(BBC News) Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump‘s three-hour interview with the United States’ #1 podcaster, Joe Rogan, has been released.
In the wide-ranging sit-down, the former president discusses everything from the “biggest mistake” of his White House tenure, what he told North Korea’s leader, and whether extraterrestrial life exists.
Two years ago, Rogan described Trump as “an existential threat to democracy” and refused to have him on his show. But the pair seemed friendly on Friday as they chatted about their shared interest in Ultimate Fighting Championship and mutual friends such as Elon Musk.
The Republican’s campaign hopes the interview will consolidate his influence with male voters, who make up the core of listeners to the Joe Rogan Experience, which has 14.5 million Spotify followers and 17.5 million YouTube subscribers.
Trump took a major detour to visit Rogan in Austin, Texas, causing him to show up almost three hours late to a rally in Traverse City, Michigan, a crucial swing state where both he and his Democratic opponent, Kamala Harris, have been campaigning hard.
Trump on his ‘biggest mistake’
Trump told Rogan the “biggest mistake” of his 2017-21 presidency was “I picked a few people I shouldn’t have picked.”
“Neocons or bad people or disloyal people,” he told Rogan, referring to neoconservatives, policy-makers who champion an interventionist US foreign policy.
“A guy like Kelly, who was a bully but a weak person,” Trump added, mentioning his former White House chief-of-staff John Kelly, who told the New York Times this week that he thought his former boss had “fascist” tendencies.
Trump also described his former US National Security Adviser John Bolton as “an idiot”, but useful at times.
“He was good in a certain way,” said Trump. “He’s a nutjob.
“And everytime I had to deal with a country, when they saw this whack-job standing behind me, they said: ‘Oh man, Trump’s going to go to war with us.’ He was with Bush when they went stupidly into the Middle East.”
Trump says he told Kim Jong-un ‘go to the beach’
Trump said he got to know North Korean leader Kim Jong-un “very well” despite some nuclear sabre-rattling between the two initially when Trump said he told him: “Little Rocket Man, you’re going to burn in hell.”
“By the time I finished, we had no problem with North Korea,” Trump said.
Trump said he urged Kim to stop building up his “substantial” weapons stockpile.
“I said: ‘Do you ever do anything else? Why don’t you go take it easy? Go to the beach, relax.
“I said: ‘You’re always building nuclear, you don’t have to do it. Relax!’ I said: ‘Let’s build some condos on your shore.’”
Trump also argued that Russia would never have invaded Ukraine if he had been president.
“I said, ‘Vladimir, you’re not going in,’” he told Rogan, referring to Russian President Vladimir Putin. “I used to talk to him all the time.
“I can’t tell you what I told him, because I think it would be inappropriate, but someday he’ll tell you, but he would have never gone in.”
Trump said Putin invaded Ukraine because “number one, he doesn’t respect Biden at all.” The White House has previously accused Trump of cozying up to foreign autocrats.
On 2020 election – ‘I lost by, like, I didn’t lose’
Asked for proof to back up his claims that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from him by mass voter fraud, Trump told Rogan: “We’ll do it another time.
“I would bring in papers that you would not believe, so many different papers. That election was so crooked, it was the most crooked.”
Rogan pressed him for evidence.
Trump alleged irregularities with the ballots in Wisconsin and that Democrats “used Covid to cheat.”
“Are you going to present this [proof] ever?” asked Rogan.
“Uh…,” said Trump before pivoting to talk about how 51 former intelligence agents aligned with Joe Biden had falsely suggested that stories about his son Hunter Biden’s laptop were Russian disinformation.
“I lost by, like, I didn’t lose,” said Trump.
Harris ‘very low IQ’
Trump lashed out at his political opponents and praised his allies, many of whom are likely to appeal to Rogan’s fanbase.
He called his rival, Vice-President Kamala Harris, a “very low IQ person” and described California’s Gavin Newsom as “one of the worst governors in the world.”
Trump said that Elon Musk, who has appeared on Rogan’s podcast in the past, was “the greatest guy.”
He also said he is “completely” committed to bringing Robert F Kennedy Jr into a potential new Trump administration.
The former independent presidential candidate, who has a close friendship with Rogan, dropped out in August and endorsed the Republican nominee.
Trump said he disagrees with Kennedy on environmental policy so would instead ask the vaccine critic to “focus on health, do whatever you want.”
On extraterrestrial life
Trump said that he hadn’t ruled out there being life in space.
“There’s no reason not to think that Mars and all these planets don’t have life,” he said, referring to discussions he’d had with jet pilots who’d seen “very strange” things in the sky.
“Well, Mars – we’ve had probes there, and rovers, and I don’t think there’s any life there,” Rogan said.
“Maybe it’s life that we don’t know about,” said Trump.
On The Apprentice
Trump said that some senior figures at NBC had tried to talk him out of running for president to keep his show The Apprentice on air.
”They wanted me to stay,” he said. “All the top people came over to see me, try and talk me out of it, because they wanted to have me extend.”
Trump starred in 14 series of The Apprentice from 2004, but NBC cut ties with him after he launched his 2015 bid for the presidency, citing his “derogatory” comments about immigrants.
Health is ‘unbelievable’
Trump has been under pressure from Democrats to release his medical records after Harris released hers earlier this month, which concluded she was in “excellent health” and fit for the presidency.
Trump’s team said at the time that his doctor described him as being in “perfect and excellent health,” without sharing his records.
Trump did not address the topic directly on Friday’s podcast, but he told Rogan that during one physical, doctors had described his ability to run on a steep treadmill as “unbelievable”.
“I was never one that could, like, run on a treadmill. When passing a physical, they asked me to run on a treadmill, and then they make it steeper and steeper and steeper, and the doctors said, it was at Walter Reed [hospital], they said: ‘It’s unbelievable!’ I’m telling you, I felt I could have gone all day.”
But he said treadmills are “really boring,” so he prefers to stay healthy by playing golf.
