The Kamala Harris & Joe Rogan Interview Drama, Explained

After Kamala Harris lost the 2024 election to Donald Trump, there was much debate about where it all went wrong for her. Some speculated that Harris' failure to appear on the popular podcast "The Joe Rogan Experience" was one of the nails in her coffin. However, after the Harris campaign claimed that Rogan made it difficult for the former vice president to be on the show, the controversial host swiftly clapped back to correct them. For their book "Fight: Inside the Wildest Battle for the White House," authors Jonathan Allen and Ami Parnes interviewed several members of Harris' campaign, who explained that they purposely went to the trouble of setting up a separate event with Beyoncé in Houston, Texas, so it would be easier for the Democratic candidate to meet with Rogan in Austin. 

Despite this, they were informed that Rogan was too busy with "personal" business to see her on the one day Harris was available, which then turned out to be the very same day that Trump appeared on "The Joe Rogan Experience." As Rob Flaherty, Harris' deputy campaign manager, recalled raging, "The vice president of the United States is offering to come to your f***ing show, and you keep putting up more hoops." As the book continued, "Harris's team still wanted to make it work, but a new wariness set in." And then, "On October 22, the same day the Harris camp announced the rally, the Associated Press reported that Trump would be Rogan's guest on Friday — the 'personal day' Rogan had originally reserved." And, naturally, Trump's interview with Rogan had everyone saying the same thing.

During a February 2025 episode of "The Joe Rogan Experience,"the outspoken host angrily told guest Dan Richards that the excerpt concerning him in "Fight: Inside the Wildest Battle for the White House" was completely untrue. Joe Rogan confirmed that he was interested in interviewing former vice president Kamala Harris and that he didn't have any bias in favor of Donald Trump (the host did quip that he wouldn't have voted for the Democrat either way though). "It's just normal political bulls**t. They just lie. They cover their a**, and they lie," he reasoned, adding, "I would have been very happy to have her on. [...] The goal was to release both [interviews with the candidates] the same day."

Rogan also touched on the swirling speculation that he declined to interview Harris in order to chat with Trump instead, asserting that the reason he was invited on the show on the same day that Harris' team was hoping to do an interview was simply because Trump's team had no runaround. "One of the things they said that wasn't true was that we lied about the day that Trump was coming on, and we just didn't [say] that Trump was coming on," Rogan said. "This is how it worked: Trump was really easy to book. Like, super easy. We offered one day. He said, 'Yes.' That was it. It was no, 'What are we going to talk about? How long is it going to be? Is it going to be edited?'" Naturally, the truth as to why an interview between Harris and Rogan didn't end up occurring, and what effect, if any, it would've had on the outcome of the 2024 presidential election may never be known.