Former President Donald Trump will appear on Joe Rogan’s podcast Friday, an opportunity that has previously eluded the Republican candidate and stands to shore up his support with young male voters.
Consistently among the top podcasts in the U.S., “The Joe Rogan Experience” has an audience that is about 80% men, half of whom are under the age of 35. While the show will be recorded on Friday, it’s unclear when it will air.
The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday that Rogan, a former comedian, said in 2022 that he had repeatedly declined requests to have Trump on his show. “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,” Rogan said then, adding, “I don’t want to help him, I’m not interested in helping him.”
Rogan supported Vermont independent Sen. Bernie Sanders in 2020, and had said he might support Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis in 2024. But this year, the closest he’s come to making an endorsement was saying that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was “the only one that makes sense to me.” (He later clarified that the statement was not an endorsement.)
Interest in who — if anyone — Rogan might support is such that Newsweek recently asked ChatGPT to predict his leaning. The AI chatbot noted that Rogan has been critical of Trump in the past and recently praised Vice President Kamala Harris’ performance in their debate, but concluded “it is more likely that he would vote for Donald Trump,” citing the candidates’ positions on free speech.
Per Reuters, the Harris campaign has been in conversations with Rogan’s team about the vice president appearing on the podcast, but nothing has been scheduled as of now. Such conversations don’t always result in appearances; Harris was also said to have been considering a sit-down interview with podcaster and radio personality Dave Ramsey, but that never materialized, and Ramsey wound up endorsing Trump after he met with the former president.
But that doesn’t keep Harris supporters from hoping that she could yet, as New York Magazine’s Intelligencer put it, “beat Trump in the all-important bro-podcast war of 2024.” So far, Harris’s most momentous podcast appearance was on “Call Her Daddy,” which Intelligencer noted had a politically diverse audience, but “also a majority female one.”
Just as Trump has been struggling to earn the votes of young women, so has Harris struggled to win the support of young men. As Deseret recently reported, one recent poll of registered voters between the ages of 18 and 29 in battleground states, 59% of women said they had a favorable view of Harris, compared to 38% of men.
It’s been reported that Trump is going to Rogan’s studio in Austin, Texas, to tape the interview. It’s unclear when the episode will be released, but the shows are distributed through Spotify and are available on YouTube. Rogan’s conversations with his guests typically last two to three hours.