Harris Campaign Leadership Claim Trump Taping Partly to Blame for VP Not Going On Rogan’s Podcast: ‘We Wanted To Do It’
Screenshot via Pod Save America
Vice President Kamala Harris’s campaign leadership joined Pod Save America to give a post-mortem analysis of their loss to President-elect Donald Trump and criticism over some perceived missteps, like Harris not going on Joe Rogan’s podcast.
Pod Save America’s Dan Pfeiffer was joined by Jen O’Malley Dillon, David Plouffe, Quentin Fulks, and Stephanie Cutter from Harris’s campaign and at one point he noted the debate around Rogan’s podcast. Democratic strategist James Carville and others have blasted the Rogan interview not happening, especially in light of some suggesting some within Harris’s campaign itself objected to the interview because of Rogan’s own politics.
Cutter, who oversaw “messaging and communications” for the campaign, said Harris was “ready” and “willing” to do the podcast, but they could not lock down a date. She also claimed the best chance they had was during a trip to Houston where Harris rallied with Beyonce, but Trump happened to be taping his episode of Rogan that day.
Rogan ultimately endorsed Trump the night before the election. He’s said on multiple occasions that he agreed to Harris’s campaign demands, including no marijuana talk, and eventually told them he could make any time work as long as they made it to Austin, Texas.
According to Cutter:
“There’s a lot of intrigue around this, a lot of theories, it’s pretty simple. We wanted to do it. I hate to repeat this over and over, but it was a very short race with a limited number of days and for a candidate to leave the battleground to go to Houston, which is a day off the playing field in the battleground, getting that timing right is really important. So we had discussions with Joe Rogan’s team, they were great, they wanted us to come on, we wanted to come on, we tried to get a date to make it work and ultimately we just weren’t able to find a date. We did go to Houston and she gave a great speech at an amazing event.”
Cutter explained they were “hoping” to fit in a Rogan taping on the day Trump sat with the podcaster and comedian for more than three hours.
She said:
“We were hoping to fit it in around that ultimately weren’t able to do it. As it turns out, that was the day that Trump was taping his Joe Rogan, which they had never confirmed to us, we just kind of figured that out in the lead up to it. You know, she was ready, willing to go on Joe Rogan. Would it have changed anything? You know, it would have broken through, not because of the conversation with Joe Rogan, but the fact that she was doing it and that was really the benefit of it. Will she do it sometime in the future? Maybe. Who knows? It didn’t ultimately impact the outcome one way or another, but she was willing to do whatever it takes.”
Plouffe tried to further explain the podcast not happening, even floating a theory that Rogan may have “leveraged” negotiations with Harris to get Trump in his studio.
“Yeah, Dan, so what’s clear is we offered to do it in Austin, people should know that. It didn’t work out. Maybe they leveraged that to get Trump in studio, I don’t know, and then, you know, we were obviously not going to be back in Texas, but offered to do it on the road,” he said.
The campaign said Rogan would not travel to do the interview. The Call Her Daddy podcast did this style of interview, recreating their set in Washington D.C. to interview Harris — something that reportedly cost six figures. That interview has just over 900,000 views on YouTube today, while Trump’s appearance on Rogan has more than 50 million on the platform.
Watch above via Pod Save America.
