Less than two weeks before Election Day, former president Donald Trump sat down with popular podcast host Joe Rogan for nearly three hours for a wide-ranging interview that included a trademark discussion of life on Mars, the mental health of whales, and some Trump campaign greatest hits on the failures of the Biden-Harris administration.
The interview has generated significant buzz since it was announced last week, given that The Joe Rogan Experience is the most popular podcast on Spotify, with an audience of more than 14 million listeners tuning into the program on the digital-music service alone, not to mention the massive audience that views Rogan’s interviews on YouTube, where the Trump episode racked up more than 10 million views in less than twelve hours.
The longform interview format, which Rogan pioneered to great success, gave Trump the opportunity to move in and out of topics — a conversational tactic he described during the episode as “the weave” — expanding on his standard stump-speech riffs with the occasional interjection from Rogan.
Here are some of the biggest takeaways from Rogan’s interview with Trump:
‘Running the Nation and Survival’
Rogan kicked off the interview by asking Trump what it was like to assume the responsibilities of the presidency with no prior political experience.
Trump explained that his first term was plagued by relentless attacks from his political opponents and his lack of familiarity with the ways of Washington, D.C., which he pointed out he had only visited on 13 occasions over the course of his entire life before being elected president.
Trump told Rogan he focused on two things after entering the presidency in 2016: “running the nation and survival.”
“From the moment I won, before I got to office, all of a sudden they came down on me,” Trump said, referring to the immediate public attacks from the news media and political establishment. “Nobody has ever been treated that way.”
The former president added that the impeachment process against him started immediately after he took office, with Democrats starting to lay the ground work. Trump faced two impeachments toward the end of his term: the first accusing him of soliciting foreign interference in the 2020 presidential election and the second alleging Trump incited an insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021.
Kelly is a ‘Bully,’ Bolton a ‘Whack job’
When asked whether he hired the wrong White House advisers, Trump said he regretted some of his choices. He named John Kelly as one example, deriding his former chief of staff for being a “bully” and a “weak person.”
Earlier this week, the Atlantic published a story alleging that Trump once told Kelly: “I need the kind of generals that Hitler had. People who were totally loyal to him, that follow orders.” A spokesperson for Trump denied he ever made the remark.
In an interview with the New York Times also published this week, Kelly said he believed his former boss is a “fascist” and a “dictatorial leader” who has no empathy. “Certainly the former president is in the far-right area, he’s certainly an authoritarian, admires people who are dictators—he has said that,” Kelly told the newspaper. “So he certainly falls into the general definition of fascist, for sure.”
The reports inspired Vice President Kamala Harris to dedicate a speech likening Trump to Hitler less than two weeks before the November election.
Kelly departed the White House in January 2019 amid reports of heated disagreements with Trump, who later claimed he fired his longest-serving chief of staff.
Trump also took aim at his former national-security adviser, John Bolton, calling him an “idiot” yet acknowledging he was “great” for the job.
During the podcast interview, Trump recalled a phone call with businessman Phil Ruffin, who told the former president to not pick Bolton to serve in the White House because “he’s a bad guy” and “it always works out bad with that guy.” Trump then quipped, “I wish you told me this two weeks ago. I already hired him. He’s here.” Trump noted Ruffin was correct in his assessment of Bolton.
“But he was good in a certain way. He’s a nut job,” Trump said of Bolton. “And every time I had to deal with a country, when they saw this whack job standing behind me, they said, ‘Oh man, Trump’s going to go to war with us.’”
Asked about Kelly’s comments earlier this week, Bolton argued Trump is incapable of governing as a fascist.
“I think his behavior alone is troubling enough,” Bolton told CNN’s Kaitlan Collins. “To be a fascist, you have to have a philosophy. Trump’s not capable of that.”
“I’m not trying to understate the dangers of a Trump presidency. I think it’s important to focus on the dangers themselves.”
Trump the ‘Whale Psychiatrist’
Trump and Rogan dedicated a significant portion of the interview to environmental issues, one policy area where they showed slight disagreement.
Asked why progressives oppose fracking and the development of other natural resources in the U.S., Trump explained that there’s a cottage industry of environmentalists and lawyers who make a living by obstructing development and weighing down the economy.
