Last week, as we covered at the time, an excerpt for a new book was released detailing claims about former Vice President Kamala Harris and an interview with Joe Rogan that never came to be. The details from frustrated and entitled aides with the Democratic nominee’s failed presidential campaign put the blame on Rogan as to why Harris never made it onto “The Joe Rogan Experience,” while now President Donald Trump did. Rogan is now speaking out against such claims made in the book.
To recap, the excerpt from the book, “FIGHT Inside the Wildest Battle for the White House,” spoke to how Rogan supposedly made the Harris campaign jump through all of these hoops, and she even foolishly held a rally in Texas despite it not being a swing state. Although the excerpt does not mention as much, Harris was also there to campaign with now former Rep. Colin Allred (D-TX) in his race to unseat Republican Sen. Ted Cruz, though he lost by 8.5 points. Harris was also there to campaign on her pet issue of abortion.
Rogan addressed the claims during Tuesday’s episode of his podcast.
The podcast host revealed that “they said a bunch of things that weren’t true.” Even though they talked to “a lot of people,” Rogan pointed out, “they didn’t talk to us,” which he called “kind of crazy” that they “didn’t even ask.”
One of the specific claims that Rogan took issue with, when it comes to the details about Trump’s timing on the show, Rogan made clear “he was already booked a long time ago.”
“This is how it worked,” Rogan explained, “Trump was really easy to book, like super easy. We offered one day, he said yes. That was it! There was no ‘what are we gonna talk about, how long is it gonna be, is it gonna be edited,’ there was nothing,” he continued, likely referring to questions and concerns the Harris team had about the Rogan-Harris interview. Trump also signed a waiver without a problem, Rogan added, again stressing how “easy” it was to book the now president as a guest.
“They never committed to doing the show,” Rogan continued, speaking about the Harris team, as he too referenced the Texas rally. “So all this talk–they said the reason why they did… the Beyoncé event in Houston was so that they could be in Texas to do my show. They never agreed to do the show. None of that’s true. They never agreed.” To add insult to injury about Beyoncé, the end of the book excerpt also reminded how Beyoncé spoke but didn’t even sing at the event.
“They also said that they sent someone down here to the studio to do a walk-through of the set. That’s not true,” Rogan continued, though the Secret Service did for Trump, “because they were the only ones who had a date to do the show. These people didn’t have a date. They never agreed to do the show, this is really important,” Rogan stressed to draw that further contrast between Harris and Trump.
Rogan also spoke to other specific claims made in the excerpt, that Harris’ team wanted Rogan to come to DC. “Even after Trump went on, they offered for me to come to DC and do a show with Kamala,” he said. “But even then, it was the same deal. It was only like 45 minutes to an hour. And, you know, it was not on my set. And I said that, ‘Look, [Trump] did it here. We should probably do it here, like if it’s possible to do it here.'” Rogan’s program with guests typically lasts for hours, just as it did for Trump.
That, Rogan further spoke to, was actually because he wanted her interview to have the same effect. “Obviously, when [Trump] did it, it had an enormous result, I’m willing to do the same thing for her. I wanted to release both of them on the same day. This was my goal,” Rogan explained. “I was even trying to figure out if there was a way that I could do it, and I even offered to do it late that night, so the night that Trump came on, I’m like, ‘what if we do her, like when she’s done in Texas?’ If she came here. But no one ever committed to doing it, this is like really important, ’cause they keep pretending that I lied, or I did this, or I did that. They never committed to doing it,” Rogan again stressed.
He also made clear that “we have all the receipts… I have a whole list of conversations that took place. They never said she was gonna do it! So this whole idea that we f**ked her over, and that we f**ked her over for Trump, incorrect! Just not true!”
Rogan also offered a theory as to why the story is being told not as it is, as well as how it could have impacted Harris’ chances. “I think it’s someone trying to cover their ass for the fact that she never did it, and if she did do it, it might have had a positive effect. If her and I had a good time, and we got along great, and she won over, you know, the ‘young male vote,’ things could have turned out different, so who knows. This guy is probably trying to cover his ass.”
When speaking to the reaction about Harris not doing the interview, Rogan again stressed the theme he was sticking to. “But they didn’t commit to doing it,” he again reminded, going on to speak about a Harris campaign staffer, likely deputy campaign manager Rob Flaherty, described as “the aide in charge of digital strategy.”
“This is the thing, while this guy was saying like we were difficult to work with. Not true. We were super easy. We made it real clear. But also it’s got to be the actual real show. It shouldn’t be some fake version of it, where I’m sitting in a conference room. Oh, also, they wanted a stenographer in the room. They wanted staff in the room,” he added about more demands from the campaign, again in contrast to Trump, who “was just in here by himself… for three hours.”
Perhaps one of the most noteworthy mentions from Rogan, and given what we know about Harris’ concerns with all of her botched interviews, is how “they wanted it really controlled, and they were really concerned that it wasn’t going to be edited. So I don’t think they were ever really sure that they wanted to do it,” though he thinks the Harris team expressed more interest once Trump actually did so, especially when “it had this huge response,” with Rogan touting those numbers and the freakout from the Harris campaign.
On the note of Harris’ own interest in the program, Rogan says her people “wouldn’t even say whether or not she had expressed willingness to do it, or whether they were trying to convince her to do it. We know there were some people that were supposedly on her staff that were against her doing it. They thought it was bad because, you know, they are, a bunch of wokesters, they’re basically in a cult.”
Sure enough, many of Harris’ staffers didn’t want Harris doing Rogan, a point Democratic strategist James Carville angrily took issue with not long after Harris lost last November.
Rogan also revealed some thoughts about when Harris had her catastrophic interview with Fox News’ Bret Baier last October, ending after only about 20 minutes, “when they did that, that’s when I was like look, it’s got to be in the studio. It’s gotta be in the studio and it’s gotta be real. It’s gotta be a real conversation.”
While he entertained going to Harris, he said, Rogan also pointed out that “45 minutes is just not enough… it’s not enough time, you need more time, you need more time to find out what makes someone tick,” which Rogan and his guest for Tuesday’s show figured might be what she, or more specifically, her team, “was afraid of,” although Rogan doesn’t think they should have been.
This is what actually happened with Kamala not coming on the podcast. https://t.co/XXvmYs6Cgs
— Joe Rogan (@joerogan) February 5, 2025
Coverage from The Hollywood Reporter mentioned that HarperCollins, the publisher of the book did not have “an immediate comment on Rogan’s claims.”
Trump appeared on the podcast in October. Rogan eventually endorsed Trump on the eve of the 2024 election, referencing Elon Musk as his motivation for doing so.
