Opinion: Donald Trump's Joe Rogan interview was a brain-rotted waste of 3 hours
“The wind drives whales crazy. … I want to be a whale psychiatrist.”
Bill Goodykoontz,
I thought Rogan might challenge Trump, whom he has criticized before. Maybe make him defend some of his more indefensible positions, or at least try to. Every now and then he did, a little. But mostly Rogan would just bring up a topic, Trump would start talking and Rogan would let him go, unchallenged.
It's part of both Trump and Kamala Harris' efforts to use non-traditional forms of media to court voters — and to attract young male voters in particular. Trump recently held a rally at Arizona State University's Mullett Arena, for instance. It may seem like a sliver of the electorate, but in a historically close race (if you believe the polls), every little bit helps, in theory.
Trump wants to be a 'whale psychiatrist,' um, and also president
They discussed, among other things, how bull riders occasionally die, aspects of concrete and the effects of wind on whales.
“What is happening with the whales?” Rogan asked as Trump disparaged windmills, an alternative form of energy
“The wind drives whales crazy. … I want to be a whale psychiatrist.”
He also wants to be president, and he hit on several of his campaign’s greatest hits. He disparaged Harris’ intelligence, praised tariffs (“To me the most beautiful word … in the dictionary today is the word tariff. It’s more beautiful than love. It’s more beautiful than anything”) and, why not, once again falsely claimed that he won the 2020 election.
“I don’t want to get you in any disputes, but I won that election so easy,” Trump said, referring to the election he lost to President Joe Biden.
“I want to talk to you about that,” Rogan said, which, in this conversation, amounted to pushback. He did ask Trump why none of his claims of election fraud held up in court, but Trump just fell back on the usual complaints about a bad court system.
'This show is too valuable to talk about concrete' and yet
Perhaps the best quote from the entire thing, from Trump: “This show is too valuable to talk about concrete.”
I’m not sure that’s true.
Honestly, it’s kind of hard to describe what it was really like, slogging through the whole thing, just a marathon of mediocrity. Imagine a Trump rally, only if Trump was more energetic than he has been lately, with someone onstage echoing him. Even if Rogan asked Trump to explain himself, however gently, he didn't stay with it too long.
Trump told Rogan at one point forest fires could be prevented if they just raked the forest floor.
“Could you really rake the whole forest though?” Rogan asked. “I don't think you could rake the whole forest.”
And that’s the kind of tough questioning that gets you nearly 15 million listeners on Spotify alone.
Trump and Rogan seemed delighted with each other
The two seemed delighted with each other’s company, just a couple of bros talking trash between compliments and praise for MMA fighting. Just two people who cut from the same reality-show cloth, where they found big audiences and somehow became important.
“Did you just assume that because people loved you on ‘The Apprentice’ they were going to love you as a president?” Rogan asked at one point.
“Well, I was thinking it would be so easy,” Trump said.
“Well it probably would have been if the media didn’t attack you the way they did, if they didn’t conflate you with Hitler. … They love to take things out of context and distort things,” Rogan said.
“They don’t even have to,” Trump said. “They make them up entirely.”
“They do that, too,” Rogan said.
And so it went.
Another hard-hitting question from Rogan: “How are you so healthy? Is it golf?”
“No,” Trump said, “it’s genetics, I believe.” Of course he does.
Opinion: Trump's rhetoric empowered haters
They didn't cut through the noise. They amplified it
Somewhere someone is listening to this podcast and saying, finally. Just a couple of guys with some real talk. Except that it wasn’t. It was two guys surprisingly sympathetic to one another in a three-hour marathon meeting of the mutual appreciation society.
They didn’t cut through the noise. They amplified it. Rogan said at one point that while Harris has said she won’t appear on his show, he hopes she still will. It would be interesting from the standpoint of comparing how he talks to her and how he talked to Trump.
Interesting from the listener’s point of view, at least. From her perspective, why bother?
Reach Goodykoontz at bill.goodykoontz@arizonarepublic.com. Facebook: facebook.com/GoodyOnFilm. X: @goodyk. Subscribe to the weekly movies newsletter.
This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Opinion: Donald Trump's Joe Rogan interview? Don't bother
“The wind drives whales crazy. … I want to be a whale psychiatrist.”
Bill Goodykoontz,
Arizona Republic
Sat, October 26, 2024
Have you ever been in a bar or restaurant and overheard two people who clearly don’t have any idea what they’re talking about, but they just keep talking anyway? And the dumber it gets, the louder it gets? And eventually the shrimp just isn’t that tasty anymore?
That’s what it was like listening to “The Joe Rogan Experience” Friday night, when Rogan released his much-ballyhooed interview with Donald Trump, recorded earlier in the day. It was bad, and it wouldn’t end.
What a waste of three hours.
Sat, October 26, 2024
Have you ever been in a bar or restaurant and overheard two people who clearly don’t have any idea what they’re talking about, but they just keep talking anyway? And the dumber it gets, the louder it gets? And eventually the shrimp just isn’t that tasty anymore?
That’s what it was like listening to “The Joe Rogan Experience” Friday night, when Rogan released his much-ballyhooed interview with Donald Trump, recorded earlier in the day. It was bad, and it wouldn’t end.
What a waste of three hours.
I thought Rogan might challenge Trump, whom he has criticized before. Maybe make him defend some of his more indefensible positions, or at least try to. Every now and then he did, a little. But mostly Rogan would just bring up a topic, Trump would start talking and Rogan would let him go, unchallenged.
It's part of both Trump and Kamala Harris' efforts to use non-traditional forms of media to court voters — and to attract young male voters in particular. Trump recently held a rally at Arizona State University's Mullett Arena, for instance. It may seem like a sliver of the electorate, but in a historically close race (if you believe the polls), every little bit helps, in theory.
