When ex-President Donald Trump appeared on Joe Rogan’s podcast recently, it set the world of social media on fire. Never has any media availability collaboration ever had so much traction before on X. One example: If one types “Rogan” on the X platform, every possible result panders to the GOP nominee appearing on The Joe Rogan Experience Podcast. The man to thank for this viral collaboration is none other than UFC CEO and close cohort Dana White.
The Joe Rogan Experience is the #1 podcast show on the planet. It has 14.5 million Spotify top-rated followers and 17.5 million YouTube subscribers. Although Spotify and Apple Podcasts do not release audience data, Rogan and Trump hit 26 million views on YouTube in its first 24 hours. A week before this writing, there were 900,000 posts recorded mentioning it on X alone. White gives the inside scoop:
He is authentic enough to go on Joe Rogan show for three and a half hours, unscripted and talk about anything that that, that popped up …[To do that] to talk to Joe uh or anybody else you know… um, and I… I, I pushed hard for him to do that interview because that’s the setting that he needs to be in every time he does an interview. With…with the mainstream media.
Dana White to Comedian Russell Brand’s YT Channel (@RussellBrand); ‘Awakening Wonder’
According to Rogan fan site JRE Library, the podcast’s 10 most-viewed episodes over its 15-year run were between 27m and 68m on YouTube. So Trump’s first 24 hours fall just outside this bandwidth. The top-rated one is still his September 2018 interview with tech billionaire Elon Musk. But the ‘JRE’ Show #2219, with Trump in tow, was a wonder of its own.
White has often sung praises about three-time Republican candidate and pre-election GOP nominee Trump being the only one to helm the State of the Union. To that end, he bills his curious friend Rogan and his likes of mainstream media as the perfect unfiltered platform. The UFC bossman has always been against media veering or opinionating against Trump. To that end, he is happy with where this union went.
Will Donald Trump’s appearance on Joe Rogan’s show affect the election?
Unfiltered social media can be much better than the whitewashed ones on cable news channels. The quirky theorist and veteran podcaster Joe Rogan proved that. However one might feel on Donald Trump—in a good change of pace, this hit home. Trump definitely rabbit-trained quite a few times and sometimes didn’t answer Rogan’s questions directly. But it was good media coverage for everyday voters.
The duo went at it for three hours on such happenstance from the Ex-prez! Rogan did not give an endorsement to Trump during the interview. Rogan previously supported independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has since suspended his campaign and endorsed Trump. However, the media communion saw Trump in a new light that might just help his cause.
As the polls tighten, media campaigning is winding up to greater heights. First tied 50-50 in the Keystones, Trump has greatly overtaken the metrics. Kamala Harris was trailing with just a single-point lead in the final Forbes/HarrisX polls. Per Associated Press and Yahoo News/YouGov, CBSNews polls, and others, that has largely deteriorated. As have her media perceptions.
Seven swing state polls also had tight races, with Harris ahead in Nevada, Georgia, Michigan, and Wisconsin. Trump was heading to Arizona and North Carolina. Many of these states were divided by less than two points. The 78-year-old even made headlines as a McDonald’s server in Pennsylvania, which saw him back to a fan-fave setting.
