Earlier this month, the Kamala Harris campaign promised to expand their outreach to media, and followed up with their Fox News interview that turned into a train wreck for the Democrat anointee. At the time, leakers from Team Kamala told media outlets that they wanted to negotiate an appearance on Joe Rogan's podcast as well. That has not come to pass, but Harris did appear on the sex-drenched Call Her Daddy podcast instead, which ranks right behind Rogan's show.

Donald Trump has beaten Harris to the punch. Politico reported this afternoon that Trump will make a live appearance in Rogan's studio on Friday in Austin, TX for a lengthy interview. The aim, as Alex Isenstadt points out, will be to strengthen his standing among the young men that make up most of his 14-million-plus listener audience:

The interview will take place at Rogan’s studio in Austin, Texas, according to a person familiar with the plans who was granted anonymity to discuss the matter.

Rogan, who has more than 14 million followers on Spotify, has long occupied the top positions in national podcast ratings, and Trump’s appearance on his show continues the campaign’s push to win young male voters. In recent weeks, Trump has appeared on such male-friendly podcasts as “This Week w/ Theo Vaughn” and “Full Send,” a show hosted by the pro-Trump Nelk Boys.

First off, one has to wonder what happened to the Harris plan to make an appearance, However, one does not have to wonder very long about it. After watching Harris come apart under the pressure of just normal journalistic follow-up questions, her team almost certainly understood how dangerous a Joe Rogan Experience would be. Rogan likely would have been on his best behavior, but he'd be more dogged about getting answers than Baier, and much less likely to let filibustering pass unremarked.

That set up an expectation of more risk that Harris has left unfulfilled. She will sit down with NBC News this week for a recorded interview that will run in prime time tonight, but it's not with Lester Holt. Harris famously bombed a Holt interview in June 2021 about the border crisis, a performance so bad that the White House mainly kept her away from the media until she took over for Joe Biden in July. Hallie Jackson will do the interview tonight, and then she has another with Telemundo afterward. Given her performances thus far this cycle, these also hold more risk, but nowhere near as much as an unstructured grilling from Rogan.  

That risk applies to Trump too, especially since the two have crossed swords at times in the past. For now, they seem to be on friendly terms, but that doesn't mean Rogan will toss softballs at Trump. Trump is far more experienced at adversarial media engagement than Harris is, however, thanks to his experiences over the last nine years as a three-time presidential candidate and a one-term president (thus far). No doubt Trump will say something controversial, but at this point, that's almost on-brand for Trump. 

Harris could always follow up with a Rogan appearance of her own, but now it will appear that she's chasing Trump rather than taking real risks on her own. Trump stole a march on Harris, and that imposes a price on Harris for her dithering.

Interestingly, that puts both candidates in Texas on Friday. I'll have more on that in a later post.