The Donald Trump Experience Disappoints
Donald Trump's content-free interview on The Joe Rogan Experience
I watched or listened to all of the nearly three-hour interview with Donald Trump by Joe Rogan on his podcast, and I wasn’t particularly impressed by it. The optics of the interview were fine; both Rogan and Trump were at their ease in a free-ranging conversation, but the content of the interview was, essentially, null. Simply put, we learned nothing new about Donald Trump or his preferred policies going into the election. I never expected Rogan to grill Trump as that’s not really what Rogan’s show is about, but even early on Rogan asked a simple question about what it’s like stepping into the role of president and Trump never really answered the question as Rogan meant it despite Rogan trying several times to rephrase it and get a real answer.
And that pretty much sums up the entire interview, with Rogan asking pretty easy questions and Trump rarely giving a direct answer or giving contradictory answers. At one point he suggested that he and California governor Gavin Newsom had a good relationship, but then amended that later to state that they did not have a good relationship and referring to him as Gavin “New-scum;” he derided the Cheneys, correctly, as dumb warmongers, but then called his former secretary of state Mike Pompeo, also a dumb warmonger, a “good guy;” he said that John Bolton was one of the worst people he ever hired, but that it was also good because having other world leaders see this “insane” warmonger behind Trump helped him diplomatically somehow. Never mind the fact that Bolton was reportedly one of the forces in the first Trump regime that undermined and ultimately ruined Trump’s diplomatic outreach to North Korea, which I consider to be the best thing about his presidency.
We can rightly criticize Kamala Harris for her inability to answer a question, but it’s not as if Trump is being anymore forthright than she is. Trump, with decades of media training, is able to seem more natural when he refuses or is unable to answer a question. On the other hand, I think he actually did make the best point he’s made so far about his claim that he can end the war between Ukraine and Russia. Normally it’s all bluster about how it never would have happened if he had been president and how he’ll end it on day one, but in the interview with Rogan he made the point that he can’t simply announce his negotiating strategy because that would undermine the negotiation. It’s not a great answer because he could have expounded more, but it is a fair point in and of itself.
I think the fact that Trump was willing to do Rogan’s podcast at all, and the optics of the interview are what matter far more than the actual content of the interview which was essentially nothing. So in that respect this is actually a big win for the Trump campaign, but for voters who actually care about what Trump might do in office this interview was worthless. Kamala Harris was reportedly considering doing Rogan’s podcast, and Rogan mentioned several times that he’d love to have her on, but I don’t think it would go as well for her. She is not as smooth as Donald Trump so her inability to answer simple questions would be far more apparent, and the word salad that would result after Joe Rogan told her to her face that calling Donald Trump a fascist makes no sense and is a lie would probably be the death-blow to any chance she might still have in this election.