Trump wants to be a 'whale psychiatrist,' um, and also president
They discussed, among other things, how bull riders occasionally die, aspects of concrete and the effects of wind on whales.
“What is happening with the whales?” Rogan asked as Trump disparaged windmills, an alternative form of energy
“The wind drives whales crazy. … I want to be a whale psychiatrist.”
He also wants to be president, and he hit on several of his campaign’s greatest hits. He disparaged Harris’ intelligence, praised tariffs (“To me the most beautiful word … in the dictionary today is the word tariff. It’s more beautiful than love. It’s more beautiful than anything”) and, why not, once again falsely claimed that he won the 2020 election.
“I don’t want to get you in any disputes, but I won that election so easy,” Trump said, referring to the election he lost to President Joe Biden.
“I want to talk to you about that,” Rogan said, which, in this conversation, amounted to pushback. He did ask Trump why none of his claims of election fraud held up in court, but Trump just fell back on the usual complaints about a bad court system.
'This show is too valuable to talk about concrete' and yet
Perhaps the best quote from the entire thing, from Trump: “This show is too valuable to talk about concrete.”
I’m not sure that’s true.
Honestly, it’s kind of hard to describe what it was really like, slogging through the whole thing, just a marathon of mediocrity. Imagine a Trump rally, only if Trump was more energetic than he has been lately, with someone onstage echoing him. Even if Rogan asked Trump to explain himself, however gently, he didn't stay with it too long.
Trump told Rogan at one point forest fires could be prevented if they just raked the forest floor.
“Could you really rake the whole forest though?” Rogan asked. “I don't think you could rake the whole forest.”
And that’s the kind of tough questioning that gets you nearly 15 million listeners on Spotify alone.
Trump and Rogan seemed delighted with each other
The two seemed delighted with each other’s company, just a couple of bros talking trash between compliments and praise for MMA fighting. Just two people who cut from the same reality-show cloth, where they found big audiences and somehow became important.
“Did you just assume that because people loved you on ‘The Apprentice’ they were going to love you as a president?” Rogan asked at one point.
“Well, I was thinking it would be so easy,” Trump said.
“Well it probably would have been if the media didn’t attack you the way they did, if they didn’t conflate you with Hitler. … They love to take things out of context and distort things,” Rogan said.
“They don’t even have to,” Trump said. “They make them up entirely.”
“They do that, too,” Rogan said.
And so it went.
Another hard-hitting question from Rogan: “How are you so healthy? Is it golf?”
“No,” Trump said, “it’s genetics, I believe.” Of course he does.
Opinion: Trump's rhetoric empowered haters
They didn't cut through the noise. They amplified it
Somewhere someone is listening to this podcast and saying, finally. Just a couple of guys with some real talk. Except that it wasn’t. It was two guys surprisingly sympathetic to one another in a three-hour marathon meeting of the mutual appreciation society.
They didn’t cut through the noise. They amplified it. Rogan said at one point that while Harris has said she won’t appear on his show, he hopes she still will. It would be interesting from the standpoint of comparing how he talks to her and how he talked to Trump.
Interesting from the listener’s point of view, at least. From her perspective, why bother?
Reach Goodykoontz at bill.goodykoontz@arizonarepublic.com. Facebook: facebook.com/GoodyOnFilm. X: @goodyk. Subscribe to the weekly movies newsletter.
This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Opinion: Donald Trump's Joe Rogan interview? Don't bother
Hilary Hanson
Sat, October 26, 2024
Podcaster Joe Rogan pressed former President Donald Trump on Friday about his false claims that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from him.
“You’ve said over and over again that you were robbed in 2020,” said Rogan, who hosts the popular and controversial “Joe Rogan Experience.”
“How do you think you were robbed?” he continued.
Trump tried to pivot.
“Well, what I’d rather do is, we’ll do it another time,” said the Republican, who’s now seeking to retake the White House. “And I would bring in papers that you would not believe. So many different papers. That election was so crooked. It was the most crooked election.”
Rogan tried to extract more specifics:
Rogan: OK, but give me some examples of how.
Trump: Well, let’s start on the top and the easy ones. They were supposed to get legislative approval to do the things they did, and they didn’t get it. In many cases, they didn’t get it.
Rogan: What things?
Trump: Anything.
Rogan: Legislative approval of?
Trump: Like for extensions of the voting, for voting earlier, for this — all different things. By law, they had to get legislative approvals. You don’t have to go any further than that.
Trump’s claim about legislative approvals is seemingly related to an argument from some Republicans that state officials changed certain election procedures in 2020 without proper authorization. In 2021, the fact-checking site PolitiFact called this a “flawed argument” in a detailed explainer on the legal issues involved.
Speaking to Rogan, Trump went on: “If you take a look at Wisconsin, they virtually admitted that the election was rigged, robbed and stolen. They wouldn’t give access in certain areas to the ballots because the ballots weren’t signed. They weren’t originals. They were — we could go into this stuff. We could go into the ballots, or we could go into the overall.”
In 2021, a nonpartisan audit of Wisconsin’s 2020 election found that although some absentee ballots had only partial witness signatures, the vote was — in the words of a GOP leader on the state Legislature’s Audit Committee — “largely safe and secure.” Only eight ballots were missing a witness signature altogether, and only three were missing a voter signature.
“Are you going to present this ever?” Rogan asked Trump, to which the Republican responded, “Uh.”
That exchange swiftly made it into social media posts from the Democratic campaign of Trump’s 2024 rival, Vice President Kamala Harris.
“Do you think, like — ” Rogan then started to ask, before Trump cut him off.