“But there are legitimate concerns about environmental impact, correct?” Rogan interjected.
“Sure,” Trump conceded, insisting on the importance of clean air and clean water while pointing out that the U.S. is sacrificing its economic vitality in the name of the environment while China and other major polluters are still relying heavily on coal.
Rogan and Trump returned to shared territory with the mention of wind energy, which both men argued was inefficient and actively harmful to the environment.
The mixed martial arts commentator raised the subject of wind farms, which he referred to as “pollution,” and the impact they’ve had on whale and bird populations off the East Coast.
“I think windmills are really disruptive. When you talk about the environment, they kill the birds,” Trump said. “You want to see a bird cemetery, go under a windmill someday that hasn’t been cleaned out with all the bird carcasses.”
“The whales are washing up on shore,” he continued. At least 18 whales were found dead along the East Coast since December 1, 2022, the Wall Street Journal reported in February 2023.
Moreover, consortium researchers recently confirmed that five North Atlantic right whales have died so far this year and four calves are presumed dead. The right whale species is considered critically endangered, given there are approximately 370 left.
Trump vowed in May to eliminate offshore wind power on “day one” of a potential second term, again claiming the floating wind turbines are killing whales and birds.
There is no evidence yet directly linking whale deaths to the construction and operations of offshore wind farms. However, the marine mammals are affected over time. According to a University of Maryland study, whales can be harmed by the low-frequency sounds and vibrations of pile-driving turbines into the ocean floor.
“They say that the wind drives ’em crazy. You know it’s a vibration because you have those things that 50-story building,” Trump said of the whales. “The wind is rushing. The things are blowing. It’s a vibration and it makes noise.”
“I wanna be a whale psychiatrist. It drives the whales fricking crazy. And something happens with them, but for whatever reason, they’re getting washed up onshore and you know, they’re ignored by these environmentalists. But they don’t talk about it.”
‘Enemy from Within’
About two weeks ago, Trump described Democrats and those who have opposed or investigated him as the “enemy from within.” Referring to domestic foes, the term prompted criticism from Harris, comedian Jon Stewart, and the mainstream media who have all pushed the narrative that Trump is a “fascist” for his rhetoric. The former president doubled down on the remark.
“We had no problem with [North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un],” Trump told Rogan. “We have a bigger problem, in my opinion, with the enemy from within, and it drives them crazy when I use that term.”
“We have people that are really bad people that I really think want to make this country unsuccessful,” the GOP presidential nominee added, citing the border crisis as an example of how the U.S. is being undermined within the federal government.
“When other countries are allowed to enter their prisons into our country with murderers — we had 13,099 murderers dropped into our country over the last three years,” he said. Trump labeled illegal immigrants pouring into the U.S. under the Biden administration as “rapists, drug dealers, drug lords, terrorists, people from mental institutions.”
Rogan then brought up recent news reports of Tren de Aragua gang members taking over apartment buildings in San Antonio, Texas, and Aurora, Colo. Trump said that is “just the beginning,” suggesting the illegal activity would continue if Harris becomes president.
Life on Mars
Rogan predictably used the opportunity of interviewing a former president to learn more about one of his favorite topics: extraterrestrial life.
Trump was eager to indulge Rogan’s curiosity, telling the host that he learned “a lot” of top secret information about the emergence of UFO’s and the possibility of alien existence during his time in the White House, although he said it’s not a big interest for him.
“I’ve never been a believer,” Trump said of alien life.
“I interviewed jet pilots, solid people,” Trump said, “and they said, ‘We saw things, sir, that were very strange.'”
In recent years, the Pentagon has made public reports filed by several Air Force pilots who say they encountered flying objects during missions that defied the known laws of physics. The Pentagon has not taken an official position on what those objects might be, and theories range from genuine extraterrestrial craft to military technology developed by a rival power.
Asked whether he believed in aliens, Trump said he was open to the possibility.
“There’s no reason not to think that Mars and all these planets don’t have life,” Trump said. When Rogan pointed out that research on Mars has produced no evidence of alien life, Trump responded, “Maybe it’s another form of life we don’t know about.”