How do you know that the Harris campaign thinks it is losing? Sources claim the vice president is considering an appearance on The Joe Rogan Experience. For those keeping score at home, we are talking about the same Joe Rogan who was the focus of the Left’s anger and censorship efforts after he refused to worship at the altar of Anthony Faucism during the COVID-19 pandemic. Recent polls paint the picture of a floundering Harris campaign, but its internal polling must resemble no man’s land at the Battle of the Somme if it is willing to speak to super-Nazi Joe Rogan, with all of his free speech and horse paste.
Vice President Kamala Harris may not have a choice. Former President Donald Trump has confirmed he will appear on Rogan’s podcast, and as her campaign is bleeding support among men for a variety of reasons, her advisers must see Rogan’s audience, which skews 81% male, as their last best hope of winning back men. Rogan’s 14.5 million followers on Spotify and 16.4 million subscribers on YouTube dwarf the audiences of Democrat-friendly cable news networks and radio shows such as The Howard Stern Show, on which Harris appeared recently for a softball interview.
Setting aside electioneering and the political decision-making process behind the willingness of both candidates to sit down with Rogan, these interviews would provide a profound service to voters. Rogan owns his show and has no editors filtering what content he releases. Rogan is independently minded and holds liberal and conservative views. He has hosted politicians from Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) to Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-TX) and discussed issues with guests who hold wildly different positions on all manner of relevant topics. It is fair to assume both Trump and Harris would be treated with respect, as Rogan is rarely combative with any guest, even when he and the interviewee hold opposing views.
Rogan’s podcast is long. We are talking three hours or more. Even on their best days, Trump can’t bloviate and Harris can’t deflect with her typical sense of smug entitlement for that long, not with an interviewer as intellectually curious and impervious to political propaganda as Rogan. Voters would learn more about the two candidates from a single podcast episode than from all of the cable news hits and teleprompter-assisted stump speeches in the world.
Gallup released a poll on Monday that found mass media are some of the least trusted institutions in all of American society. More adults, 36%, say that they have no trust in the so-called legacy media than say they trust the press a great deal. The corporate press are justifiably losing credibility and bleeding cash as they attempt to hold on to the power and influence they once had.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
An interview of each candidate on the most popular podcast in the world has the possibility to render large swaths of mainstream news coverage irrelevant once and for all. If an independent voter watches a three-hour interview with a presidential candidate conducted by a reasonable, independent host who is not driven by hatred and ideology, why would he ever tune in to a five-minute back massage of an interview hosted by Jake Tapper or Sean Hannity ever again? If candidates could articulate positions and answer meaningful, relevant questions over the course of a long-form conversation, voters would see no need to tune into the networks to hear the red guy and the blue guy yell at each other obnoxiously in between far too frequent commercial breaks.
Corporate media have long outlived their usefulness, and these interviews would mark a significant step toward finally putting them out to pasture, regardless of whether or not a podcast appearance would help my preferred candidate electorally. Let the politicians meet voters where they are, say, on the most popular show on Earth, and let the hacks on cable news complain as they fade away into irrelevance.
Brady Leonard (@bradyleonard) is a musician, political strategist, and host of The No Gimmicks Podcast.