Trump spent 3 hours on Joe Rogan’s podcast. Here’s what he did – and didn’t say –

In one of the longest interviews he’s done as a candidate, former President Donald Trump’s three-hour interview with podcaster Joe Rogan on Friday offered an extended version of the meandering and sometimes factual rally speeches he – said Trump lately.

Trump, who left thousands of rally-goers in Traverse City, Mich., waiting for an extra three hours Friday night because of the extra time he spent with Rogan, attacked Vice President Harris as someone who “couldn’t string two sentences together.” in interviews and presented his own. oratory skills that regularly rotate through several divergent topics in a short time.

“I like to give a long weave,” Trump said on “The Joe Rogan Experience.” “But when you’re making fabric, and you have to be really smart to make fabric, when you’re making fabric, look at it, just in one thing, we’re talking about small pieces..”

“I have to take him back home,” Rogan interjects.

“No, no, it’s coming home to the right people,” Trump continued. “For the wrong people, it doesn’t come home and they end up in the desert, right?”

Like his rally speeches, Trump’s chat with Rogan touched on a wide range of unrelated topics, such as an episode of The View he was on during his first campaign, hosting The Apprentice, UFOs, dead whales and a historical detour about Abraham Lincoln. .

“Lincoln had a, I don’t know. I’ve never read that, I’ve heard it from people in the White House who really understand what’s going on with the whole life of the White House,” he said. “But Lincoln had an idea of, in a way, as golfers would say, he had a phobia of (Confederate General) Robert E. Lee. He said, ‘I can’t beat Robert’ because Robert E. Lee won many battles in a row.”

He also repeated several anecdotes and arguments central to his presidential campaign, which are also the staples of his speech, such as a call to lower the corporate tax rate to 15%, to apply rigid tariffs on foreign vehicles imported into the country and continued to fake. claims fraud cost him the 2020 election.

“I won by something like — I lost by something like — I didn’t lose, but they say we lost, Joe,” Trump said, repeating the lie that he won that election. He didn’t do it.

In passing, Trump also appeared to support lowering income taxes and relying solely on tariffs to fund the government, though before fully elaborating on what he meant and how that would work, he moved on to discuss billionaire Elon Musk, how Musk supported him in the election and joked that Rogan would not be a Harris supporter, but rather a “Khabib person,” referring to UFC fighter Khabib Nurmagomedov.

“Your tissue is getting wider,” Rogan exclaimed.

In the final days of his third presidential bid, Trump has become increasingly erratic with his public appearances and appalling with his rhetoric. On Rogan’s podcast, Trump repeated his view that there is an “enemy within” that is worse for the country than enemies like North Korea. Trump has also previously floated using the military against domestic enemies.

“We have a bigger problem, in my opinion, with the enemy within, and it’s driving them crazy when I use that term,” he said. “But we have an enemy from within. We have people who are really bad, people who I really think want to make this country unsuccessful.”

He also said that he really doesn’t “believe much” in the polls, before presenting his latest numbers and baselessly claiming, again, that there was widespread election fraud.

Former President Donald Trump sends a personal message on the jumbotron informing attendees that he will be three hours late to a campaign rally in Traverse City, Michigan, on Friday.

When Trump finally arrived in Michigan, he looked and sounded visibly tired, repeating some of the same topics and anecdotes from Rogan’s interview hours earlier, but with far less energy and cohesion.

He took to the stage to theme music from WWE wrestler The Undertaker, standing silently on stage as the ominous song played before apologizing for the delay.

“Here’s what they wanted to do: We were so tied, and I thought you wouldn’t mind too much, because we’re trying to win,” he said.

He then cited poll numbers and early voter turnout, falsely claiming he was leading in all seven swing states, before attacking Harris for holding a campaign rally in Texas that featured the superstar global Beyoncé.

“Do you know where she is tonight? She goes out to party,” he said. “So Israel attacks, we have a war and she’s out partying. At least we’re working to make America great again, that’s what we’re doing.”