Former President Donald Trump taped a nearly three-hour episode of “The Joe Rogan Experience” on Friday. He courted the show’s young male audience by floating the idea of eliminating the income tax, talking about mixed martial arts fighters, praising the military skills of Gen. Robert E. Lee and speculating that there was “no reason not to think” there could be life on Mars and other planets.

Much of the discussion centered on refrains familiar from Trump’s rambling speeches on the campaign trail, but the podcast offered Trump an opportunity to reach an audience his campaign covets. Rogan has 14.5 million followers on Spotify and 17.6 million on YouTube, many of them the young, male, low-propensity voters that the Trump campaign is hoping to draw to the polls.

At one point Rogan tried to lead Trump, who has described his meandering, digression-laden speaking style as “the weave,” back to the point. “Your weave is getting wide,” Rogan said. “You’re getting wide with this weave.”

Here are six takeaways from the podcast.

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Trump Saw the Podcast as Well Worth a Detour

That Trump opted to step off the campaign trail and spend hours in Rogan’s studio in Austin, Texas — a detour that delayed the start of his remarks at a rally Friday evening in Michigan by several hours — was a mark of Rogan’s reach and the importance of the audience he draws.

Just two years ago, Rogan said he had declined to have Trump on his show, calling the former president “an existential threat to democracy.” But in their interview, Rogan was a receptive if occasionally challenging interlocutor.

Rogan acknowledged that he had rethought his position on interviewing Trump after he survived an assassination attempt in July at a rally in Pennsylvania.

“Once they shot you, I was like, ‘He’s got to come in here,’” Rogan said. “It’s all about timing.”

Rogan Invited Trump to Talk About His Debunked Claims of Widespread Election Fraud

“I want to talk about 2020 because you said over and over again that you were robbed in 2020,” Rogan said, offering Trump a platform to repeat his debunked claims of widespread fraud in the 2020 election and the lie that he won that year. “How do you think you were robbed? Everybody always cuts you off.”

Trump lamented that “the judges didn’t have what it took to turn over an election” and repeated a few false claims, suggested that mail-in ballots were not secure and said that Democrats had “used COVID to cheat” in 2020.

Rogan seemed to back Trump’s questioning of election processes, at one point likening those who raised concerns over elections to those who questioned coronavirus vaccines.

“You get labeled an election denier,” Rogan said. “It’s like being labeled an anti-vaxxer if you question some of the health consequences that people have from the COVID-19 shots.”

In 2022 Rogan was criticized for spreading what was widely seen as misinformation about the coronavirus, prompting Neil Young and Joni Mitchell to remove their music from Spotify to protest the platform’s support of the podcaster.

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Trump Floated Eliminating the Income Tax

Trump voiced casual support for the idea of eliminating the federal income tax, suggesting a return to economic policies that existed before the early 20th century.

“Did you just float out the idea of getting rid of income taxes and replacing it with tariffs?” Rogan asked Trump, who had mentioned the notion Monday in a Fox News segment. “Were we serious about that?

“Yeah, sure,” Trump said. “But why not?” He again offered praise for William McKinley, the 25th president, a Republican whose views on tariffs Trump frequently commends.

Even before Trump began talking about eliminating the income tax, an analysis by the nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget estimated that his other economic proposals could add as much as $15 trillion to the nation’s debt over 10 years.

Is There Life on Mars?

Rogan pressed Trump for government secrets on whether there is life beyond Earth.

The former president initially said he had “never been a believer” in extraterrestrial life. But then he seemed to pivot, recalling that he had interviewed “solid” jet pilots who claimed to have seen “very strange” things in the sky.

“There’s no reason not to think that Mars and all these planets don’t have life,” Trump said.

Rogan corrected him.

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“Well, Mars — we’ve had probes there, and rovers, and I don’t think there’s any life there,” Rogan said. (Mars is the most widely explored planet in the solar system other than Earth.)

“Maybe it’s life that we don’t know about,” replied Trump, who has vowed in stump speeches to get an American astronaut to Mars.

Scientists have not found life on Mars, though they are on the hunt for evidence of fossilized organisms.

Trump Does Not Trust Polls — or Pollsters

Trump told Rogan he had little regard for political polls, explaining that he believed there was “probably a lot of fraud” in them, even as he at times positively cited polls that showed him doing well with voters.

“You know how polls are done?” Trump asked. “Oh, I’m going to get myself in trouble. So I really don’t believe too much in them.”

Polls have consistently shown a tight race between Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris. Polls were notably inaccurate during the last two presidential elections, and many pollsters have taken steps to try to improve their accuracy. But Trump suggested, without evidence, that they were not just mistaken but might be fraudulent. “I don’t think they interview in many cases,” he said.

Lots of Praise, but a Challenge on the Environment

Rogan was a friendly interviewer, often praising Trump. He rarely interrupted the former president, and they seemed to bond over their shared love of the Ultimate Fighting Championship, a mixed martial arts league whose matches Trump attends.

And Rogan, a standup comedian, praised Trump for “comedic instincts” on the trail.

But their worldviews were not always a neat fit. At one point, Rogan asked Trump to elaborate on why he thought people opposed increasing oil and gas production or fracking, “outside of the environmental concerns, which are legitimate, of course.”

Trump started to object to that point, but Rogan continued on with his question. And he turned stern as he pressed Trump over his claim that environmental regulations were used only to enrich consultants who stymie development.

“They use it as a weapon,” Trump said.

Rogan pushed back with a series of questions. “But there are legitimate concerns about environmental impact, correct?” he asked, citing environmental disasters. “You want to mitigate that as much as possible.”

“Sure,” Trump conceded. But he shifted to his standard insistence that he was focused on clean water and clean air before moving to a discussion about China and complaints about California.

Trump has made a sometimes uneasy alliance with Robert F. Kennedy Jr., an environmental activist and former presidential candidate, who has endorsed him. Kennedy, whom Rogan favors, has advanced a number of environmental proposals that clash with some of Trump’s deregulation pledges and plans to increase fracking.

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This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

By Michael Gold, Tim Balk and Simon J. Levien
c. 2024 The New York Times Company