Former President Donald Trump arrived nearly three hours later for his Traverse City, Michigan rally after recording his highly anticipated interview with Joe Rogan took longer than expected.
Emerging from his airplane late Friday evening, Trump strode onstage at the Cherry Capital Airport in a black and gold MAGA hat to the music of former WWE star the Undertaker. Trump recorded a podcast with the grappler earlier this week.
Before he launched attacks on Vice President Kamala Harris for “partying” amid a burgeoning war in the Middle East and claimed her policies had gutted Michigan’s auto industry and devastated the economy Trump explained the significant delay.
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“We got so tied up, and I figured you wouldn’t mind too much because we’re trying to win,” the former president said, later calling Rogan “a great guy” who conducted “the longest interview I’ve ever done in my life.”
Trump said his campaign staff offered to cancel the Michigan rally but the former president told the cheering crowd that he said”Are you crazy?”
BREAKING: TRUMP JUST WALKED OUT TO THE UNDERTAKER THEME WEARING A BLACK MAGA HAT pic.twitter.com/bDcOhXHgGx
— Jack Poso
(@JackPosobiec) October 26, 2024
With Harris rallying with Beyonce the same evening in Houston, Texas, Trump blasted her for holding a “dance party.”
“Tonight, the Middle East is a tinderbox. Nobody is in charge. Joe Biden is asleep, and Kamala is at a dance party with Beyonce,” he said. Israel on Friday evening (U.S. time) launched retaliatory strikes on Iran after the country directed nearly 200 missiles across the Jewish state’s borders earlier this month.
PRESIDENT TRUMP: Tonight, the Middle East is a tinderbox. Nobody is in charge. Joe Biden is asleep, and Kamala is at a dance party with Beyonce. pic.twitter.com/irfNTtWwjD
— Trump War Room (@TrumpWarRoom) October 26, 2024
Trump blamed Harris for an “inflation nightmare that has already cost the typical family over $30,000 in higher prices,” later claiming as president, she would raise “the typical family’s taxes by more than $3,000 dollars a year.”
The former president continued to tout his plan to bring back the U.S. auto industry. In the final weeks of his campaign, Trump’s promises to restore the auto and manufacturing industry by enacting tariffs on foreign-made goods have become a running theme during campaign appearances.
“Vote Trump and you will see a mass exodus of manufacturing jobs from Mexico to Michigan, from Shanghai to Sterling Heights, and from Beijing to right here in Traverse City,” he promised supporters gathered at the Cherry Capital Airport,” he said.
Rogan posts interview earlier than expected
Meanwhile, Rogan dropped his highly anticipated podcast interview with Trump late on Friday, just hours after they spoke. Initially, the podcast seemed to be delisted and appeared only on YouTube, prompting conspiracy theories about it being censored. Rogan explained later, however, that there had been “no issue with YouTube censoring the trump episode.”
“It was just supposed to go live on both Spotify and YouTube at the same time and there was a glitch in Spotify’s upload system,” he said in a statement to X.
During the roughly three-hour interview on The Joe Rogan Experience, Trump discussed his partnership with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and his “Make America Healthy Again” campaign to tackle chronic health disease, reiterated concerns over CBS News’s move to edit Vice President Kamala Harris’s 60 Minutes interview, and touted gains he made with young people ahead of Election Day.
Trump confirmed he was “completely committed” to having Kennedy in his administration if he’s elected, though he said he didn’t want the former independent presidential candidate to touch “environmental issues.”
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“I want to be a little careful about with him is the environment because, you know, he doesn’t like oil. I love oil,” Trump said. “So I’m just going to keep him out. I said, ‘Focus on health. You can do whatever you want, but got to be a little bit careful with the liquid gold.’”
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A lighter moment in the episode came as Rogan and Trump discussed the UFC. Rogan has a long background in the UFC as a broadcaster while Trump has been a long-time fan.
After Rogan asked Trump if he would attend Bo Nickal’s next fight in November, the former president joked he would be too “depressed” to go if he didn’t win the election.
The interview also touched on Harris’s attempts to compare him to Adolf Hitler, his relationship with former chief of staff John Kelly, who he called “a bully”, and his low opinion of pollsters, who he mused don’t do the work they say they do.
“I don’t know one person who every got called by a pollster,” he said.
The Rogan interview had already been viewed more than one million times in a little over two hours since it was posted on YouTube.
Donald Trump asks Joe Rogan about Bo Nickal’s next fight at #UFC309 in November
“After the election? So I’ll either go [to UFC 309] as president or I’ll be depressed and I won’t bother going.”
@joerogan #UFC #MMApic.twitter.com/mLVDF88ACL
— Championship Rounds (@ChampRDS) October 26, 2024
