Video News Clips: In Their Own Words

Joe Rogan Explains Why He Interviewed Trump In 2024 After Previously Saying He Didn’t Want To ‘Help Him’

Screenshot/YouTube/Ultimate Human Podcast with Gary Brecka

Popular podcast host Joe Rogan explained on a Tuesday podcast why he finally decided to interview President Donald Trump during the 2024 election after previously expressing reservations.

Rogan said on the “Lex Fridman Podcast” in 2022 that he had rejected multiple chances to host Trump on his podcast, “The Joe Rogan Experience,” because he had no desire to “help him.” However, Rogan said on “The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka” that Trump’s criminal cases, and the Butler, Pennsylvania, assassination attempt against him, changed his mind.

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“Well, there was a bunch of things that happened. First of all, there was the lawfare. There was these lawsuits that they were trying to pin on him. They were trying to convict him and turn him into a felon. And they were doing it so blatantly and obviously,” Rogan said. “The case with the bookkeeping error or the bookkeeping — whatever it was — the misdemeanor that they had charged him with 34 felonies for, which isn’t even a felony. It’s a misdemeanor and … it’s also past the statute of limitations. None of it made any sense. And people were cheering it on. He’s a convicted felon.”

“Like, hey, they can do that to you. Do you understand that? If they can do that to a former president, a former fucking president who’s rich as shit,” he continued. “They can do that to him, they can do that to you, too. You can’t cheer this on. This is insane. And then when they tried to kill him — all those things.”

Host Gary Brecka noted Trump faced two assassination attempts during the 2024 campaign, but Rogan said the Pennsylvania one was more meaningful to him. He also said he was dismayed by the lack of available information about the attempt.

“The whole thing’s insane because they’ve managed to cover it up. I mean, it would have been Lee Harvey Oswald 2.0 if Trump had died that day,” Rogan said.

Yet another reason Rogan said he decided to interview Trump was the media bias against him.

“[T]here’s no real conversations with him where you’re just treating him like a human being. Like everything — he’s being grilled — and then everything’s taken out of context and I’m seeing him being taken out of context on the campaign trail and like — it was just gross,” he said. “It was just so anti-American. Like if you’re an American and you believe in our justice system and if you believe in our system of electing representatives, it should be the best people should have this opportunity to express what their plan is.”

“‘This is what I want to do. This is where I stand on the issues. This is how I think I could pull it off.’ And then the American people are supposed to look at this person saying it and that person saying it and decide,” he added. “But that’s not what we were getting. We were getting one side that was radically being supported by almost all of mainstream media except Fox News.”

Trump appeared on Rogan’s podcast on Oct. 25, recording a three-hour episode that had already amassed over 40 million views on YouTube by Oct. 30. Rogan also endorsed Trump on Nov. 4 — just one day before the presidential election.