“Let me give you just one more,” he said. Trump then asserted that controversy around a laptop owned by Democrat Joe Biden’s son ― and false speculation by intelligence officials that stories about the laptop could be Russian disinformation ― significantly swayed the 2020 election in Biden’s favor.
Rogan’s three-hour conversation with Trump delayed a Michigan rally for the Republican, leaving his supporters waiting in the cold for him to appear.
Trump pushes false election claims, 'weaves' from topics during Joe Rogan interview
LALEE IBSSA , SOO RIN KIM, KELSEY WALSH and IVAN PEREIRA
Sat 26 October 2024
Former President Donald Trump used his appearance on "The Joe Rogan Experience" to push false claims about the 2020 election, bash his opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris, and attack his former White House staff.
The episode, which went live Friday night, likely reached one of the biggest podcast audiences in the country, with over 15.7 million followers on Spotify. Trump's interview caused a three-hour delay at a planned rally in Michigan Friday night.
PHOTO: In these screen grabs from a video, Joe Rogan interviews Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump during The Joe Rogan Experience podcast, on Oct. 25, 2024. (The Joe Rogan Experience)
With just over a week to go until November's election, Trump continued to spread doubts about the election results, slammed secure voting practices, such as mail-in voting and voting machines, and doubled down on his false beliefs that he won the 2020 presidential election.
"You had old-fashioned ballot screwing," Trump told Joe Rogan, making unfounded claims about unsigned ballots and "phony votes."
Rogan compared the label of election denialist to the labeling of anti-vaxxer, with Trump railing against mail-in voting despite telling his supporters to go out and vote however they want.
PHOTO: Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump speaks during an interview on The Joe Rogan Experience podcast, on Oct. 25, 2024. (The Joe Rogan Experience )
When Rogan asked Trump why he didn't publish comprehensive evidence of alleged voter fraud in 2020, the former president got combative, falsely claiming he did and argued he lost the election because judges "didn't have what it took."
When Rogan brought up Democrats and Harris labeling him a fascist, Trump shot back.
"Kamala is a very low IQ person. She's a very low IQ," the former president said.
Trump, who has come under fire after former Chief of Staff John Kelly said in interviews that Trump praised Nazi generals, told Rogan he had an affinity for Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee. "He took a war that should have been over in a few days, and it was, you know, years of hell of vicious war," Trump said.
MORE: Election officials, concerned about misinformation, confront Elon Musk on his own turf
The unedited episode was more of a conversation than an interview as Rogan asked Trump to reminisce on his political arch and let him ramble about various topics from the environment to the economy to health care.
However, in the freeform format, even Rogan got lost at times.
"Your weave is getting wide. I wanna get back to tariffs," Rogan said at one point.
Trump referenced his style of talking at a rally in August, calling it "the weave."
"I'll talk about like, nine different things and they all come back brilliantly together," he said at the time.
PHOTO: Joe Rogan interviews Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump on The Joe Rogan Experience podcast, on Oct. 25, 2024. (The Joe Rogan Experience)
On the Rogan podcast, Trump defended his own age and cognitive acuity while attacking President Joe Biden's cognitive ability.
"Biden gives people a bad name because that's not an old – that's not an age. I think they say it because I'm three or four years younger, you know? I think that's why they say it. They say his age. It's not his age. He's got a problem," Trump said.
MORE: How Trump has undermined public trust in election system leading up to 2024 race
While talking about the first presidential debate between Trump and Biden, Rogan floated a disproven conspiracy theory that Democrats wanted the debate to happen earlier than usual to get Biden out of the race.
Trump acknowledged it but disagreed, saying, "I don't think anybody thought he was going to get out," referring to Biden.
PHOTO: Republican presidential nominee, former President Donald Trump, arrives for a campaign rally at Avflight at Cherry Capital Airport on Oct. 25, 2024, in Traverse City, Michigan. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
Toward the end of the podcast, Rogan asked Trump about extraterrestrial life and if Trump believed in aliens to which the former president went on to say there may be life on Mars.
"Mars, we've had probes there and rovers, and I don't think there's any life there," Rogan pushed back.
"Maybe it's life that we don't know about," Trump retorted.
Trump pushes false election claims, 'weaves' from topics during Joe Rogan interview originally appeared on abcnews.go.com
Fact check: 32 false claims Trump made to Joe Rogan
Daniel Dale, CNN
Sun 27 October 2024
Donald Trump sat down Friday with prominent podcast host Joe Rogan for a conversational interview that ran for nearly three hours — and the former president delivered his standard bombardment of false claims, at least 32 in all.
Many of those false claims are lies that were debunked months or even years ago. The claims spanned a variety of topics, including immigration policy, environmental and energy policy, the legitimacy of the 2020 election, Trump’s record in office, Vice President Kamala Harris, crowd sizes, and how schools deal with transgender children.
Here is a fact check of 32 false claims Trump made to Rogan. This is not intended as a complete list of the inaccurate statements Trump uttered in the interview; with just over a week to go until Election Day, we were unable to look into every dubious assertion he made.
Immigration
Migrants and murderers: Trump repeated his frequent false claim that “we had 13,099 murderers dropped in our country over the last three years.” In reality, as the Department of Homeland Security and independent experts have noted, that official figure is about immigrants with homicide convictions in the US today who entered the country over decades, including during Trump’s own administration, not over the past three years or under the Biden administration. You can read more here.
Trump’s border wall: The former president falsely claimed, “You know, I built 570 miles of wall.” That’s a significant exaggeration; official government data shows 458 miles were built under Trump — including both wall built where no barriers had existed before and wall built to replace previous barriers.
Harris’ border role: Trump repeated a regular false claim about Harris: “She was in charge of the border.” She was not and is not; Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas is the Biden administration official in charge of border security. In reality, President Joe Biden gave Harris a more limited immigration-related assignment in 2021, asking her to lead diplomacy with El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras in an attempt to address the conditions that prompted their citizens to try to migrate to the United States.
