Inside story of Kamala Harris' lost gamble on Joe Rogan, Beyoncé and a late Texas rally
A new book by Jonathan Allen of NBC News and Amie Parnes of The Hill has details about Kamala Harris campaign's botched attempt to schedule a Joe Rogan interview.
Editor’s note: The following is excerpted from the forthcoming book “FIGHT: Inside the Wildest Battle for the White House” (copyright © 2025), by Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes, which is due to be published April 1 by William Morrow. It is reprinted courtesy of HarperCollins Publishers.
Vice President Kamala Harris wasn’t performing well in softball interviews as her sugar high faded in September and early October.
But if she wanted to expand her support — and she needed to — she would have to expose herself to tough questioning. That was particularly important with men—specifically young men—who were not buying what she was selling.
The obvious answer: Joe Rogan. A late-1990s sitcom star turned bro-with-a-brain podcaster, Rogan boasted a subscriber base that amounted to a total eclipse of the genre’s universe, with nearly 15 million signed up just on Spotify. His 2018 interview with Elon Musk, during which the Tesla and SpaceX founder smoked pot and sipped whiskey, garnered tens of millions of views on YouTube and crashed the next-generation car company’s stock.
The vast majority of Rogan’s guests and listeners were white men, presenting Harris with a potentially golden opportunity to prove her mettle by walking into the lion’s den.
Rating: 5