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Gee, maybe Kamala Harris should have showed up in Joe Rogan’s studio. Or maybe not; I have a post coming up later about Harris’ hilariously catastrophic performance on another podcast.

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Four years ago, Rogan endorsed Bernie Sanders. This time, he’s endorsing Donald Trump, as he announced on his latest podcast yesterday evening. Elon Musk made an appearance on Rogan’s show and laid out his reasoning for voting Trump in 2024, which Rogan found “the most compelling case”:

How big of a deal is this? Big enough to get the attention of the New York Times and Trump himself:

Minutes later, Mr. Trump promoted Mr. Rogan’s endorsement from the campaign trail in Pittsburgh, falsely suggesting that Mr. Rogan had never before endorsed a political candidate. Mr. Rogan endorsed Bernie Sanders in 2020.

“He’s the biggest there is,” Mr. Trump said of Mr. Rogan, adding, “Somebody said the biggest beyond anybody in a long time.” The Trump campaign soon sent out a fund-raising email playing up Mr. Rogan’s endorsement.

“Falsely” is a loaded word here. Trump probably didn’t know that Rogan had endorsed Sanders in the 2020 primary and then sat out the general election; I barely recalled that as well, and I’m in the business, so to speak. 

However, that raises the question again why Harris didn’t sit down with Rogan. The podcaster has — or at least had — sympathy for the progressive agenda Harris champions. She could have woven that into the conversation to give a good impression to Rogan’s audience, which again consists of the very demo Harris really needed to reach and never did: young men. 

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It’s not that Rogan has a rep for ambushing guests. The NYT notes how relaxed and friendly Rogan has been with both Republicans on the ticket as well as with Musk:

Mr. Rogan’s conversations with Mr. Trump, Mr. Vance and Mr. Musk were overwhelmingly friendly, often full of praise for the former president. In his appearance, Mr. Trump courted Mr. Rogan’s audience, largely young and male, with talk of eliminating the federal income tax, mixed martial arts and speculation about life on Mars.

So what was Harris afraid of? We know, we know … even if the NYT won’t admit it. Harris couldn’t keep up with Rogan in a free-form conversation. She proved that on “Subway Talk,” which again I’ll write about separately, and which the NYT buried in a profile of the podcaster.

The question still remains: how much impact will Rogan’s endorsement have? He has an estimated audience of 14 million listeners, so it will have some impact. The impact will likely go beyond that, too. Here’s the Google search data for “Joe Rogan endorsed Trump,” along with mapping intensity of interest (updating constantly):

When this started, the top state on the list was … Pennsylvania. As of 9 am ET, it still ranks fourth on the states of interest, only New Mexico has taken over the top spot. At the same time this morning, the alternate search on “Joe Rogan Endorses Donald Trump” generated the most interest in Oregon, followed by North Carolina, Florida, New York, and California. 

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Does this data signal voting choices? Tough to say, but it certainly indicates interest. Had Harris taken risks in this campaign, perhaps she’d get more interest from voters on Election Day. 

The latest episode of The Ed Morrissey Show podcast is now up! Today’s show features:

  •  Who will win tonight and who will lose? Andrew Malcolm and I … don’t know!
  • Nevertheless, we talk about the data we’re tracking, and the media spin that still hasn’t let up. 
  • And even if we can’t predict who will win today’s election, we can tell which campaign is panicking that they are losing it.  

The Ed Morrissey Show is now a fully downloadable and streamable show at  Spotify, Apple Podcasts, the TEMS Podcast YouTube channel, and on Rumble and our own in-house portal at the #TEMS page!