The number of migrants: Trump claimed that at least “21 million” people have illegally crossed the border during the Biden administration. Through September, the country had recorded under 11 million nationwide “encounters” with migrants during the Biden administration, including millions who were rapidly expelled from the country; even adding in so-called gotaways who evaded detection, estimated by House Republicans as being roughly 2 million, there’s no way the total is “21 million.”
Elections, campaigns and crowds
The outcome of the 2020 election: Trump repeated his lie that he won the 2020 election, falsely claiming, “I won that second election so easy.” He lost, fair and square, to Biden, who beat Trump 306-232 in the Electoral College and earned over 7 million more votes than Trump.
The legitimacy of the 2020 election: Trump made various specific false assertions about the 2020 election, claiming it was “crooked”; that his opponents cheated using the guise of the Covid-19 pandemic; and, vaguely, that it was marred by “old-fashioned ballot-screwing.” All of this is baseless.
Polling in 2016: Trump told a story about how, he said, a Washington Post/ABC News poll of Wisconsin during his 2016 race against Hillary Clinton showed him “down 17 points the day before the election,” but he knew it was wrong because of the size of his crowds, and he ended up winning the state: “I was down 17 points in Wisconsin and I won; it’s crooked stuff.” This story is false; the poll showing him down 17 the week of the election came during his 2020 race against Biden, and he lost Wisconsin that year — though by less than one percentage point.
The 2020 election and Wisconsin: Trump falsely claimed, “If you take a look at Wisconsin, they virtually admitted that the election was rigged, robbed and stolen.” This did not happen, “virtually” or otherwise; while some Wisconsin Republicans certainly support Trump’s claim that the election was rigged and stolen, the state’s elections authorities have not made such assertions — and as PolitiFact previously reported, even Republican-led election reviews did not find that Trump won the state.
An election ruling in Virginia: Trump falsely claimed that, just before he walked in for the Friday interview, there was a ruling in a legal “case where they found thousands of illegal ballots.” This case did not involve “illegal ballots”; rather, a judge ruled that Virginia had purged voter registrations from its rolls too close to Election Day. You can read more here.
Grocery stores and identification: Calling for strict voter identification laws, Trump spoke of how identification is required in other circumstances, saying, “When you go to a grocery store, you give ID.” This was a little vaguer than his previous declarations that “you need” ID to buy groceries, but it’s nonsense nonetheless; few grocery shoppers are required to provide identification unless they are paying by check or buying alcohol, tobacco or certain medications.
A Carter commission and mail-in ballots: Trump repeated his false claim that a commission led by former President Jimmy Carter published a report whose “primary finding was you cannot have mail-in ballots.” Trump added, “The one thing with Jimmy Carter: He had a very strong commission. It was, no mail-in ballots.”
Though the commission Carter co-chaired was generally skeptical of mail-in ballots, calling absentee voting “the largest source of potential voter fraud,” it did not say, “You cannot have mail-in ballots,” as Trump claimed. In fact, its report highlighted an example of successful mail-only elections — noting that Oregon, a state that has been conducting elections by mail-in voting since the late 1990s, “appears to have avoided significant fraud in its vote-by-mail elections by introducing safeguards to protect ballot integrity, including signature verification.”
The report also offered some recommendations for making the use of mail-in ballots more secure and called for “further research on the pros and cons” of voting by mail (as well as early voting).
Trump’s Las Vegas crowd size: In his latest exaggeration about crowd sizes, Trump claimed there were “29,000 people” at his event the night prior. His rally Thursday night, in Las Vegas, was at an arena with a capacity under 19,000.
Trump’s McDonald’s crowd size: Trump falsely claimed that there were “28,000 people sitting around” the McDonald’s in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, where he held a publicity event last weekend in which he briefly performed some of the duties of an employee (the restaurant was closed to the public). This is fiction; while videos show there was a substantial pro-Trump crowd gathered in the vicinity of the restaurant, it is obvious that it didn’t approach 28,000. A local journalist on the scene, Tom Sofield, the publisher of Bucks County news outlets, wrote on social media Tuesday: “There were several thousand excited supporters nearby, but the figure wasn’t 25,000, as stated by the former president later.”
Harris’ schedule: Trump, criticizing Harris’ work ethic, falsely claimed she “took off yesterday” and “took off the day before,” and also that “she’s going to take off tomorrow or the next day.” Trump is entitled to argue that Harris isn’t campaigning hard, but she was not “off” or scheduled to be off any of these days. On Wednesday, she participated in a CNN town hall in Pennsylvania; on Thursday, she held a rally in Georgia; on Friday, she held a rally in Texas; on Saturday, she held a rally in Michigan; on Sunday, she is scheduled to make a series of campaign stops in Philadelphia.
Foreign policy
Trump and ISIS: Repeating one of his regular false claims, Trump said, “We defeated ISIS in record time. It was supposed to take years, and we did it in a matter of weeks.” The ISIS “caliphate” was declared fully liberated more than two years into Trump’s presidency.
Obama and Kim Jong Un: Trump, touting his relationship with Kim Jong Un, revived his old false claim that the North Korean leader refused to meet with Barack Obama when the then-president sought a meeting: “They wouldn’t meet Obama. He (Obama) tried to meet. They wouldn’t even talk to him about it.”
There is no evidence that Obama ever sought a meeting with Kim. Independent experts on North Korea and former Obama officials told CNN in 2019 that the claim is fictional.
Who pays tariffs: Trump repeated his frequent false claim that, through tariffs, “I took in hundreds of billions of dollars from China.” US importers make the tariff payments, not China, and study after study has found that Americans bore the overwhelming majority of the cost of Trump’s tariffs on China.
