Former vice president Kamala Harris went as far as planning a Houston rally so that she could stop at Joe Rogan’s Austin studio, a forthcoming book reveals as her failure to land Rogan became a turning point in the election. It was seen as a factor why male voters did not vote for her but now the inside details will soon be out in this new book by Jonathan Allen or NBC News and Amie Parnes of The Hills. Fight: Inside the wildest battle for the White House will be published on April 1.
In the final weeks ahead of the election, the Harris team was in talks to sit down with Joe Rogan but that did not work out. Reports claimed that Kamala Harris’ team feared a progressive backlash but the forthcoming book says Harris planned the Houston rally keeping Joe Rogan in mind.
“Harris had less than zero reason to be in Texas. It was not a swing state. Her campaign was flush with cash—so it made no sense to take her off the trail to raise money. She was in battleground-or-bust mode. Plus, a detour to Texas might smell like desperation to the press and a waste of money to donors,” reads an excerpt from “FIGHT.”
So the Harris team planned to fly Harris to Houston for an Oct. 25, 2024, rally, Allen and Parnes reported, “under the cover of visiting a state with one of the nation’s most restrictive abortion laws — to put her in proximity to Austin.”
But the same day the campaign announced the Houston rally, news broke that Donald Trump would sit down with Rogan on October 25.
Negotiation with Joe Rogan started on October 11
Harris’ deputy campaign manager Rob Flaherty made the first Zoom call to start negotiating with Rogan’s representatives on October 11. “He was surprised—perhaps a tad disappointed—to find out that Rogan’s associates were more like Hollywood agents. In that vein, they outlined the podcaster’s conditions for an interview: no staff in the studio, no topic restrictions, and Harris would have to sign a waiver,” the book said, as reported by NBC.
“There was one more item in the small print: Harris would have to come to Austin, Texas. Rogan’s reps said that might be negotiable, but he had only once done an interview with an out-of-studio guest. That was leaker Edward Snowden, who was wanted in the United States at the time,” it said.
