Joe Rogan could decide the US election

This presidential race marks insurgent media’s supplanting of the mainstream.

W hen not interviewing Donald Trump, Joe Rogan might be found floating in a sensory-deprivation tank, injecting himself with testosterone, perusing the moose hearts in his freezer, tripping on DMT or smoking weed with Elon Musk on The Joe Rogan Experience, the most popular podcast in the world.

Rogan is the king of podcasts. Since launching his in 2009, he has invited misfits, philosophers, comedians, veterans and astrophysicists to his studio in Austin, Texas, for two- or three-hour unedited conversations that careen from UFOs to whether dinosaurs really existed. The formula works: Rogan has a $250m deal with Spotify and 18 million subscribers on YouTube, many of whom are young men – a key target for Trump.

That is why last month Trump sat down with Rogan for a three-hour freewheeling chat, taking in Trump’s opinion of the White House decor, US generals in Iraq and the contents of the JFK files. With the election imminent, Trump would not spend three hours on a podcast unless he thought it could swing the vote. Rogan just might be the key to the White House.

Joe Rogan, 57, is a media powerhouse, a gadfly, today’s sardonic answer to the Renaissance man. In August 1988, his friends talked the then 21-year-old into delivering his first stand-up set at Stitches comedy club in Boston after he made them laugh with impressions and jokes about his feminist girlfriend. He got a buzz from that performance and kept returning for open-mic nights, honing a routine that leaned into controversy and the gritty gag. As he later said: “My act is so completely and totally uncensored that the only way I could really pull it off is if I treat the audience like they’re my best friends and I talk to them completely honestly.” The style stuck.

In 1995 Rogan landed a TV role on the sitcom NewsRadio, as a handyman in a New York office of radio journalists. His character is the butt of the joke: the non-college-educated gym-bunny who futilely flirts with his female colleagues. Twenty years later the inversion is stark: podcasts like Rogan’s are making radio redundant.

For Rogan, acting was about making money. He saw himself as a comedian who acted, not an actor who did comedy. But neither competed with his true love: mixed martial arts. Rogan excelled at taekwondo at school, winning the US Open Taekwondo Championships at 19. Martial arts gave him the discipline school could not: “Martial arts really made me who I am, without a doubt.”

Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) is the biggest mixed martial arts organisation in the world. Its founding idea was to bring together competitors with different skillsets – say, a boxer and a Muay Thai fighter – to fight with minimal rules and no weight classes. The brutality of its early bouts led Senator John McCain to compare it to “human cockfighting”. In 2001, its president, Dana White, asked Rogan to become a commentator, who became famous for his trademark, “Wow!” and extravagant, open-mouthed reactions.

Donald Trump, too, has always liked sitting ringside. In footage of Mike Tyson knocking out Michael Spinks in 91 seconds in 1988, the words “Trump Plaza” can be seen in the background, emblazoned on a corner post. For Trump, the fighting doesn’t even need to be real. He has long had an affinity for wrestling: he once shaved the head of Vince McMahon, the father of World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE), in a staged ring performance, and Hulk Hogan ripped off his own shirt at Trump’s rally at Madison Square Garden on 27 October.

When Trump heard White needed somewhere to host the frowned-on UFC fights in 2001, he offered up his Atlantic City casinos. The two men formed a deep bond. More than 20 years later, White spoke at the Madison Square Garden rally, praising Trump as a “strong leader [who] allies and adversaries alike must respect. He’s proven he loves this country so much, he’s literally put his life on the line for it.” Halfway through his interview with Trump, Rogan tells him White is “probably the reason why you’re here” – a revealing remark suggesting the invitation was a favour to White.

Despite their shared love for UFC, Rogan and Trump have different politics. Weeks before Trump arrived in his studio, Rogan revelled in Harris mocking the Republican candidate’s rallies as dull and said she was “nailing it” after the presidential debate. In 2022 he called Trump an “existential threat to democracy”.

Rogan’s politics are eclectic: he has endorsed Bernie Sanders, the “Trumpism without Trump” Republican Ron DeSantis, and has praised the former independent candidate Robert F Kennedy Jr. He is a libertarian who supports gay marriage, recreational drug legalisation, universal healthcare and gun rights. His credulity and openness to new ideas can make him a conduit for unscientific theories. He facilitates debates that others won’t touch: during the pandemic the efficacy of vaccines and lockdowns was a topic on the show. Rogan does not pretend to know more than his guests: he represents his listeners, sharing in their curiosity. He prizes authenticity over everything.

Trump knows how powerful that is. During their conversation, Trump obsequiously asked Rogan for his endorsement, urging the podcast host to back him as Musk has done. “I’ve watched you for so many years. You’re not a Kamala person,” Trump said. He continued: “I think you know everything actually, as a student of yours.” But the most Rogan did was praise Trump’s “comedic instincts”.

Trump clipped through his usual riffs: the economy was great under him; Harris is a crazy liberal; he regrets appointing bad people in his first term. He called his former national security adviser John Bolton a “nut job”: “Every time 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 could soon return to the White House, but Rogan treated their conversation like any other, listening as Trump recounted the time he told Kim Jong Un to stop building nuclear weapons, “go to the beach” and “relax”. They bonded over their mutual friends Musk, White and RFK. Rogan “[loved] the fact that you guys teamed up” regarding Trump’s promise to give RFK, a vaccine-sceptic who hates processed food, responsibility for food regulation and healthcare. Rogan repeatedly tried to pin down Trump on the evidence that the 2020 election was rigged, without much success. The one thing that Rogan really wanted to know from Trump was what he had been told about UFOs.

By the time I finished the episode on YouTube, the video had clocked up a further three million views, taking the total to 37 million. This election marks the moment that mainstream media was supplanted by insurgents. Both Trump and Harris have favoured softball interviews on podcasts over traditional media, each picking shows to appeal to their target voters. Trump’s appearance on Rogan’s show heralds the dawn of a new mainstream media, one where fighting, dirty jokes and politics merge into entertainment. As we go to press, Harris is supposedly negotiating her own appearance on the podcast. Like Trump, she knows that what is said on The Joe Rogan Experience could decide the election.