Previous presidents and tariffs on China: Trump repeated his frequent false claim that no previous president had imposed tariffs on Chinese imports, saying, “Nobody took in 10 cents, not one other president.” The US was actually generating billions per year in revenue from tariffs on Chinese imports before Trump took office; in fact, the US has had tariffs on Chinese imports since 1789. Trump’s predecessor, Obama, imposed additional tariffs on Chinese goods.
China and Taiwan: Trump repeated an exaggeration about China: “The day I left, they flew 28 bombers over the middle of Taiwan — 28 bombers.”
Trump was wrong about key details of this incident. On the third and fourth days of the Biden presidency, not the day Trump left office, China sent military planes into Taiwan’s air defense identification zone over the Taiwan Strait — not “over the middle of Taiwan,” a major difference. Also, the incident involved 28 Chinese planes but not “28 bombers.” The New York Times reported at the time that the Taiwanese military said eight Chinese bombers were involved; the other planes were fighters, anti-submarine aircraft and a reconnaissance plane.
And it’s worth noting that China also sent planes into Taiwan’s air defense identification zone during Trump’s presidency. In early 2021, Taiwan News reported that, according to a recent report funded by Taiwan’s government, “In 2020, the Chinese military violated Taiwan’s air defense identification zone (ADIZ) more times than in any year since 1996.”
Environment and energy
Global warming and sea level rise: Trump repeated a regular false claim minimizing the threat of climate change: “I watch these poor fools talking about, ‘Our oceans will rise one-eighth of an inch over the next 500 years.’” The global average sea level is rising more per year than Trump claimed that unnamed concerned people say it will rise over 500 years; NASA reported in March that the global average sea-level rise in 2023 was 0.17 inches per year, more than double the rate in 1993.
Electric vehicle charging stations: Trump falsely claimed that the Biden administration spent $9 billion on just eight electric vehicle charging stations: “They built the charger stations, right, in the Midwest. They built eight of them. They cost $9 billion.”
As FactCheck.org and others have noted, Trump was distorting news articles about the slow pace at which $7.5 billion in federal funds allocated for electric charging have been spent. The articles reported that, as of March, only eight charging stations had been built under the program (not all in the Midwest). The articles did not say that these stations had themselves cost the entire $7.5 billion, let alone $9 billion.
The number of charging stations built with this federal funding has increased since March. The Federal Highway Administration told USA Today that, as of October 11, 20 stations had been built with the money, with plans underway for more than 800 additional stations.
California and electricity: Trump, reviving his false claim about the stability of the electric system in California, said, “They want to go to all electric cars, but they have brownouts every weekend.” California does not have “brownouts every weekend.” A spokesperson for Gov. Gavin Newsom told CNN in late August that the state had not had any outages because of electricity demand since 2020, and a spokesperson for the entity that manages the power grid for about 80% of the state said the same.
A LNG plant in Louisiana: Trump revived a false claim he repeatedly made during his presidency, claiming that he “instantly” secured a key environmental permit to allow for the construction of a massive liquefied natural gas facility in Louisiana after the initiative had been on hold “for 14 years.” In fact, this facility was granted its key permits under the Obama administration, and its construction also began under Obama.
Drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve: Trump repeated his false claim that before the Biden administration suspended oil and gas leases in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in 2021, “They were getting ready to start drilling. … It was all set to go.”
“To quote our friends at PolitiFact, what Trump said in this case qualifies as ‘pants on fire,’” Pavel Molchanov, an energy analyst at Raymond James & Associates, said last year after Trump made the same claim. Molchanov said, “No one was ready to start drilling there, in 2017 or at any other point in time.”
There is no drilling infrastructure in place in the refuge; major oil companies have shown little interest in the site; and the seven leases the Biden administration eventually canceled were all held by the Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority, a state entity that is not an oil company.
Trump’s record and history
Trump’s response to “lock her up” chants: Trump repeated his false claim that he “never said” the words “lock her up” when his supporters chanted that refrain about his 2016 Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton. He added, “I’d always go, ‘Take it easy. Just relax.’” In fact, Trump repeatedly said the words “lock her up” in both 2016 and 2020, and he also repeatedly called for Clinton’s imprisonment using other language.
Trump and Oprah: Trump repeated a false claim he has been making for at least 11 years, saying he appeared on Oprah Winfrey’s popular television program during “one of her last shows” in “that final week.” In fact, Trump appeared about three and a half months before Winfrey’s show concluded, not during its star-studded final week.
Trump’s tax cuts: Repeating another regular false claim, the former president claimed that he signed the “biggest tax cuts in history.” Independent analyses have found that his tax-cut law was not the biggest in history, either in percentage of gross domestic product or in inflation-adjusted dollars.
Supreme Court appointments: Trump touted the fact that he appointed three Supreme Court justices, then said, “Most people get none,” adding that “even if a president is in there for eight years, oftentimes they never have a chance.” This is false; no president who served for eight years did not get a chance to appoint a single Supreme Court justice. Only four presidents didn’t get a chance to appoint one justice to the Supreme Court, as PolitiFact previously reported, and three of them served for less than a full four-year term, while the other, Carter, served for four years.
Trump’s uncle and MIT: Trump repeated a false claim that his uncle John Trump, whom he has repeatedly invoked as evidence of the smarts of his family, was the “longest-serving” professor in the history of the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology. John Trump was one of the longest-serving professors at MIT, but not the very longest; the school told Newsweek early this year that at least 10 other people were on the faculty for longer.
Miscellaneous
Schools and transgender children: Trump repeated his false claim that schools are sending children for gender-affirming surgeries without parental consent: “Who would want to have — there’s so many — the transgender operations: Where they’re allowed to take your child when he goes to school and turn him into a male — to a female — without parental consent.”
