What Donald Trump told Joe Rogan on his podcast
Donald Trump has told influential US media commentator Joe Rogan where his presidency went wrong, why the 2020 election was “rigged” and called the women of The View “stupid”. See the video.
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Donald Trump has revealed his biggest mistake was hiring “bad people, or disloyal people” while in the White House in a highly anticipated interview with influential US media commentator Joe Rogan.
Mr Trump singled out his former White House chief of staff John Kelly and former National Security Adviser John Bolton.
He called Mr Kelly a “bully” and Bolton “an idiot”, who ended up being “great”.
“He was good in a certain way, he was a nut job,” Mr Trump said. “Any 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.’”
“The biggest mistake I made … I picked some people that I shouldn’t have picked,” he said.
Mr Rogan asked if Mr Trump was referring to “neo-cons,” and he replied, “Yeah, neo-cons, or bad people, or disloyal people.”
Mr Trump, who kept voters at a Michigan rally waiting for three hours while he was recording the podcast episode with Mr Rogan, talked about a range of issues.
The podcast offered Mr Trump an opportunity to reach an audience his campaign is hungry for. Mr Rogan has 14.5 million followers on Spotify and 17.6 million on YouTube, many of them the young, male, low-propensity voters that the Trump campaign is hoping to draw to the polls.
Mr Trump also repeated unsubstantiated claims that the 2020 election was “rigged” — but when Rogan asked him if he was going to release evidence proving the election was “stolen,” the former president changed the subject.
Mr Trump also voiced casual support for the idea of eliminating federal income tax, calling the word tariff “the most beautiful word” in the dictionary.
“It’s more beautiful than love. It’s more beautiful than anything,” he said. “This country can become rich with the use — the proper use — of tariffs.”
Mr Rogan asked Mr Trump if he would consider replacing income taxes with tariffs. Mr Trump answered, “Yeah, sure. Why not?”
Mr Trump also praised China’s leader Xi Jinping, as a “brilliant guy”.
“He controls 1.4 billion people with an iron fist,” he said. “I mean, he’s a brilliant guy, whether you like it or not.”
Mr Trump spoke about his view on aliens. “I interviewed jet pilots that say they saw something. … There’s no reason not to think that Mars and all these planets don’t have life,” he said.
Mr Trump said he gets asked about what the US government knows about “the people coming from space,” and that, as president, he was told “a lot.”
Mr Trmup also went back to his theory on the war in Ukraine and how it would never have happened if he were president.
He continued his long-running feud with members of the US chat show, The View, calling the all-female co-hosts “stupid”.
Mr Trump complained that people in the entertainment business “loved” him before turning on him, specifically pointing out The View, which features Oscar-winner Whoopi Goldberg as moderator.
“Some of these women, they’re so, they’re so stupid,” Mr Trump said, referring to the female hosts of The View, who he claimed went from praising him to publicly slamming him.
He called by name “Joy” Behar, “Whoopi” Goldberg, and “the new one on there, the one from my administration,” referring to former press secretary to Vice President Mike Pence Alyssa Farah Griffin, who he knew “sits on the far right hand side” of the table.
He also complained about the lack of fact-checking Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris enough during their presidential debate.
He also went back to discuss how he thought the 2020 election was stolen from him.
Mr Rogan asked Mr Trump to explain how the 2020 election was stolen, and he cited election law changes that he said did not get proper legislative approval.
“They were supposed to get legislative approval to do the things they did, and they didn’t get it,” Mr Trump said.
Mr Trump, who will not be able to run for a third term if he wins, said it would be his last election “if I win”.
He was noncommittal on whether he would run again if he loses.
“If I win, that’ll be, this will be my last election,” he said. “But I think I owe it to the country. We have to have fair elections.”
Mr Rogan later suggested the presidential nominees should sit down and have a conversation.
“I think you and Kamala, you sit across a table with no one in the room but the two of you, of course, you’re not going to shout at each other, hopefully, that is the way you do it,” he said.
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