The Harris campaign decided against allowing Vice President Kamala Harris to sit for an interview with Joe Rogan over concerns that it would infuriate her radical left base, according to Jennifer Palmieri, a senior adviser to second gentleman Doug Emhoff.
The far-left often opposes platforms that encourage debate, the exchange of ideas, and the destruction of speech codes.
The campaign originally claimed Harris did not sit for the interview because of a scheduling conflict. The decision fueled skepticism that Harris could not make it through a three-hour interview given her propensity for gaffes.
“There was a backlash with some of our progressive staff that didn’t want her to be on it, and how there would be a backlash,” Palmieri said Wednesday at a conference organized by The Clearing House.
Palmieri joined the Harris campaign in August as a senior adviser to Emhoff. She had served in the Obama administration and as the director of communications for the Hillary Clinton 2016 presidential campaign.
Palmieri also claimed that the leak of Harris’s potential interview with Rogan caused a “very weird dynamic” with the podcaster, “because all of a sudden he’s on his heels about how his audience is going to react to this, and the demands that they were going to put on him to be tough on her.”
Rogan, who stated he never voted “right wing” in his life, interviewed President-Elect Donald Trump for three hours before the election. That interview garnered almost 50 million views.
Rogan later endorsed Trump the day before the election, saying Elon Musk made a “compelling case” on his show.
Wendell Husebo is a political reporter with Breitbart News and a former RNC War Room Analyst. He is the author of Politics of Slave Morality. Follow Wendell on “X” @WendellHusebø or on Truth Social @WendellHusebo.
