Harris Campaign Adviser Says Joe Rogan Interview Fell Apart Over ‘Backlash’ From ‘Progressive Staff’
Democratic strategist Jennifer Palmieri revealed that Vice President Kamala Harris’s interview with Joe Rogan partly fell apart due to “backlash” from some of the “progressive staff” on the campaign.
“There was a backlash with some of our progressive staff that didn’t want her to be on it, and how there would be a backlash,” Palmieri said Wednesday at a conference organized by The Clearing House and covered by Financial Times.
Palmieri worked as a senior advisor to Harris’s husband Doug Emhoff and she’s a veteran of Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign. She also previously worked as White House director of communications in former President Barack Obama’s administration.
Palmieri said there was a “weird dynamic” about the interview, especially as Rogan talked about it more.
“Because all of a sudden he’s on his heels about how his audience is going to react to this, and the demands that they were going to put on him to be tough on her,” she said.
Some critics have questioned Harris’s decision to not do Rogan’s podcast. The comedian and UFC commentator hosted both President-elect Donald Trump and his running mate JD Vance on his show shortly before the election.
Trump’s three-plus hour interview with Trump has been viewed more than 50 million times on YouTube. For comparison’s sake, Harris went on a similarly popular podcast called Call Her Daddy — which reportedly cost her campaign six figures to build a set for — and that episode has less than one million views on the same platform.
Rogan endorsed Trump on the night before the election.
Rogan has said that there were multiple talks between his team and Harris’s campaign, but issues about the length of the episode and other requirements stalled progress. Rogan said he eventually gave an “open invitation” to Harris, saying he’d avoid whatever topics she wanted and make any time work, but that she would have to travel to him.
On Tuesday’s The Joe Rogan Experience, Rogan revealed one of the conditions for the interview that never happened was to stay away from talking about “marijuana legalization.”
“They had requirements on things she didn’t want to talk about,” Rogan said. “She didn’t want to talk about marijuana legalization, which I thought was hilarious.”