By Steve Holland and James Oliphant
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump will participate in an interview on Friday with popular podcaster Joe Rogan, who has a devoted following in the tens of millions of listeners.
Two campaign officials said Trump would travel to Rogan’s studio in Austin, Texas, for the session. While they did not say how long Trump’s appearance would last, he has given recent interviews lasting 30 minutes to an hour.
The former president criticized Rogan in August on Truth Social, his social media platform, after the podcaster praised then-independent candidate Robert Kennedy Jr. Kennedy has since pulled out of the race and endorsed Trump. Trump later called Rogan a “good guy.”
Trump’s opponent in the Nov. 5 election, Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris, has been considering doing an interview with Rogan to try to expand her appeal to male voters.
Trump and Vice President Harris have been courting voters with appearances on podcasts, in addition to more traditional rallies and interviews with journalists.
Spotify said in March that “The Joe Rogan Experience” had 14.5 million followers. This was almost triple the platform’s second most popular program. Rogan also has more than 19 million followers on Instagram and 17 million followers on YouTube.
A poll by YouGov last year found that 81% of his listeners are male and 56% are under 35 years old, a demographic that tends to support Trump over Harris.
During the pandemic, Rogan drew criticism from health experts for suggesting that young people should not get the COVID-19 vaccine, and for promoting ivermectin as a treatment despite warnings from the Food and Drug Administration about it.
He later maintained that he was not an anti-vaxxer and he admitted that it “makes sense” for even young, healthy people to get vaccinated in the interests of public health.
(Reporting By Steve Holland and James Oliphant; Editing by Ross Colvin, Mark Porter and Jonathan Oatis)
