Trump’s interview may be one of the most watched episodes in Rogan’s show’s history.
Former President Donald Trump’s interview with podcast host Joe Rogan racked up about 28 million views on YouTube in just over a day, becoming the most-viewed podcast appearance for either Trump or his opponent Vice President Kamala Harris.
By Sunday afternoon, the episode had 28.3 million views on YouTube alone. Spotify, where Rogan hosts his podcast primarily, does not release viewership data for individual episodes.
But the YouTube figures suggest that Trump’s interview may be one of the most significantly watched episodes in Rogan’s show’s history. Fan website JRE Library found that the top 10 most-watched episodes have between 27 million and 69 million views, with Elon Musk’s episode being the most-watched.
Trump and Harris have been courting voters with appearances on podcasts, in addition to more traditional rallies and interviews with journalists.
A poll by YouGov last year found that 81 percent of Rogan’s listeners are male and 56 percent are under 35 years old, a demographic that tends to support Trump over Harris in swing states.
Harris’s campaign has said that she will not appear on Rogan’s podcast. Harris’s team had been in touch with Rogan’s program about a possible appearance, but scheduling did not line up, a spokesperson said.
“We talked with Rogan and his team about the podcast. Unfortunately it isn’t going to work out right now because of the scheduling of this … period of the campaign,” spokesperson Ian Sams said on MSNBC last week.
Harris appeared on the “Call Her Daddy” podcast earlier in October, which garnered about 703,000 views in three weeks.
Rogan Explains Why
At the start of the podcast episode with Trump, Rogan explained why he wanted the former president to appear on the program now—with just over a week to go before the Nov. 5 election.
Rogan said, “Once they shot you I was like, ‘He’s gotta come in here,’” stressing that it was “all about timing” and that the “timing is perfect.”
Later in the interview, Rogan said that he hoped Harris would appear on his show. “I would talk to her like a human being and try to have a conversation with her,” he said.
