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Former President Donald Trump and podcast host Joe Rogan covered a lot of ground in a sprawling three-hour conversation released online Friday night, but they kept returning to election integrity issues.

They spoke several times about mail-in ballots and voter identification. The United States should return to all paper ballots, Trump said. When ballots go through the mail, things can get “messed up,” he said, adding that paper ballots are less expensive than voting machines.   

Trump and Rogan both questioned why anyone would not want a law that requires voters to show identification before they vote.

“It is one of the most bizarre and polarizing ideas that’s promoted by the left,” Rogan said.

The only reason they don’t want voter ID, Trump said, is because Democrats want to cheat.

“It is the only thing that makes sense,” Rogan said in agreement. At times like this, they finished each other’s sentences.

Voters don’t want Democrat policies like open borders and men playing in women’s sports, Trump said, adding voters never ask him to implement those policies.

“We have to have fair elections,” Trump said, so voters can live under the policies they want.  

So-called election denial was a common posture among losing Democrats in the past, Rogan said. Hillary Clinton and Al Gore believed they won past races. In the years since the 2016 election, Clinton has continued to claim she was robbed of the presidential seat calling Trump an “illegitimate president.”

“Look at these sleaze bags in Congress that are Democrats, they’re still denying 2016,” Trump said.

Election Fraud has become a forbidden topic, Rogan said, and anyone who talks about it is in danger of being labeled an election denier, but many Americans feel something was amiss in the 2020 election.

“If you ask me, ‘What is the amount of election fraud in this country, is it 0 percent?’ No one thinks it’s 0 percent, Rogan said. I’ve never met one person — not a super liberal or a right-wing conservative — not one person thinks it’s 0 percent.”

Rogan then asked Trump to explain his views on the 2020 election.  

“You’ve said over and over again that you were robbed in 2020. How do you think you were robbed?” Rogan said. “Everybody always cuts you off, but I’m going to allow you to talk.”

Some voting rules were changed without legislative approval, Trump said, mentioning extending the voting time, and counties receiving unsigned ballots as examples.

The FBI denied that Hunter Biden’s laptop belonged to him, calling it Russian misinformation.

“You say you have all this evidence that 2020 was rigged. Why haven’t you put this evidence in a consumable form?” Rogan asked.

Trump said there have been books written on it.  

“We have an author named Hemingway, who is a great writer,” Trump said. “She wrote a book on it,” referring to The Federalist’s Editor in Chief, Mollie Hemingway, and her book Rigged: How the Media, Big Tech, and the Democrats Seized our elections.  

Often critics say Trump’s complaints about the election results were heard in court, but Trump said judges never heard the merits of the cases.

“They would say, ‘You don’t have standing,” Trump said. They didn’t rule on the merits. The merits never got there. The judges didn’t have what it took to turn it over.”

Beth Brelje is an elections correspondent for The Federalist. She is an award-winning investigative journalist with decades of media experience.