Trump was really easy to book, like super easy. We offered one day, he said yes, and that was it. There 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."
“They never agreed to do the show. None of that’s true. They never agreed,” Rogan added. “They also said that they sent someone down here to the studio to do a walkthrough of the set. That’s not true. The Trump administration did.”
Rogan also recalled how the Harris campaign offered to come to Washington for a shorter interview, believed to be 45 minutes to an hour, which was less than a third of his normal conversations.
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“And I said, look, [Trump] did it here,” Rogan said. “We should probably do it here. Like, if it’s possible to do it here — obviously when he did it, it had an enormous result. I’m willing to do the same thing for her. I wanted to release both of them on the same day. This was my goal.”
Jack Kenmare