Former President Donald J. Trump taped a nearly three-hour episode of “The Joe Rogan Experience” on Friday. He brought up the idea of abolishing the income tax, talked about mixed martial arts fighters, praised the military skills of General Robert E. Lee, and made headlines on the show by speculating that there was “no reason why” abolishing the tax couldn’t be considered. attracted young male viewers. Life on Mars and other planets.
While much of the discussion centered on a familiar refrain from Trump’s rambling speeches on the campaign trail, the podcast offered Trump an opportunity to reach the audience his campaign coveted. Mr. Rogan has 14.5 million followers on Spotify and 17.6 million followers on YouTube, many of whom are young, male, less-sexual voters the Trump campaign is hoping to attract to the polls.
At one point, Mr. Logan tried to guide Mr. Trump, who describes his meandering, digression-filled speaking style as a “weaving,” back to the point. “Your weave is widening,” Logan said. “This way of weaving makes it wider.”
Here are six takeaways from the podcast.
President Trump thought the podcast was worth a detour.
Mr. Trump’s decision to step away from the campaign trail and spend hours at Mr. Rogan’s studio in Austin detours the start of his remarks at a rally in Michigan on Friday night by several hours. The fact that this happened was a sign of Mr. Logan’s attitude. The importance of the reach and audience he draws.
Just two years ago, Logan said he refused to appear on his show, calling former President Trump an “existential threat to democracy.” But in their interviews, Mr. Logan was a receptive, if sometimes challenging interlocutor.
Logan acknowledged that he reconsidered his position on interviewing Trump after Trump survived an assassination attempt at a Pennsylvania rally in July.
“After they shot you, I thought, ‘He has to come here,'” Logan said. “It’s all about timing.”
Mr. Rogan invited Mr. Trump to speak about his debunked claims of widespread election fraud.
“The reason I want to talk about 2020 is because you’ve said many times that you were robbed in 2020,” Logan said, debunking widespread fraud in the 2020 election. It provided Mr. Trump with a platform to repeat his claims and the lies he has told. He won that year. “How do you think you got robbed? People always cut you off.”
Trump lamented that “the judges didn’t have what it took to overturn the election,” reiterated several false claims, suggested mail-in voting was unsafe, and in 2020, Democrats said “COVID-19 He used a virus to commit fraud.” .
Mr. Rogan appeared to support Mr. Trump’s questioning of the election process, at one point likening people expressing concerns about the election to those questioning coronavirus vaccines.
“You’re going to be labeled an election denier,” Logan said. “Questioning the health effects of COVID-19 vaccinations on people is like being labeled an anti-vaxxer.”
In 2022, Logan was criticized for spreading misinformation about the coronavirus. His stance led Neil Young and Joni Mitchell to remove their music from Spotify in protest of the platform’s support for podcasters.
President Trump has proposed abolishing the income tax.
Mr. Trump has expressed subtle support for the idea of eliminating the federal income tax, signaling a return to economic policies that existed before the early 20th century.
“Did you just come up with the idea of abolishing the income tax and replacing it with tariffs?” Rogan asked Trump, who mentioned the idea on Monday’s Fox News segment. “Were we serious about that?”
Mr. Trump said: “Yes, certainly.” “But why not?” He again praised the 25th Republican president, William McKinley, whose views on tariffs Trump frequently praises.
Even before Trump started talking about eliminating the income tax, an analysis by the bipartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget found that Trump’s other economic proposals could add up to $15 trillion to the national debt over 10 years. It was estimated that.
Does life exist on Mars?
Mr. Logan asked Mr. Trump for government secrets about whether there is life beyond Earth.
The former president initially said he had “never believed” in extraterrestrial life. But then he seemed to change direction, recalling interviews with “solid” jet pilots who claimed to have seen “very strange” things in the sky.
“There’s no reason not to think there’s no life on Mars and all these planets,” Trump said.
Mr. Logan corrected him.
“Well, it’s Mars. They have probes and probes there, but I don’t think there’s life there,” Logan said. (Mars is the most widely explored planet in the solar system other than Earth.)
“Maybe it’s a life we don’t know,” Trump replied. In his stump speech, Trump vowed to take American astronauts to Mars.
Although scientists are searching for fossilized evidence of life, no life has been found on Mars.
Trump doesn’t trust pollsters or pollsters.
Mr. Trump told Mr. Rogan that he has little interest in political polls, and while he occasionally cited positive polls that showed his support with voters was positive, the polls showed “probably a lot.” He explained that he believes there was fraud.
“Do you know how polls are done?” Trump asked. “Oh, they’re going to be in trouble. That’s why I don’t really trust them.”
Polls consistently show a close race between Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris. Polling has been markedly inaccurate in the past two presidential elections, and many polling organizations have taken steps to improve accuracy. But Mr. Trump suggested, without providing evidence, that they were not only false, but potentially fraudulent. “I don’t think there will be an interview in many cases,” he says.
There’s a lot of praise, but there’s also a challenge to the environment.
Mr. Logan was a friendly interviewer and often praised Mr. Trump. He rarely gets in the former president’s way, and they appear to have bonded over a shared love of the Ultimate Fighting Championship, a mixed martial arts league in which Trump also competes.
Logan, a stand-up comedian, also praised Trump’s “comedic instincts” during the campaign.
However, their worldviews were not always the best fit. At one point, Mr. Logan asked Mr. Trump to elaborate on why people were opposed to increased oil and gas production and fracking, “aside from environmental concerns, which is understandable.”
Mr. Trump began to dispute that point, but Mr. Logan continued to ask questions. And he turned tough when he confronted Trump over his claims that environmental regulations are only used to enrich consultants who block development.
“They’re using it as a weapon,” Trump said.
Mr. Logan responded with a series of questions. “But there are legitimate concerns about the environmental impact, right?” he asked, citing environmental disasters. “We want to mitigate that as much as possible.”
“Of course,” Trump acknowledged. But he moved on to his usual focus on clean water and clean air before moving on to discuss complaints about China and California.
Mr. Trump has forged a sometimes uneasy alliance with his supporter, environmental activist and former presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Mr. Kennedy, supported by Mr. Logan, has advanced a number of environmental proposals that conflict with Mr. Trump’s deregulation pledges and some of his plans to increase fracking.