There is no evidence that schools in any part of the United States have sent children for gender-affirming surgeries without their parents’ approval, or performed unapproved such surgeries on-site; none of that is “allowed” anywhere in the country. Even in the states where gender-affirming surgery is legal for people under age 18, parental consent is required before a minor can undergo such a procedure.
Trump’s own campaign has not been able to find a single example of this ever having happened anywhere in the United States. You can read more here.
Alyssa Farah Griffin: Trump told a thoroughly false story about a former official in his administration, Alyssa Farah Griffin, who is now a co-host of the ABC talk show “The View” and a political commentator on CNN. Trump claimed Griffin worked in the administration as “like an assistant press secretary”; that, upon leaving the administration, she “writes me this gorgeous letter,” “the most beautiful letter,” declaring “he was the greatest president”; but then, upon joining “The View,” that she suddenly started “hitting the hell out of me” with criticism.
This is untrue in several ways.
Griffin had the top-tier role of White House communications director and assistant to the president upon her resignation in late 2020, not “assistant press secretary” (she had previously been Pentagon press secretary and Vice President Mike Pence’s press secretary).
Griffin did issue a statement upon her resignation saying, “It’s been the honor of a lifetime to serve in the Trump administration over the last three and a half years,” but did not say that Trump was “the greatest president.” She said Saturday that she has never written Trump a private letter.
And she began sharply criticizing Trump shortly after the riot at the Capitol on January 6, 2021, not when she started guest-hosting “The View” in October 2021 or when she was named a permanent co-host in August 2022.
Abraham Lincoln’s sons: Trump told a story about how President Abraham Lincoln was a “very depressed” person in part because he lost his son “whose name was Tad.” Trump repeated later in the story that Lincoln lost his son “Tad.” In fact, Tad Lincoln outlived Abraham Lincoln by six years; the son Abraham Lincoln lost in 1862 was Willie. (This appeared to be an inadvertent mistake by Trump, but his claim was still inaccurate, and Trump has repeatedly bashed Biden over such mix-ups.)
Daniel Dale, CNN
Sun 27 October 2024
Donald Trump sat down Friday with prominent podcast host Joe Rogan for a conversational interview that ran for nearly three hours — and the former president delivered his standard bombardment of false claims, at least 32 in all.
Many of those false claims are lies that were debunked months or even years ago. The claims spanned a variety of topics, including immigration policy, environmental and energy policy, the legitimacy of the 2020 election, Trump’s record in office, Vice President Kamala Harris, crowd sizes, and how schools deal with transgender children.
Here is a fact check of 32 false claims Trump made to Rogan. This is not intended as a complete list of the inaccurate statements Trump uttered in the interview; with just over a week to go until Election Day, we were unable to look into every dubious assertion he made.
Immigration
Migrants and murderers: Trump repeated his frequent false claim that “we had 13,099 murderers dropped in our country over the last three years.” In reality, as the Department of Homeland Security and independent experts have noted, that official figure is about immigrants with homicide convictions in the US today who entered the country over decades, including during Trump’s own administration, not over the past three years or under the Biden administration. You can read more here.
Trump’s border wall: The former president falsely claimed, “You know, I built 570 miles of wall.” That’s a significant exaggeration; official government data shows 458 miles were built under Trump — including both wall built where no barriers had existed before and wall built to replace previous barriers.
Harris’ border role: Trump repeated a regular false claim about Harris: “She was in charge of the border.” She was not and is not; Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas is the Biden administration official in charge of border security. In reality, President Joe Biden gave Harris a more limited immigration-related assignment in 2021, asking her to lead diplomacy with El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras in an attempt to address the conditions that prompted their citizens to try to migrate to the United States.
The number of migrants: Trump claimed that at least “21 million” people have illegally crossed the border during the Biden administration. Through September, the country had recorded under 11 million nationwide “encounters” with migrants during the Biden administration, including millions who were rapidly expelled from the country; even adding in so-called gotaways who evaded detection, estimated by House Republicans as being roughly 2 million, there’s no way the total is “21 million.”
Elections, campaigns and crowds
The outcome of the 2020 election: Trump repeated his lie that he won the 2020 election, falsely claiming, “I won that second election so easy.” He lost, fair and square, to Biden, who beat Trump 306-232 in the Electoral College and earned over 7 million more votes than Trump.
The legitimacy of the 2020 election: Trump made various specific false assertions about the 2020 election, claiming it was “crooked”; that his opponents cheated using the guise of the Covid-19 pandemic; and, vaguely, that it was marred by “old-fashioned ballot-screwing.” All of this is baseless.
Polling in 2016: Trump told a story about how, he said, a Washington Post/ABC News poll of Wisconsin during his 2016 race against Hillary Clinton showed him “down 17 points the day before the election,” but he knew it was wrong because of the size of his crowds, and he ended up winning the state: “I was down 17 points in Wisconsin and I won; it’s crooked stuff.” This story is false; the poll showing him down 17 the week of the election came during his 2020 race against Biden, and he lost Wisconsin that year — though by less than one percentage point.
The 2020 election and Wisconsin: Trump falsely claimed, “If you take a look at Wisconsin, they virtually admitted that the election was rigged, robbed and stolen.” This did not happen, “virtually” or otherwise; while some Wisconsin Republicans certainly support Trump’s claim that the election was rigged and stolen, the state’s elections authorities have not made such assertions — and as PolitiFact previously reported, even Republican-led election reviews did not find that Trump won the state.
An election ruling in Virginia: Trump falsely claimed that, just before he walked in for the Friday interview, there was a ruling in a legal “case where they found thousands of illegal ballots.” This case did not involve “illegal ballots”; rather, a judge ruled that Virginia had purged voter registrations from its rolls too close to Election Day. You can read more here.
