Joe Rogan hints he will record podcast from Mar-a-Lago with Trump as ‘walk-on’ guest — after refusing to travel for Harris
Podcast guru Joe Rogan said Thursday he would be open to recording an episode of his wildly popular show from Mar-a-Lago — after refusing to travel to interview Vice President Kamala Harris while she was on the 2024 campaign trail.
“Yeah, we have to. We helped Trump get elected,” Rogan blurted out after being asked by comedian Ari Shaffir about heading to Trump’s West Palm Beach, Fla., estate during a 13th sit-down with other fan-favorite guests and fellow comics Mark Normand and Shane Gillis.
Shaffir first floated the idea of recording another session at the president-elect’s resort on Jan. 14 to coincide with the release of his Netflix comedy special “America’s Sweetheart.”
“Can we get together?” Shaffir asked. “Trump’s obviously going to walk on.”
“100%,” Rogan agreed. “He’s gonna walk on if we do Mar-a-Lago.”
“If there’s a camera, then bro!” Gillis said expectantly.
When they gather in the studio, the “Protect Our Parks” members — Rogan, Shaffir, Normand and Gillis — always get wrecked, leaving listeners to speculate how the soon-to-be 47th president, who is a lifelong tee-totaler, would handle the debauchery.
Trump’s elder brother, Fred Trump Jr., died from a heart attack in 1981 due to his descent into alcoholism.
Rogan, 57, said he’d already spoken with Donald Trump Jr. about the possibility — and the president-elect’s eldest son said he could “make that happen.”
The “Joe Rogan Experience” podcaster recorded a wide-ranging, nearly three-hour interview with the 45th president in the final stretch of the 2024 campaign, in which they talked about Trump’s policies, his views on his first term in the White House, expectations for a second term and his personal life.
The podcast had monster traffic — with more than 20 million views in the first 20 hours after it was posted — and Rogan endorsed Trump on the eve of Election Day, while also praising billionaire Elon Musk for buying Twitter, turning it into X and backing the former president as well.
“If it wasn’t for him, we’d be f–ked,” Rogan said about Musk. “He makes what I think is the most compelling case for Trump you’ll hear, and I agree with him every step of the way.”
“For the record, yes, that’s an endorsement of Trump,” the comedian added.
Trump and his vice presidential pick JD Vance both traveled to Austin, Texas, to record podcasts with Rogan in the final stretch of the 2024 race — but Harris, 60, who was also looking to go on the show, refused to travel due to her tight schedule despite visiting Houston for a rally with pop queen Beyonce in late October.
Critics took two sides at the time, with some praising Rogan for standing his ground and refusing to change the format of his show for the vice president, while others panned him for not being willing to travel for such an anticipated interview.
“She had an opportunity to come,” Rogan said on his podcast at the time. “You could look at this and you can say, ‘Oh, you’re being a diva,’ but she had an opportunity to come here when she was in Texas — and I literally gave them an open invitation.”
He also expressed frustration that Harris only wanted to go for an hour, whereas his shows regularly host marathon sessions like Thursday’s episode featuring Shaffir, Normand and Gillis, which stretched past the four-hour mark.
“They offered a date for Tuesday, but I would have had to travel to her and they only wanted to do an hour. I strongly feel the best way to do it is in the studio in Austin,” Rogan had said in a statement on X.
Stefanie Cutter, a senior Harris campaign adviser, claimed on a recent episode of the “Pod Save America” podcast that the vice president wanted to be interviewed in front of Rogan’s massive audience.
“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,” Cutter said.
“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,” she added.
However, top campaign aides had cowered after “progressive staff” threw a fit knowing Harris was considering an appearance on the raucous podcast, the Financial Times previously reported.
Rogan nearly walked away from a $200 million deal with Spotify in 2022 after critics tried to cancel him for hosting far-right voices and platforming so-called “misinformation” about COVID-19 and vaccines.
