President Donald Trump convincingly won the 2024 election last November. His podcast appearances certainly looked to have quite possibly played a role, especially with "The Joe Rogan Experience." Rogan and former Vice President Kamala Harris just couldn't get an interview to work out, though, and now a new book excerpt is sharing some key details.
The excerpt comes from a new book to be released on April 1, "FIGHT: Inside the Wildest Battle for the White House," by Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes, with Allen working for NBC News and Parnes for The Hill, the later which published the excerpt.
It starts off with a sobering reminder, before even mentioning Rogan:
Vice President Kamala Harris wasn’t performing well in softball interviews as her sugar high faded in September and early October.
But if she wanted to expand her support — and she needed to — she would have to expose herself to tough questioning. That was particularly important with men—specifically young men—who were not buying what she was selling.
Although the Fox News interview with Bret Baier from October isn't mentioned until later, it's key to remind about, given how poorly Harris did.
Rogan is then introduced in the excerpt as "[t]he obvious answer," with an added note of how the "vast majority of Rogan’s guests and listeners were white men, presenting Harris with a potentially golden opportunity to prove her mettle by walking into the lion’s den."
There's also mention about how Harris deputy campaign manager Rob Flaherty, "the aide in charge of digital strategy," worked with Rogan's people, with them having "outlined the podcaster’s conditions for an interview: no staff in the studio, no topic restrictions, and Harris would have to sign a waiver."
What follows is an explainer of what happened next, and how it ultimately didn't work out for Harris to get that interview, as we know. It's also worth reminding that Rogan had said that the interview wasn't cancelled, and he was still hoping to make it work.
As the excerpt goes on to read [emphasis added]:
After two Zoom sessions, Flaherty called the Rogan intermediaries with an offer. Could Rogan join Harris in Michigan? he asked, proposing a date later in the week. No-go, the Rogan team said after reaching the host on a weeklong hunting trip. Austin or nothing.
“That’s going to be tough,” Flaherty said. “We’re only a few weeks out from the election.” Harris had less than zero reason to be in Texas. It was not a swing state. Her campaign was flush with cash—so it made no sense to take her off the trail to raise money. She was in battleground-or-bust mode. Plus, a detour to Texas might smell like desperation to the press and a waste of money to donors.
Harris campaign chief Jennifer O’Malley Dillon broke the impasse. Harris would be in Atlanta on October 24 with Barack Obama and Bruce Springsteen. O’Malley Dillon said the campaign could fly her to Houston for a rally—under the cover of visiting a state with one of the nation’s most restrictive abortion laws—to put her in proximity to Austin. She dispatched an advance team to the Texas state capital to do a walk-through of Rogan’s studio and get ready for a Harris arrival. She authorized her negotiating team to give Rogan what he demanded—an in-studio interview in Austin—on October 25.
...
For many Democratic operatives outside the campaign, the October 22 announcement that Harris would hold a Houston rally felt like a palm-to-face moment. She was going to lose Texas, by a lot, and a visit would not force Trump to spend his limited campaign money there.
Her aides scheduled the rally for a Friday night in the fall—October 25—in Texas! It was as if no one on her team knew that the night reserved for high school football was more sacred than Easter in the state. Campaign adviser David Plouffe responded to the criticism publicly, explaining that Harris wanted to shine a spotlight on a place where she believed Trump’s anti-abortion policies had done the most damage to women’s health.
Only a few people knew the real reason: the whole Houston rally was built to put her in proximity to Rogan. The ongoing negotiations on that were touch-and-go.
That there's whining about Harris having to go to Texas seems particularly pointless. It was part of the conditions. She's the one who decided to go and campaign for now former Rep. Colin Allred (D-TX) and focus on her pet issue of abortion. Allred isn't even mentioned in this excerpt, though that is what Harris was there in Houston for.
For all of the acknowledgment now about how Texas is indeed not a swing state, there's been chatter for years about Texas suddenly turning blue, though it's done no such thing. People also really thought that Allred could defeat Republican Sen. Ted Cruz. The appearance actually looked to have hurt the Senate hopeful. Not only did Allred lose, but he lost by 8.5 points, when polls had Cruz winning by +4.4.
One thing the excerpt does seem to have gotten correct is that it indeed "smell[ed] like desperation to the press and a waste of money to donors," even though it was framed as Jennifer O'Malley Dillon having "broke[n] the impasse."
There's more reasons for mockery from there, as the excerpt points to how those in the campaign weren't exactly thrilled with Rogan, and a reminder of how Harris "bombed" her interview with Baier:
At the same time, Rogan was hardly Mr. Popular inside Harris’s camp. Her brother in law, Tony West, longtime adviser Minyon Moore and others argued against putting Harris on the podcast, especially after her first venture into politically tough terrain—an interview with Fox’s Bret Baier in the middle of the Rogan negotiations—bombed.
We've heard of the disarray from Democrats, including and especially in the Harris camp before. It's one reason why Democratic strategist James Carville lost it when analyzing last November's losses.
When it comes to an explanation surrounding Flaherty lamenting about the change in "tone," the Harris team seems increasingly insufferable, and entitled [emphasis original]:
Flaherty had called his Rogan contacts on October 18, before the rally was set.
“We could do Friday, the 25th,” Flaherty said.
With such handling, it's becoming less and less surprising that Harris lost last November, and that Democrats also lost control of the Senate and failed to regain control of the House.
As we covered at the time, Rogan endorsed Trump on the eve of the election, with the podcast host referencing Elon Musk, another Trump supporter, as a major factor for why. Could Harris going on "The Joe Rogan Experience" have helped her? Who knows, it may have worsened her chances. There's always somebody else to blame with these folks. For all of those who said that the left needs a Rogan and/or Musk, they already had them, Rogan and Musk themselves, until the left turned them off.