Grocery stores and identification: Calling for strict voter identification laws, Trump spoke of how identification is required in other circumstances, saying, “When you go to a grocery store, you give ID.” This was a little vaguer than his previous declarations that “you need” ID to buy groceries, but it’s nonsense nonetheless; few grocery shoppers are required to provide identification unless they are paying by check or buying alcohol, tobacco or certain medications.
A Carter commission and mail-in ballots: Trump repeated his false claim that a commission led by former President Jimmy Carter published a report whose “primary finding was you cannot have mail-in ballots.” Trump added, “The one thing with Jimmy Carter: He had a very strong commission. It was, no mail-in ballots.”
Though the commission Carter co-chaired was generally skeptical of mail-in ballots, calling absentee voting “the largest source of potential voter fraud,” it did not say, “You cannot have mail-in ballots,” as Trump claimed. In fact, its report highlighted an example of successful mail-only elections — noting that Oregon, a state that has been conducting elections by mail-in voting since the late 1990s, “appears to have avoided significant fraud in its vote-by-mail elections by introducing safeguards to protect ballot integrity, including signature verification.”
The report also offered some recommendations for making the use of mail-in ballots more secure and called for “further research on the pros and cons” of voting by mail (as well as early voting).
Trump’s Las Vegas crowd size: In his latest exaggeration about crowd sizes, Trump claimed there were “29,000 people” at his event the night prior. His rally Thursday night, in Las Vegas, was at an arena with a capacity under 19,000.
Trump’s McDonald’s crowd size: Trump falsely claimed that there were “28,000 people sitting around” the McDonald’s in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, where he held a publicity event last weekend in which he briefly performed some of the duties of an employee (the restaurant was closed to the public). This is fiction; while videos show there was a substantial pro-Trump crowd gathered in the vicinity of the restaurant, it is obvious that it didn’t approach 28,000. A local journalist on the scene, Tom Sofield, the publisher of Bucks County news outlets, wrote on social media Tuesday: “There were several thousand excited supporters nearby, but the figure wasn’t 25,000, as stated by the former president later.”
Harris’ schedule: Trump, criticizing Harris’ work ethic, falsely claimed she “took off yesterday” and “took off the day before,” and also that “she’s going to take off tomorrow or the next day.” Trump is entitled to argue that Harris isn’t campaigning hard, but she was not “off” or scheduled to be off any of these days. On Wednesday, she participated in a CNN town hall in Pennsylvania; on Thursday, she held a rally in Georgia; on Friday, she held a rally in Texas; on Saturday, she held a rally in Michigan; on Sunday, she is scheduled to make a series of campaign stops in Philadelphia.
Foreign policy
Trump and ISIS: Repeating one of his regular false claims, Trump said, “We defeated ISIS in record time. It was supposed to take years, and we did it in a matter of weeks.” The ISIS “caliphate” was declared fully liberated more than two years into Trump’s presidency.
Obama and Kim Jong Un: Trump, touting his relationship with Kim Jong Un, revived his old false claim that the North Korean leader refused to meet with Barack Obama when the then-president sought a meeting: “They wouldn’t meet Obama. He (Obama) tried to meet. They wouldn’t even talk to him about it.”
There is no evidence that Obama ever sought a meeting with Kim. Independent experts on North Korea and former Obama officials told CNN in 2019 that the claim is fictional.
Who pays tariffs: Trump repeated his frequent false claim that, through tariffs, “I took in hundreds of billions of dollars from China.” US importers make the tariff payments, not China, and study after study has found that Americans bore the overwhelming majority of the cost of Trump’s tariffs on China.
Previous presidents and tariffs on China: Trump repeated his frequent false claim that no previous president had imposed tariffs on Chinese imports, saying, “Nobody took in 10 cents, not one other president.” The US was actually generating billions per year in revenue from tariffs on Chinese imports before Trump took office; in fact, the US has had tariffs on Chinese imports since 1789. Trump’s predecessor, Obama, imposed additional tariffs on Chinese goods.
China and Taiwan: Trump repeated an exaggeration about China: “The day I left, they flew 28 bombers over the middle of Taiwan — 28 bombers.”
Trump was wrong about key details of this incident. On the third and fourth days of the Biden presidency, not the day Trump left office, China sent military planes into Taiwan’s air defense identification zone over the Taiwan Strait — not “over the middle of Taiwan,” a major difference. Also, the incident involved 28 Chinese planes but not “28 bombers.” The New York Times reported at the time that the Taiwanese military said eight Chinese bombers were involved; the other planes were fighters, anti-submarine aircraft and a reconnaissance plane.
And it’s worth noting that China also sent planes into Taiwan’s air defense identification zone during Trump’s presidency. In early 2021, Taiwan News reported that, according to a recent report funded by Taiwan’s government, “In 2020, the Chinese military violated Taiwan’s air defense identification zone (ADIZ) more times than in any year since 1996.”
Environment and energy
Global warming and sea level rise: Trump repeated a regular false claim minimizing the threat of climate change: “I watch these poor fools talking about, ‘Our oceans will rise one-eighth of an inch over the next 500 years.’” The global average sea level is rising more per year than Trump claimed that unnamed concerned people say it will rise over 500 years; NASA reported in March that the global average sea-level rise in 2023 was 0.17 inches per year, more than double the rate in 1993.
Electric vehicle charging stations: Trump falsely claimed that the Biden administration spent $9 billion on just eight electric vehicle charging stations: “They built the charger stations, right, in the Midwest. They built eight of them. They cost $9 billion.”
