Trump Insists He and Joe Rogan Are Fine, Actually

Last month’s tiff between Donald Trump and Joe Rogan over the podcaster’s mock endorsement of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was, apparently, no biggie.

In an interview with Lex Fridman released Tuesday, Trump attempted to brush off the “bit of tension.”

“I don’t think there was any tension,” Trump said. “I’ve always liked him, but I don’t know him. I only see him when I walk into the arena with Dana and I shake his hand. I see him there and I think he’s good at what he does, but I don’t know about doing his podcast. I guess I’d do it but I haven’t been asked and I’m not asking them. I’m not asking anybody.”

Still, Trump insisted that he “likes” Rogan, even if he’s “sort of liberal.” His endorsement of Kennedy—whom Trump described as a “different kind of guy”—supposedly didn’t bother him.

That’s a starkly different tone from the one the Republican presidential nominee took in the immediate aftermath of Rogan’s Uno-reverse endorsement of Kennedy, in which he posted to Truth Social that he was looking forward to Rogan getting “booed” at a UFC tournament.

Attacking Rogan, one of the most popular podcasters in the country with independents and people on the right, was an eyebrow-raising decision for the waning candidate. Trump has rushed to pander to younger audiences in recent weeks in an effort to recoup the younger vote, hitting a youth podcast circuit that included speaking with comedian Theo Von and livestreamer Adin Ross.

Donald Trump just couldn’t back up his outlandish claims about voter fraud during an interview with podcaster Lex Fridman that aired Tuesday. 

During the 45-minute interview, Fridman asked Trump directly if he felt that Kamala Harris should be challenged more by the press. In response, the Republican nominee started rattling off false claims of voter fraud in the 2020 presidential election. 

“I don’t know. I can’t believe the whole thing is happening. We had a man in there that should’ve never been in there. They kept him in a basement, they used Covid, they cheated, but they used Covid to cheat. They cheated without Covid, too,” Trump said. Moments later, the former president claimed he had “lost by a whisker” in 2020. 

Later, Fridman tried to delicately ask Trump about what he would say to convince independent voters who were “troubled by what happened in the 2020 election” to vote for him. Fridman specifically referred to Trump’s unsupported claims about widespread voter fraud, and his administration’s alleged fake electors scheme. Despite Fridman’s softball approach, Trump doubled down on his disturbing rhetoric, before quickly swerving off topic.

“I think the fraud was on the other side. I think the election was a fraud, and many people felt it was that. And they wanted answers. And when you can’t challenge an election—you have to be able to challenge it, otherwise it’s gonna get worse, not better,” Trump said. He explained that there were lots of ways to “solve this problem” to prevent noncitizens from voting, including paper ballots, same-day voting, and stricter voter identification.

In reality, there is very little evidence to suggest that noncitizen voting is a major problem in the U.S.  In 2016, noncitizen votes accounted for just 0.0001 percent of the votes cast, according to the Brennan Center for Justice. As it happens, the only people concocting a scheme to fake votes in the last election were in Trump’s camp.

“So, uhhhh look, we have the worst border in the history of the world. We have, coming into our country right now, millions and millions of people, at levels that nobody’s ever seen. I don’t believe any country has ever seen it. We have, coming into our country right now, millions of people. And they would use sticks and stones not to make it happen, not to let it happen,” Trump said, seeming increasingly confused as he descended into one of his typical anti-immigrant stump speeches. 

Trump went on to complain about Harris as the “border czar,” which was never her official position, and continued to tout baseless claims that countries from around the world were offloading their people from prisons, mental institutions, and insane asylums to the U.S. After about three minutes of Trump’s blatant fearmongering, Fridman tried to ask his original question a different way, so that it might actually elicit a real answer.

“So, a lot of people believe that there was some shady stuff that went on with the election. Whether it’s media bias or big tech. Still, the claim of widespread fraud was the thing that bothers people,” Fridman said, but Trump easily bypassed his gentle phrasing.

“Well, I don’t focus on the past, I focus on the future,” Trump said, before diving into a lengthy rehashing of the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, which was, of course, also the past.

Fridman tried one last time to get an actual response from Trump. “Let me just linger on the election a little—a little bit more. For this election, it might be a close one. What can we do to avoid the insanity and division of the previous election? Whether you win or lose,” Fridman asked. 

“Well I hope it’s not a close one. I don’t know how people can vote for someone who destroyed our country,” Trump said, before turning back to immigration. 

The former president’s softball interview with Fridman was littered with several particularly off moments for a low-energy Trump. 

“I get very big audiences, and you know, for many people it’s virtually impossible to get up and speak for an hour and half and have nobody leave,” Trump bragged at one point. “You know, it’s not an easy thing to do, and it’s an ability.”

Of course, there is some well-documented evidence that plenty of onlookers choose to cut out on Trump’s incoherent speeches early—and even Fox News doesn’t play them all the way through anymore. 

