One reason Joe Rogan’s interview with Kamala Harris went up in smoke: the vice president didn’t want to talk about weed.
The comedian, on Tuesday’s episode of his “Joe Rogan Experience” podcast, said his team had “multiple conversations” with Harris’ campaign about having her come on his show. Rogan said he knew Harris would be in Texas several times leading up to Election Day, and that she had an “open invitation” to swing by his Austin studio.
“You pick a time, I will be here,” Rogan said on Tuesday.
“It seems like — and these are all anecdotal reports, right? — but it seems like her campaign was kind of chaotic, like, no one could make a decision,” he said.
But the Harris team’s rules about what he could and couldn’t ask her derailed any chance of an interview, Rogan said.
“They had requirements on things she didn’t want to talk about,” he said. “She didn’t want to talk about marijuana legalization — which I thought was hilarious.”
“Why?” asked Adrienne Iapalucci, the comedian who appeared on Rogan’s Tuesday episode.
“Because of her prosecuting record. She put a lot of people in jail for weed — 1,500 apparently, allegedly,” Rogan said.
Harris, while serving as San Francisco’s district attorney from 2004 to 2011, “oversaw more than 1,900 marijuana convictions,” according to The Mercury News. Prosecutors told the Bay Area outlet that most of those convictions didn’t lead to jail time.
Harris’ record on weed has been criticized in the past. During a 2019 CNN debate among Democratic presidential candidates, Tulsi Gabbard skewered Harris for her inconsistent stance on the matter.
“I’m deeply concerned about this record,” Gabbard said. “She put over 1,500 people in jail for marijuana violations, then laughed about it when she was asked if she ever smoked marijuana.”
Rogan had been aiming to interview both presidential candidates in the weeks leading up to the election. In late October, he said the Harris campaign had offered him an interview, but that he’d have to travel to her and that it’d only be for one hour. Rogan’s podcast is usually around three hours long and is recorded from his studio in Austin, Texas. The interview with Harris never materialized.
Harris’ non-interview was especially glaring after Donald Trump recorded a three-hour podcast with Rogan on Oct. 26.
Beyond Harris, some of the people and topics mentioned on the Trump-Rogan podcast included: Joe Biden, Abraham Lincoln, Robert E. Lee, China, Israel, Russia, Iran, UFC, The White House, depression, primetime television, the media, Baron Trump, Melania Trump, Ronald Reagan, oil, Adolf Hitler, CNN, CBS, Tim Walz, the 2020 election, “The View,” David Muir, tariffs, policing, polling and Elon Musk.
Rogan’s interview with Trump has been viewed 49.2 million times as of Tuesday.