As FactCheck.org and others have noted, Trump was distorting news articles about the slow pace at which $7.5 billion in federal funds allocated for electric charging have been spent. The articles reported that, as of March, only eight charging stations had been built under the program (not all in the Midwest). The articles did not say that these stations had themselves cost the entire $7.5 billion, let alone $9 billion.
The number of charging stations built with this federal funding has increased since March. The Federal Highway Administration told USA Today that, as of October 11, 20 stations had been built with the money, with plans underway for more than 800 additional stations.
California and electricity: Trump, reviving his false claim about the stability of the electric system in California, said, “They want to go to all electric cars, but they have brownouts every weekend.” California does not have “brownouts every weekend.” A spokesperson for Gov. Gavin Newsom told CNN in late August that the state had not had any outages because of electricity demand since 2020, and a spokesperson for the entity that manages the power grid for about 80% of the state said the same.
A LNG plant in Louisiana: Trump revived a false claim he repeatedly made during his presidency, claiming that he “instantly” secured a key environmental permit to allow for the construction of a massive liquefied natural gas facility in Louisiana after the initiative had been on hold “for 14 years.” In fact, this facility was granted its key permits under the Obama administration, and its construction also began under Obama.
Drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve: Trump repeated his false claim that before the Biden administration suspended oil and gas leases in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in 2021, “They were getting ready to start drilling. … It was all set to go.”
“To quote our friends at PolitiFact, what Trump said in this case qualifies as ‘pants on fire,’” Pavel Molchanov, an energy analyst at Raymond James & Associates, said last year after Trump made the same claim. Molchanov said, “No one was ready to start drilling there, in 2017 or at any other point in time.”
There is no drilling infrastructure in place in the refuge; major oil companies have shown little interest in the site; and the seven leases the Biden administration eventually canceled were all held by the Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority, a state entity that is not an oil company.
Trump’s record and history
Trump’s response to “lock her up” chants: Trump repeated his false claim that he “never said” the words “lock her up” when his supporters chanted that refrain about his 2016 Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton. He added, “I’d always go, ‘Take it easy. Just relax.’” In fact, Trump repeatedly said the words “lock her up” in both 2016 and 2020, and he also repeatedly called for Clinton’s imprisonment using other language.
Trump and Oprah: Trump repeated a false claim he has been making for at least 11 years, saying he appeared on Oprah Winfrey’s popular television program during “one of her last shows” in “that final week.” In fact, Trump appeared about three and a half months before Winfrey’s show concluded, not during its star-studded final week.
Trump’s tax cuts: Repeating another regular false claim, the former president claimed that he signed the “biggest tax cuts in history.” Independent analyses have found that his tax-cut law was not the biggest in history, either in percentage of gross domestic product or in inflation-adjusted dollars.
Supreme Court appointments: Trump touted the fact that he appointed three Supreme Court justices, then said, “Most people get none,” adding that “even if a president is in there for eight years, oftentimes they never have a chance.” This is false; no president who served for eight years did not get a chance to appoint a single Supreme Court justice. Only four presidents didn’t get a chance to appoint one justice to the Supreme Court, as PolitiFact previously reported, and three of them served for less than a full four-year term, while the other, Carter, served for four years.
Trump’s uncle and MIT: Trump repeated a false claim that his uncle John Trump, whom he has repeatedly invoked as evidence of the smarts of his family, was the “longest-serving” professor in the history of the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology. John Trump was one of the longest-serving professors at MIT, but not the very longest; the school told Newsweek early this year that at least 10 other people were on the faculty for longer.
Miscellaneous
Schools and transgender children: Trump repeated his false claim that schools are sending children for gender-affirming surgeries without parental consent: “Who would want to have — there’s so many — the transgender operations: Where they’re allowed to take your child when he goes to school and turn him into a male — to a female — without parental consent.”
There is no evidence that schools in any part of the United States have sent children for gender-affirming surgeries without their parents’ approval, or performed unapproved such surgeries on-site; none of that is “allowed” anywhere in the country. Even in the states where gender-affirming surgery is legal for people under age 18, parental consent is required before a minor can undergo such a procedure.
Trump’s own campaign has not been able to find a single example of this ever having happened anywhere in the United States. You can read more here.
Alyssa Farah Griffin: Trump told a thoroughly false story about a former official in his administration, Alyssa Farah Griffin, who is now a co-host of the ABC talk show “The View” and a political commentator on CNN. Trump claimed Griffin worked in the administration as “like an assistant press secretary”; that, upon leaving the administration, she “writes me this gorgeous letter,” “the most beautiful letter,” declaring “he was the greatest president”; but then, upon joining “The View,” that she suddenly started “hitting the hell out of me” with criticism.
This is untrue in several ways.
Griffin had the top-tier role of White House communications director and assistant to the president upon her resignation in late 2020, not “assistant press secretary” (she had previously been Pentagon press secretary and Vice President Mike Pence’s press secretary).
Griffin did issue a statement upon her resignation saying, “It’s been the honor of a lifetime to serve in the Trump administration over the last three and a half years,” but did not say that Trump was “the greatest president.” She said Saturday that she has never written Trump a private letter.
And she began sharply criticizing Trump shortly after the riot at the Capitol on January 6, 2021, not when she started guest-hosting “The View” in October 2021 or when she was named a permanent co-host in August 2022.
Abraham Lincoln’s sons: Trump told a story about how President Abraham Lincoln was a “very depressed” person in part because he lost his son “whose name was Tad.” Trump repeated later in the story that Lincoln lost his son “Tad.” In fact, Tad Lincoln outlived Abraham Lincoln by six years; the son Abraham Lincoln lost in 1862 was Willie. (This appeared to be an inadvertent mistake by Trump, but his claim was still inaccurate, and Trump has repeatedly bashed Biden over such mix-ups.)
