Podcaster Joe Rogan called out Democrats on Tuesday for realizing after the election that they have alienated many of their former supporters, including himself.
After President-elect Donald Trump won the election, many Democrats realized the power that independent podcasts like his have with modern voters. The fact that Vice President Kamala Harris and her staff, for various reported reasons, failed to do an interview with Rogan despite being invited is repeatedly cited as a major blunder.
Harris appeared on a number of podcasts with large followings during the campaign, but none with the pull of Rogan's. As an example, Trump’s Oct. 25 appearance on Rogan has more than 50 million views on YouTube, while a clip of Harris’ appearance on the popular women-focused "Call Her Daddy" podcast has failed to break 1 million since being uploaded Oct. 6.
"I think these Call Her Daddy shows and all these different shows that she went on-I mean I'm sure they had an impact, but I think that in the future… I'm sure they're scrambling to try to create their own version of this show," Rogan said. "This is one thing that keeps coming up like, ‘We need our own Joe Rogan’ right? But they had me, I was on their side!"
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"Well number one, they had you. They had you and they drove you away, [that’s] number one," his guest, businessman Marc Andreessen said. "But they also have, you know, ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN…"
"Right, but that doesn't work anymore," Rogan argued. "You're using smoke signals and everybody else has a cellphone. It doesn’t work. It's just … It's a bizarre time, it's really interesting though like as you said, we're in a great timeline and I think it's a fascinating timeline too, because there's so much uncertainty."
Rogan has espoused liberal views at times and expressed support for Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., in 2020 when he sought the Democratic nomination. But in 2024, Rogan endorsed Trump shortly before the election.
Andreesen had argued earlier that the "timeline," a slang word for alternate courses of history decided by historic events, had switched multiple times this very election and that the first attempted assassination of Trump in July was the first major timeline during this election, "and we saw the most conspicuous display of physical bravery I’ve ever seen." The second timeline split, he said, was on Election Day.
There have been multiple claims about why the Harris campaign failed to do an interview on Rogan's podcast, one of America's most popular.
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While Stephanie Cutter, a senior adviser on the campaign, told "Pod Save America" their campaign had been "hoping" to fit in an interview but "ultimately weren’t able to do it," another Harris campaign official said there was more to the story.
The Financial Times reported that Jennifer Palmieri, senior adviser to second gentleman Doug Emhoff, said talks about Harris appearing on Rogan's show fell through "because of concerns at how the interview would be perceived within the Democratic Party." She specified that "there was a backlash with some of our progressive staff that didn’t want her to be on it, and how there would be a backlash."