In a softball interview, Donald Trump still couldn’t answer correctly when asked about sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

In a wide-ranging interview with podcaster Lex Fridman released on Tuesday, Trump managed to praise Jeffrey Epstein while also claiming he “never went to his island.”

“He was a good salesman; he was, you know, a hailing, hearty type of guy,” Trump said when asked why he believes so many powerful people were close to Epstein. “He had some nice assets that he’d throw around, like islands.”

When asked about his “hesitation” on releasing documents related to Epstein, including a his client list, the former president refused to commit but said he’d “take a look at it.”

Trump then immediately began trying to excuse Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for his relationship with Epstein.

“Kennedy is interesting because it was so many years ago,” Trump  said, referring to the man who admitted he flew onEpstein’s private plane twice. Trump seemed to justify the list of powerful men being kept secret all this time, adding that releasing the list “endangers certain people.”

Trump has previously waffled on declassifying the Epstein files. In June, he told Fox & Friends Weekend that he would, but he also had hesitations. “I guess I would. I think that less so because you don’t want to affect people’s lives if it’s phony stuff in there, because it’s a lot of phony stuff with that whole world. But I think I would.”

At the end of the Fridman interview, Trump finished on a similar note, eventually saying he’d “be inclined” to release the files. Of course, right-wing media and influencers are already trying to claim the interview is a win. “Trump says he will release the Epstein client list if elected. The Democrat elites are shaking rn,” said Libs of TikTok, ignoring the rest of his words.

Donald Trump can’t use Isaac Hayes’s song “Hold On, I’m Coming” at his rallies anymore thanks to a federal judge in Georgia.

On Tuesday, Thomas Thrash Jr. of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia, responding to a lawsuit from Hayes’s estate, issued a temporary injunction against Trump using the song “without proper license.” Trump’s campaign has been using the song to close out his speeches this year, including at the Republican National Convention.

As recently as August 9, Trump used “Hold On, I’m Coming” at a rally in Montana, but since then, he’s been using the Village People’s “YMCA,” which he also used in his 2020 presidential campaign. (Not surprisingly, they aren’t happy with Trump using their music either.)

Hayes’s estate hopes to make the measure permanent.

“We are very pleased with the court’s decision,” James L. Walker Jr., a lawyer for the Hayes estate, told The New York Times. “Donald Trump has been told he cannot use the music of Isaac Hayes without a license. That was our No. 1 goal. Now we work on the underlying trial and case.”

Trump’s campaign did get one reprieve from the judge: Recordings from previous campaign events where they used Hayes’s song can stay online. But that hardly softens the blow when there’s a long list of artists who don’t want Trump using their music. Just last week, Swedish pop group ABBA objected to Trump using their songs at a Minnesota rally.

Before that, Beyoncé, Celine Dion, Sinéad O’Connor, The Beatles, Adele, Bruce Springsteen, Elton John, Foo Fighters, Guns N’ Roses, Leonard Cohen, Queen, Prince, Pharrell, the Rolling Stones, The Smiths’ Johnny Marr, Rihanna, Neil Young, Linkin Park, the late Tom Petty, the Village People, and Aerosmith front man Steven Tyler all banned Trump from playing their music for his campaign.

Perhaps Trump ought to stick with artists who actually support him and would want their music played at his campaign events. But then he’d be stuck with Kid Rock, Kanye West, and country music.

Donald Trump’s gaze is turned toward New Hampshire—but possibly for all the wrong reasons.

A top volunteer with the Trump campaign issued an internal message Sunday notifying fellow Trump volunteers that “the campaign has determined that New Hampshire is no longer a battleground state.” That volunteer, Tom Mountain, is reportedly no longer with the campaign.

But Trump couldn’t let the topic of the Granite State pass without attempting to drag Vice President Kamala Harris into the mud with him. In a post Tuesday on Truth Social, Trump claimed that New Hampshire was “disrespected” by the fact that Harris “never showed up” during its presidential primary, despite the fact that Harris only became the Democratic nominee a little more than a month ago. Harris also intends to visit New Hampshire on Wednesday.

“Comrade Kamala Harris sees there are problems for her campaign in New Hampshire because of the fact that they disrespected it in their primary and never showed up,” Trump wrote. “Additionally, the cost of living in New Hampshire is through the roof, their energy bills are some of highest in the country, and their housing market is the most unaffordable in history.”

Harris has at least a five-point advantage over Trump in New Hampshire, according to a University of New Hampshire Survey Center poll published August 19. Still, despite the losing edge—and the Trump campaign’s own internal kerfuffle over it—Trump insisted that New Hampshire’s concerns were still his own.

“I protected New Hampshire’s First-In-The-Nation Primary and ALWAYS will!” Trump continued. “To my friends in New Hampshire, get out and vote TRUMP. Together, we will make your State and America Strong, Safe, and Prosperous AGAIN!”