Popular podcast host Joe Rogan said Monday that he had shot down several opportunities to interview former President Donald Trump on “The Joe Rogan Experience,” explaining, “I don’t want to help him.”
Rogan discussed politics and comedy — among other things — during a July 4th appearance on Lex Fridman’s podcast, and the topic turned to the former president.
“The Trump era is also going to be one of the weirder times. When people look back historically about the division in this country, he’s such a polarizing figure that so many people felt like they could abandon their own ethics and morals and principles just to attack him and anybody who supports him because he is an existential threat to democracy itself,” Rogan said.
Fridman asked whether Rogan believed Trump had caused the division or that he was more like a “symptom” of the division that had already been present beneath the surface.
“You said it got real weird. Maybe it’s gonna get weirder,” Fridman said, at which point Rogan posited that Trump was likely to run for president again in 2024.
“Well, he’s running against a dead man, you know?” Rogan continued when Fridman asked whether Trump could win. “I mean, Biden shakes hands with people that aren’t even there when he gets off stage. I think he’s seeing ghosts … You see him on Jimmy Kimmel the other day? He was just rambling. I mean, he’s — if he was anyone else, if he was a Republican, if that was Donald Trump doing that, every f***ing talk show would be screaming for him to be off the air.”
Rogan then pivoted to make it clear that he was not a fan of Trump’s, adding, “By the way, I’m not a Trump supporter in any way, shape or form. I’ve had the opportunity to have him on my show more than once — I’ve said no, every time. I don’t want to help him. I’m not interested in helping him.”
Fridman pushed back, saying that he believed Trump would eventually make his way to “The Joe Rogan Experience” someday because Rogan would not be able to resist a conversation that was certain to be interesting.
“I mean, you had, you’ve had a lot of people that I think you might, you may otherwise be skeptical. ‘Would I have a good conversation?’ Which I think is your metric, you don’t care about politics … And I think you had like Kanye on, for example and you had a great conversation with them,” Fridman argued.
“Yeah, but Kanye’s an artist,” Rogan shot back. “Kanye doing well or not doing well, doesn’t change the course of our country.”
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