KAMALA HARRIS DITCHED JOE ROGAN PODCAST INTERVIEW OVER PROGRESSIVE BACKLASH FEARS:
Kamala Harris’s fears of a progressive backlash killed a plan for her to appear on Joe Rogan’s podcast, a campaign official has said, shedding light on a decision that infuriated some Democrats who are reeling after Donald Trump’s election victory.
The Harris campaign and Rogan, whose audience is bigger than that of many television networks, had discussed an interview for his podcast — a move some Democrats hoped would help Harris reach young men who were gravitating towards Trump.
The talks faltered because of concerns at how the interview would be perceived within the Democratic party, said Jennifer Palmieri, a senior adviser to Harris’s husband, Doug Emhoff.
“There was a backlash with some of our progressive staff that didn’t want her to be on it, and how there would be a backlash,” Palmieri said on Wednesday.
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Trump’s interview with Rogan has been viewed nearly 50mn times on YouTube, while the podcaster’s interview with vice-president-elect JD Vance has racked up 16mn views.
By comparison, about 29mn people watched Harris’s speech at the Democratic National Convention and fewer than 8mn watched her interview on Fox News.
Part of the reason for the Harris camp’s decision to skip Rogan was to avoid chatting about the chronic: Rogan says Kamala Harris campaign had a condition to avoid ‘marijuana legalization’ talk for interview.
“They had, I don’t know how many conversations with my folks, but multiple conversations giving different dates, different times, different this, different that, and we knew that she was going to be in Texas, so I said, ‘open invitation,'” Rogan said. “I think they had requirements on things that she didn’t want to talk about, she didn’t want to talk about marijuana legalization, which I thought was hilarious.”
The Harris campaign had been in talks with Rogan about doing an interview, but it didn’t end up happening. Rogan revealed that Harris wanted him to travel to Washington, D.C., to do the interview and only wanted to do an hourlong sit-down.
Rogan’s guest, Adrienne Iapalucci, asked Rogan why Harris might have wanted to avoid the subject.
“Because of her prosecuting record,” Rogan said. “She put a lot of people in jail for weed.”
She sure did:
Flashback: Kamala Harris Didn’t Send 1500 People To Jail For Pot — It Was More Than That. As “Joe Garofoli of the San Francisco Chronicle discovered as he fact-checked Gabbard’s claim, the number of people Harris sent to jail for marijuana violations was actually closer to 2000.”