By admin 
Vice President Kamala HarrisHer crushing loss on Election Day was partly due to her inability to win over male voters, many of whom tune in to the Joe Rogan experience.
While her victorious rival President-elect Donald Trump appeared on the popular Spotify podcast, Harris did not, even though Rogan’s audience of millions represented a significant voting bloc she needed to win over before the election.
Here’s everything you need to know about the high-profile interview where the vice president never showed up.
Vice President Kamala Harris, left, and podcast host Joe Rogan, right. (AP Photo/Paul Sancya, File, and AP Photo/Gregory Payan, File)
The Marijuana Rule
Rogan set his sights on interviewing Harris, and his team spent weeks negotiating with the Harris campaign in an attempt to agree on terms that both camps could agree to.
Their discussions were partly about “demands about things she (Harris) didn’t want to talk about,” according to the podcast host’s comments during one of his final episodes with comedian Adrienne Iapalucci. One of those topics was the legalization of marijuana, an issue the vice president was criticized for during his campaign.
“She didn’t want to talk about marijuana legalization, which I thought was hilarious,” Rogan said.
Harris has long supported cannabis legalization, including during her campaign against Trump, but was criticized for prosecuting people who used the drug during her time as San Francisco district attorney and California attorney general. Under Harris’ tenure, there were 1,956 convictions for misdemeanor and marijuana violations, according to an analysis by the Bay Area Newsgroup.
Rogan said he ultimately extended an “open invitation” to the Harris campaign, saying he didn’t care what they talked about or couldn’t discuss as long as the vice president agreed to the interview.
“I’d love to talk to her about all kinds of s***. I literally said, because there were some restrictions on things they didn’t want to talk about, but I said, ‘I don’t care***; bring her here,” he said during a podcast episode last week.
Progressive executives
According to senior Harris campaign adviser Jennifer Palmieri, Harris faced internal opposition from some members of her staff for considering sitting down with Rogan.
The vice president’s own team members were concerned about the response to the interview from the Democratic Party, according to Palmieri’s comments to the Financial times on Wednesday.
“There was a backlash from some of our progressive staff who didn’t want her to be there and how there was going to be a backlash,” she said.
However, a report from the Washingtonpost pushed back against suggestions that concerns were the main reason Harris refused to do the interview.
“The big problem was the timing,” Michael Scherer said in an interview after on X.
This doesn’t match my reporting on Harris/Rogan. The big problem was timing. Harris planned to travel to Texas to eventually release Rogan. But Trump had a show booked the same day and her advisers didn’t want her to show up late at night or early in the morning. So negotiations continued, but fell apart. https://t.co/52nD0tk0z1
— Michael Scherer (@michaelscherer) November 13, 2024
Planning conflicts
The timing of the interview seemed to be a major reason why the podcast fell through.
Harris campaign spokesman Ian Sams noted concerns about ‘scheduling’ conflicts had prevented the episode from being shot in the last week of October.
Rogan confirmed that timing conflicts with the Harris campaign derailed podcast plans, saying the vice president was unwilling to make the trip to his recording studio in Austin, Texas. He also said Harris wanted to limit the sitdown to an hour, even though most Rogan podcast episodes are more than three hours long.
On October 29, Rogan was still trying to fulfill his dreams of having Harris on his show, saying in a after to X: “For the record, the Harris campaign did not proceed with making the podcast.”
“They offered a date for Tuesday, but I would have to travel to her and they only wanted to do an hour. I strongly believe the best way to do this is in the studio in Austin,” he said.
Post-election reaction
Trump’s performance at the Joe Rogan experience was staggeringly popular, racking up over 50 million views on YouTube alone. Critics, even allies in her own party, have suggested that Harris missed a major opportunity by appearing on the podcast herself.
“It’s all about having conversations and exchanging ideas,” said Senator John Fetterman (D-PA) during a recent interview with Semafor. “I think it’s important for all of us, especially elected leaders, to challenge your own views and expose yourself (to others).”
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Fetterman continued to criticize the Democratic Party for not doing enough to reach male voters, who tune in to Rogan’s podcast in large numbers.
“We have a challenge. We have our own kind of “childless cat lady” situation: “Bros.” People call these young guys bros, and that’s clearly not a positive term,” Fetterman said. “They are described as fools, gullible or brutes. That is contrary to the basic rules of politics. Don’t subtract, add. I think this was part of the new coalition that really gave Trump a pretty landslide victory.”