Joe Rogan reveals the real reason Kamala Harris didn't appear on his podcast
Joe Rogan has revealed the real reason Kamala Harris did not appear on his podcast ahead of the 2024 election.
Rogan finally had new President Donald Trump, his most requested guest, on his show - for an internet-breaking episode in October.
The UFC commentator had turned down having Trump on before but eventually sat down at his studio in Austin, Texas, for an in-depth, three-hour conversation - with Rogan even making a change to his appearance for the show.
He would later be invited to Trump's second inauguration at the White House, having publicly endorsed the 78-year-old off the back of comments from Elon Musk prior to the election getting underway.
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His appearance on the podcast was seen as a key move in securing votes from American citizens.
But in his chat with Trump, Rogan did express interest in speaking to opposite number Harris, who was the vice president at the time.
"I’ve been trying, she was supposed to do it and then she might still do it, I hope she does," he said.
"I will talk to her like a human being and I will try and have a conversation with her.”
Discussions with Harris's team took place but she did not appear on the Joe Rogan Experience, which has 14.5 million followers on Spotify.
In January, Rogan claimed that Harris didn't want to "talk about marijuana legalisation", which he deemed to be "hilarious" - while he also claimed "they only wanted to do an hour" and had proposed the 57-year-old taking the rare step of travelling for it.
In a new podcast with guest Dan Richards, Rogan revealed that at one point it was proposed to do the interview with Democratic candidate Harris on a Saturday but he already committed to doing a watchalong for the featherweight title fight between Ilia Topuria and Max Holloway at UFC 308 and so said he had do it in the morning.
Rogan explained: "The other reason was they wanted to do it that Saturday after Trump. I said, 'I'll do it' but it has to be at 8:30am - the reason why was because I already had a podcast scheduled that was a live UFC podcast.
"There was this title fight which was happening. I flew in three of my buddies from California and we were all going to do this podcast together. We had committed to doing it. I can't just say, 'No guys, I can't do this awesome thing because I have to interview Kamala Harris'.
"I'm an MMA commentator, this is part of my job. I said I would do it but it has to be at 8:30 in the morning because I have to be done by the time the fights start. That's reasonable.
"That was Ilia Topuria vs Max Holloway. For UFC fans that was a huge fight, a gigantic fight. Max Holloway had just been Justin Gaethje with literally the knockout of all time.
"And Ilia Topuria is literally one of the best fighters on planet earth. This was a clash of the titans, the greatest featherweight champion of all time versus the current featherweight champion. I'm not going to miss that!
"I said I would work around you, I'll do it at night and come back and do it at midnight. I don't give a f***, I'll do it!"
Rogan responds to claims about demands he made for podcast to happen
On his official X account, Rogan shared a longer clip from the discussion about why the Harris interview didn't happen, captioning it: "This is what actually happened with Kamala not coming on the podcast."
A new book by journalists Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes entitled "FIGHT: Inside the Wildest Battle for the White House" claimed that Rogan's representatives had a number of demands for the interview and these included: no staff in the studio, no topic restrictions, and Harris would have to sign a waiver.
In addition, Rogan was advocating for the podcast to take place in Austin - which was indeed his preference. But he fired back at other statements which he was adamant were not true at all.
"They said a bunch of things that weren’t true,” Rogan stated.
"They supposedly talked to like 150 different people about her … but they didn’t talk to us, which is kind of crazy. Like, they didn’t even ask.”
He added: “One of the things they said that wasn’t true was that we lied about the day that Trump was coming on.
“No, we just didn’t tell you that Trump was coming on. He was already booked a long time ago. Trump was really easy to book, like super easy. We offered one day, he said yes, and that was it. There was no ‘What are we going to talk about? How long is it going to be? Is it going to be edited?’ There was nothing.
"They never agreed to do the show. None of that’s true. They never agreed. They also said that they sent someone down here to the studio to do a walkthrough of the set. That’s not true. The Trump administration did.”
Rogan revealed he was offered the chance to interview Harris in Washington but only for a conversation lasting 45 minutes to an hour - much less than his usual podcasts.
His plan was to release both podcasts on the same day but ultimately that idea was not possible.
Josh Lawless