Joe Rogan squashed the suggestion to interview Russian President Vladimir Putin if the latter offered to fly him to the country to meet. The idea came up during a conversation on his podcast with a fellow comedian.
“Nay,” Rogan succinctly replied, before entering one of his trademark rants pocketed with both truth and humor.
“Are you out of your f***ing mind?” Rogan then said. “‘Hey, forget about all those people that you killed that were your political opponents. Let’s be cool now. Just be a different person now. Be a totally different human with a totally different background that wasn’t in the KGB, that isn’t a dictator, that doesn’t control information and control what news gets distributed to your people.’”
The idea of talking to global tyrants sparked a separate conversation, in which the number one podcaster recalled the meeting between former president Donald Trump and North Korea’s dictator Kim Jong-un.
“After he called him ‘Little Rocket Man’ — goes to meet him,” Rogan remembered. “Shakes his hand. They’re all smiling. That’s an awful game.”
“I mean, if you’re the President of the United States like Trump, but you’re trying to make, you know, foreign relationships better, you’re supposed to do that — it’s also the f***ing mocking glare that Trump gives everyone,” he continued. “When Trump’s talking to someone, it’s always like, ‘Be nice or I’m going to talk s***.’”
Joe Rogan sitting down with anyone is usually fascinating, and no doubt there’d be a lot to glean from the hours-long conversation with Russia’s president. In terms of Donald Trump, that’s also a conversation the internet really wanted to see, but last year Rogan said he was “not interested” in having the two join up for his show.
“I’m not a Trump supporter in any way, shape, or form,” Rogan said in 2022. “I’ve had the opportunity to have him on my show more than once — I’ve said no every time. I don’t want to help him. I’m not interested in helping him.”
Reading between the lines, it seems as if Trump would certainly have more to gain than Rogan by going on the podcast. Sure, the appearance would probably make it the biggest show he’s ever done, but the benefit to Trump is that he would gain access to Rogan’s millions of devout followers and reach an audience clearly fed up with politics as usual. That would play right into Trump’s plans.
Rogan also said that the ex-president is “an existential threat to democracy itself,” but at the same time denounced people who “felt like they could abandon their own ethics and morals and principles just to attack him and anybody who supports him.”
Despite turning down requests for the show, Rogan was asked if he thought Trump might win again in 2024. He said it’d be like “running against a dead man” in reference to President Joe Biden.
“I mean, Biden shakes hands with people that aren’t even there when he gets off stage,” Rogan said. “I think he’s seeing ghosts. You see him on Jimmy Kimmel the other day? He was just rambling … If he was anyone else, if he was a Republican, if that was Donald Trump doing that, every f***ing talk show would be screaming for him to be off the air.”
Featured image: Screen shot from embedded YouTube video, Shutterstock
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