Steve Cortes, former senior spokesman and strategist for the 2016 and 2020 Trump campaigns and current head of the League of American Workers, called former President Donald Trump’s three-hour long interview with podcaster Joe Rogan on Friday a “home run.”
Noting how Trump’s mental and physical stamina was on full display during the interview, which has since been viewed 37 million times on YouTube since Friday, Cortes commented on the former president’s sharpness while being “put to the test” by Rogan.
“You saw the character and the mind of Donald Trump for three hours. You also saw the stamina, the physical and mental stamina, of this man who belies his chronological age and that I think also is very important. So just on many levels I think this was a home run,” Cortes explained on Monday’s edition of The Michael Patrick Leahy Show.
Cortes went on to explain how Rogan is “not MAGA,” further pointing out how the environment required Trump to engage in “heady intellectual” conversations.
“Joe Rogan is not MAGA. If we sat down with him, we would disagree on a heck of a lot, particularly when it comes to social policy. So he is not a right winger. I would describe him as an old school liberal. There aren’t very many of them around, an old school Democrat, but this is somebody who is sensible, thoughtful, provocative and interesting, but by no means is he a right wing podcaster, as corporate media wants to put him in that silo,” Cortes explained.
Further discussing Rogan’s political stance and the in-depth conversations he sparks on his podcast, Cortes said Vice President Kamala Harris continues to dodge sitting down with Rogan as a three-hour interview would “reveal” her too much and make her “even less likable than she already is.”
“I think if she went there and revealed herself for two or three hours, I think she would be even less likable than she already is. It’s one thing to speak in this ridiculous garbled syntax of platitudes and nonsense…That’s bad enough. It’s cringe enough. For her to try to do that for a couple of hours, for two or three hours with Joe Rogan in front of tens of millions of people who would see it, I think would do her far more harm than good,” Cortes said.
Pointing to the closeness of the race, Cortes said Trump’s performance on Friday may just be enough to “tip the balance” in the election towards his favor.
“A podcast with that kind of reach, which Joe Rogan is not just a host, he’s a network, where Trump performed incredibly well – that might tip the balance. It really might,” Cortes said.
Watch the full interview:
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Kaitlin Housler is a reporter at The Tennessee Star and The Star News Network. Follow Kaitlin on X / Twitter.
