Seven lessons from Trump’s interview with Joe Rogan

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s three-hour interview with America’s number one podcaster Joe Rogan has been released.

During the wide-ranging meeting, the former president discussed everything from the “biggest mistake” of his presidency, what he told North Korea’s leader and life in space.

Just two years ago, Rogan described the former president as “an existential threat to democracy” and refused to have him on his show. But the pair appeared friendly on Friday as they discussed their shared interest in Ultimate Fighting Championship and mutual friends like Elon Musk.

The Republican’s campaign hopes the interview will consolidate his influence among male voters, who make up the core of listeners to the Joe Rogan Experience, which has 14.5 million Spotify followers and 17.5 million YouTube subscribers.

Trump made a long detour to visit Rogan in Austin, Texas, for the podcast, causing him to appear nearly three hours late to a rally in Traverse City, Michigan, a crucial swing state where both he and his Democratic opponent, Kamala Harris, campaigned hard.

Trump told Rogan that the “biggest mistake” of his 2017-2021 presidency was: “I picked some people I shouldn’t have picked.”

“Neocons or bad people or disloyal people,” he told Rogan, referring to neoconservatives, policymakers who favor an interventionist US foreign policy.

“A guy like Kelly, who was a bully but a weak person,” Trump added, referring to his former White House chief of staff John Kelly, who told the New York Times this week that he thought his former boss was “fascist”. tendencies.

Trump also described his former US national security adviser John Bolton as “an idiot” but sometimes useful.

“He was good in a way,” Trump said. ‘He’s a madman.

“And every time I dealt with a country and they saw this crazy job behind me, they said, ‘Oh man, Trump is going to war with us.’ He was with Bush when they stupidly entered the Middle East.”

Trump said he had gotten to know North Korean leader Kim Jong Un “very well,” despite some nuclear saber-rattling between the two initially, when Trump said he told him: “Little Rocket Man, you’re going to burn in hell .”

“By the time I was done, we no longer had a problem with North Korea,” Trump said.

Trump said he urged Kim to stop building up his “substantial” weapons stockpile.

“I said, ‘Are you ever going to do anything else? Why don’t you take it easy? Go to the beach, relax.

“I said, ‘You always build nuclear power, you don’t have to do it. Relaxed!’ I said, ‘Let’s build some condos on your coast.’”

Trump also argued that Russia would never have invaded Ukraine if he had been president.

“I said, ‘Vladimir, you are not going in,’” he told Rogan, referring to Russian President Vladimir Putin. “I talked to him all the time.

“I can’t tell you what I told him because I think it would be inappropriate. But one day he will tell you, but then he would never have gone in.”

Trump said Putin invaded Ukraine because “first of all, he doesn’t respect Biden at all.” The White House has previously accused Trump of befriending foreign autocrats.

Asked for evidence to support his repeated claims that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from him, Trump told Rogan: “We’ll do it another time.

“I would bring in papers that you wouldn’t believe, so many different papers. That election was so crooked, it was the most crooked.”

Rogan pressed him for proof.

Trump alleged voting irregularities in Wisconsin and that Demcorats were “using Covid to cheat.”

“Are you ever going to present this (evidence)?” Rogan asked.

Trump said: “Um….”

He started talking about how 51 former intelligence agents tied to Joe Biden had falsely suggested that stories about his son Hunter Biden’s laptop were Russian disinformation.

“I lost by, I didn’t lose,” Trump said, quickly correcting himself.

Trump lashed out at his political opponents and praised his allies, many of whom are likely to appeal to Rogan’s fan base.

Trump said Elon Musk, who has appeared on Rogan’s podcast in the past, was “the greatest man.”

Trump also praised Robert F Kennedy Jr., the former independent presidential candidate who dropped out in August and now supports Trump. Kennedy has a close friendship with Rogan.

Trump also lashed out at his rivals.

He called opponent Vice President Kamala Harris a “person with a very low IQ” and described California Governor Gavin Newsom as “one of the worst governors in the world.”

Trump said he has not ruled out the possibility of life in space.

“There’s no reason not to think that Mars and all these planets don’t have life,” he said, referring to conversations he’s had with fighter pilots who had seen “very strange” things in the sky.

“Well, Mars, we’ve had probes and rovers there, and I don’t think there’s any life there,” Rogan said.

“Maybe it’s life we ​​don’t know about,” Trump said.

Trump said some senior figures at NBC had tried to persuade him not to run for president so his show The Apprentice could stay on the air.

“They wanted me to stay,” he said. “All the top people came to me and tried to talk me out of it because they wanted me to renew.”

Trump starred in 14 series of The Apprentice from 2004, but NBC cut ties with him after he launched his bid for the presidency in 2015, citing his “derogatory” comments about immigrants.

Trump was under pressure from Democrats to release his medical records after Harris released hers earlier this month, which showed she was in “excellent health” and fit to run for president.

Trump’s team said at the time that his doctor described him as being in “perfect and excellent health” without sharing his details.

Trump did not directly address the topic in Friday’s podcast.

But he told Rogan that during a physical examination, for which he did not give a date, doctors had described his ability to run on a steep treadmill as “incredible.”

“I was never one to run on a treadmill. When I passed a physical exam, they asked me to run on a treadmill and then they made it steeper and steeper and steeper and the doctors said, it was at Walter Reed (Hospital ), they said, ‘It’s incredible!’ I tell you, I felt like I could have stayed all day.”

He said treadmills are “really boring,” so he prefers to stay healthy by playing golf.