The Kamala Harris dead-enders found a renewed sense of vigor last week, responding furiously to a report that they believe proves podcast host Joe Rogan intentionally sabotaged the former vice president’s campaign.
The way the Harris faithful tell it, the pot-smoking Bernie Bro craftily undermined and then blew up Harris’s chances in 2024 by teasing her team with false promises of an exclusive interview.
The problem is that the reporting on which this narrative is based tells no such tale. On the contrary, it tells a story of gross incompetence on the part of the Harris campaign, confirming once again that she was a lousy candidate, surrounded by lousy advisors, dealt an even lousier hand by a failed president.
The reporting comes from the Hill’s Amie Parnes and NBC News’s Jonathan Allen’s forthcoming book, “Fight: Inside the Wildest Battle for the White House.” An excerpt published on Jan. 29 by NBC News details the wrangling in the campaign’s final weeks between Harris’s and Rogan’s representatives, ultimately going nowhere. It recounts the communication between Harris’s deputy campaign manager, Rob Flaherty, and Rogan’s team.
“We could do Friday, the 25th,” Flaherty said over the phone on Oct. 18, 2024.
“Wish we had known about this sooner, because he has the 25th blocked out as a personal day,” his contact with Rogan’s team replied.
“What about Saturday morning?” Flaherty countered.
“Only if it’s before 8:30 a.m.”
The book excerpt goes on as follows: “The tone is different, Flaherty thought. The vice president of the United States is offering to come to your f—ing show, and you keep putting up more hoops. Harris’s team still wanted to make it work, but a new wariness set in.”
“Then, on Oct. 22, the same day the Harris camp announced [a rally in Houston], the Associated Press reported that Trump would be Rogan’s guest on Friday — the ‘personal day’ Rogan had originally reserved.”
“Mutual friends Elon Musk and Dana White had convinced Trump and Rogan to bury their dispute, according to a Trump aide. There would be no Harris interview.”
This is supposedly proof of Rogan’s malicious intent.
Former Obama campaign operative and anti-Trump “resistance” favorite Jon Cooper responded: “Wow! There’s no way of knowing the extent to which this could have changed the election outcome, but Joe Rogan lied through his … teeth and intentionally screwed over the Harris campaign.”
A much smaller social media account neatly summed up the “K-Hive’s” overall reaction: “So Rogan totally [ratfu**ed] Harris.”
Not at all, according to Parnes and Allen. Rather, Harris and her team played themselves.
The vice president’s lieutenants first contacted Rogan’s representatives on Oct. 11, 25 days before the election. Harris’s team was worried about polling data indicating that Trump was capturing an unusually large share of male voters. Harris’s people figured she could curry favor with this bloc by appearing on a show hosted by a manly man.
During the conversation on Oct. 11, Rogan’s team indicated that he was open to an interview. His team also made it clear that Harris would need to agree to no topic restrictions, no staff in the studio and that she would sit for the interview in person at Rogan’s studio in Austin, Texas. (Rogan has required this latter request of every guest except Edward Snowden.)
Harris’s team left the meeting feeling optimistic yet nervous. Later, her team pitched Rogan on traveling to Michigan for the interview. Rogan’s representatives declined, repeating that they conduct only in-person interviews. It was on Oct. 18, an entire week after that initial discussion, that Harris’s team proposed the Oct. 25 sit-down referenced in the above passage.
After the Trump interview, the vice president’s team made a final effort to secure a one-on-one with Rogan, asking if the podcast host would consider flying to Washington, D.C. Rogan’s team reiterated that he conducts in-person interviews in Texas. Harris’s team grew indignant and frustrated at this point and abandoned the project altogether.
It would have been bad enough if Harris had failed merely to secure a podcast interview.
As the parties negotiated, Harris’s team organized a campaign stop in Texas. They feared that if she went to Austin just for the interview, it would reveal the campaign’s more significant concerns. So, they concocted a cock-and-bull narrative about Texas abortion laws just so that they could go, “Oh hey, while we’re here, we may as well do a Joe Rogan interview.”
They even invited Beyonce to appear at the Texas rally.
What’s crazy is that the Harris team did all of this — organizing, recruiting and coordinating a campaign stop in Texas, even deploying the advance teams — before confirming the interview with Rogan.
How can someone who supports the Democratic Party read this and feel more anger toward a podcast host than toward the Democratic nominee who failed to book the interview? The nominee failed to negotiate a podcast interview and held a completely pointless political rally in a state she knew she would lose, all because her team confirmed the rally before confirming the interview.
There ought to be a law against such political malpractice.
So, no. This wasn’t a “ratf—ing.” It was simply scheduling conflicts that Harris’s team couldn’t handle.
The real story here has nothing to do with a podcast host or conspiracies to undermine the Democratic nominee. Ignore the “K-Hive’s” outrage. Dead-enders will always be dead-enders.
The real story is that the Democratic Party suffers such crippling ineptitude and pervasive entitlement that it has placed both its short-term and long-term electoral prospects in serious jeopardy.
The spoiled and aggrieved attitudes that Parnes’s and Allen’s reporting lay bare, the belief by Harris aides that Rogan should have leapt at the chance to speak with her, that it was wrong (perhaps even immoral) for him to insist on an in-person interview, are astounding. It’s likewise astounding that they went to the trouble of staging a for-show rally in Texas on Oct. 25, yet they did not accept Rogan’s offer for an early morning interview the following morning.
These people seem to believe that Rogan owed them an interview, and that they’re too good to negotiate scheduling conflicts.
The multiple failures surrounding the abandoned Rogan interview are the real story. The subtext of party-wide dysfunction and entitlement in dealing with the media is the story with enduring political, social and cultural consequences.
The story here is that the Democratic Party is bursting with people as incompetent as they are arrogant — two qualities that don’t make for success at the ballot box. Republicans never deserved to be this lucky.
Becket Adams is a writer in Washington and program director for the National Journalism Center.
