Trump comes late to Michigan rally after three-hour Joe Rogan podcast : NPR

In one of the lengthiest interviews he’s done as a candidate, former President Donald Trump’s three-hour interview with podcaster Joe Rogan Friday offered an extended version of the meandering and sometimes fact-adjacent rally speeches Trump has delivered lately.

Trump, who left thousands of rally goers in Traverse City, Michigan waiting an extra three hours Friday night because of his extra time with Rogan, attacked Vice President Harris as someone who “couldn’t put two sentences together” in interviews and touted his own oratorical skills that regularly whirl through multiple diverging topics in a short time.

“I like to give a long — the weave,” Trump said on The Joe Rogan Experience. “But when you do the weaves, and you have to be very smart to do weaves, when you do the weave, look at this, just in this one thing, we’re talking about little pieces..”

“Gotta get it back home,” Rogan interjects.

“No no, it comes back home for the right people,” Trump continued. “For the wrong people, it doesn’t come back home and they end up in the wilderness, right?”

Much like his rally speeches, Trump’s talk with Rogan touched on a wide range of subjects with little connection, like an episode of The View he was on during his first campaign, hosting The Apprentice, UFOs, dead whales and a historical detour about Abraham Lincoln.

“Lincoln had a, I don’t know. I’ve never read this, I heard it from people in the White House who really understand what was going on with the whole life of the White House,” he said. “But Lincoln had the yips about, in a way, as the golfers would say, he had a phobia about [Confederate General] Robert E. Lee. Said, ‘I can’t beat Robert’ because Robert E. Lee won many battles in a row.”

He also repeated several anecdotes and arguments central to his presidential campaign that are also staples of his stump speech, like a call to lower the corporate tax rate to 15%, enact stiff tariffs on foreign vehicles imported into the country, and he continued to falsely claim fraud cost him the 2020 election.

“I won by like — I lost by like — I didn’t lose, but they say I lost, Joe,” Trump said, repeating the lie that he won that election. He did not.

In passing, Trump also seemed to endorse getting rid of income taxes and solely relying on tariffs to fund the government, though before fully elaborating on what he meant and how that would work, he pivoted to discussing billionaire Elon Musk, how Musk endorsed him in the election and joked that Rogan would not be a Harris supporter, but rather a “Khabib person,” referring to hall of fame UFC fighter Khabib Nurmagomedov.

“Your weave is getting wide,” Rogan exclaimed.

In the closing days of his third presidential run, Trump has become increasingly erratic with his public appearances and dire with his rhetoric. On Rogan’s podcast, Trump repeated his view that there is an “enemy from within” that is worse for the country than foes like North Korea. Trump also previously floated using the military against domestic enemies.

“We have a bigger problem, in my opinion, with the enemy from within, and it drives them crazy when I use that term,” he said. “But we have an enemy from within. We have people that are really bad, people that I really think want to make this country unsuccessful.”

He also said he really doesn’t “believe too much” in polls, before touting his latest numbers and baselessly claiming, again, there is widespread fraud in elections.

When Trump finally made it to Michigan, he looked and sounded visibly tired, repeating some of the same topics and anecdotes from the Rogan interview hours before but with much less energy and cohesion.

He took the stage to the theme music from WWE wrestler The Undertaker, standing silently on stage as the ominous song played before apologizing for the delay..

“Here’s what they wanted to do: We got so tied up, and I figured you wouldn’t mind too much, because we’re trying to win,” he said.

He then mentioned poll numbers and early voting turnout, falsely claiming that he is leading in all seven swing states, before attacking Harris for holding a campaign rally in Texas that featured global superstar Beyoncé.

“You know where she is tonight? She’s out partying,” he said. “So Israel is attacking, we got a war going on, and she’s out partying. At least we’re working to make America great again, that’s what we’re doing.”