The Real Reason Why Kamala Harris’ Interview With Joe Rogan Was Called Off

In the final days of the presidential race, eyebrows were raised after podcaster Joe Rogan announced he had rejected the terms of an interview with the Democratic nominee, Vice President Kamala Harris.
After Harris’ stinging defeat by now President-elect Donald Trump on Election Day, some Democrats have pointed to the vice president skipping Rogan’s show as a crucial misstep in the campaign.
The Harris campaign and Joe Rogan, host of The Joe Rogan Experience, discussed an interview for weeks but couldn’t settle on terms. A week after her loss, new details surfaced as a campaign official revealed that Harris’ concerns about backlash from progressives ultimately led to canceling the plans. Rogan claimed the vice president was unwilling to address controversial topics.
“Some of our progressive staff pushed back, not wanting her on the show and worrying about backlash,” Harris campaign adviser Jennifer Palmieri said on Wednesday at a New York conference organized by The Clearing House, a payments group owned by major U.S. banks.
Palmieri, as first reported by The Financial Times, also said that news leaking about Harris being in talks to appear on Rogan’s show created a “very weird dynamic” with the podcaster.
“Because all of a sudden he’s on his heels about how his audience is going to react to this, and the demands that they were going to put on him to be tough on her,” Palmieri said.
Rogan had his own views on the fallout, expressing frustration with the Harris campaign’s stipulations, particularly her request to avoid discussing marijuana legalization—a hot-button issue tied closely to her record as a prosecutor in California.
“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 on his show on Tuesday.
“I think they had requirements on things she didn’t want to talk about, like marijuana legalization, which I thought was hilarious,” he added.
Rogan questioned Harris’ skills, calling her a “bad candidate” and suggesting she was uncomfortable in unscripted situations. He described her as skilled at delivering “pre-rehearsed” speeches but lacking off-the-cuff engagement.
“I don’t know if she’s good at running things because you’d have to be behind the scenes to see how that works, but when it comes to talking off the top of her head, what she’s good at is a pre-rehearsed speech that she reads off a teleprompter. Pretty solid,” he said.
Harris’ concerns mirror previous incidents in which Democratic leaders faced internal criticism for engaging with Rogan’s audience. Senator Bernie Sanders faced backlash in 2020 after promoting an endorsement from Rogan.
While it’s hard to argue that Harris’ failed interview with Rogan and the subsequent Trump endorsement by the podcaster swung the election, it underscored Democrats’ messaging challenges—a weakness seen throughout her five-month campaign.
Harris, favored by mainstream media, relied on traditional outlets like CBS, ABC, and NBC, even appearing on Saturday Night Live. Trump, meanwhile, focused his media strategy on podcasters and social media influencers like Rogan himself.
It was a bold move that paid off in terms of reach. Trump’s three-hour appearance on Rogan’s widely viewed podcast garnered 40 million views on YouTube in a week—more than twice the combined audience of the Big Three television newscasts. It also provided a wealth of short, viral clips, far outpacing the reach of Harris’s scripted SNL appearance.