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Campaign aides on Team Kamalot are trying to blame President-elect Donald J. Trump for what many see as the last fatal act that torpedoed Democratic nominee Kamala Harris, which was to avoid sitting down with popular podcast host Joe Rogan for a lengthy, unscripted conversation.

Stephanie Cutter, a senior adviser on the campaign, told the “Pod Save America” podcast that they were hoping to meet with Rogan while in Houston — this was the campaign event where Beyoncé endorsed Harris.

“We had discussions with Joe Rogan’s team, they were great, they wanted us to come on, we wanted to come on, we tried to get a date to make it work and, ultimately, we just weren’t able to find a date. We did go to Houston and she gave a great speech at an amazing event,” Cutter said in an episode aired on Tuesday.

“We were hoping to fit it in around that but ultimately weren’t able to do it,” she added. “As it turns out, that was the day that Trump was taping his Joe Rogan [appearance], which they had never confirmed to us. We just kind of figured that out in the lead-up to it. You know, she was ready, willing to go on Joe Rogan.”

You see, it’s because Trump stole their hoped-for timeslot — never mind that the campaign reportedly wanted to change the entire atmosphere that makes Rogan’s podcast so popular, including a request to limit the time.

Cutter tried to downplay the impact of Harris not sitting down with Rogan, but many on the left point to Trump’s 3-hour-plus discussion with Rogan as a deciding factor in the race.

“Would it have changed anything? You know, it would have broken through, not because of the conversation with Joe Rogan, but the fact that she was doing it and that was really the benefit of it,” she said. “Will she do it sometime in the future? Maybe. Who knows? It didn’t ultimately impact the outcome one way or another, but she was willing to do whatever it takes.”

A common take on Harris appearing on the show was that it would have exposed her as the empty vessel she is and that her campaign advisers would have never allowed it.

David Plouffe, a senior adviser on the Harris campaign, went a step further than Cutter, suggesting that Rogan leveraged the Harris campaign’s offer to do the interview in Austin to get Trump in the studio.

“So what’s clear is we offered to do it in Austin, people should know that. It didn’t work out. Maybe they leveraged that to get Trump in studio, I don’t know, and then we were obviously not going to be back in Texas, but offered to do it on the road,” Plouffe said.

Tom Tillison
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