Aliens, North Korea, election interference: Takeaways from Trump's Rogan appearance
This story has been updated to add additional context.
Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump recorded a nearly three-hour long interview with mega-podcaster Joe Rogan on Friday, discussing everything from extraterrestrial aliens and life on Mars to election interference, and foreign policy.
With just days to go before the presidential election, Trump’s appearance on “The Joe Rogan Experience,” marks part of play by his campaign to target young, undecided male voters. Rogan’s show is Spotify’s top podcast with 14.5 million followers. More than 80% of Rogan’s listeners are male, and 56% are under age 35, according to a 2026 poll by YouGov.
Throughout the interview, Trump sought to court the key demographic with references to the Ultimate Fighting Championship, mentions of his sense of humor, and plans to eliminate taxes.
Rogan rarely pressed Trump with tough questions about his record during the interview, and at one point told the former president: “I love this idea of you teaming up with Robert Kennedy.”
Rogan signaled support for Kennedy’s presidential campaign when he was still running as an independent. Kennedy dropped out and endorsed Trump earlier this year.
Vice President Kamala Harris was in discussions about appearing on Rogan’s podcast, but a spokesperson for her campaign said that would not be possible because of scheduling issues. Rogan told Trump that he still believes Harris might appear on the show.
Here’s a breakdown of some of the key moments and major takeaways from Trump’s lengthy conversation with Rogan.
Do aliens exist?
Rogan asked Trump whether he had been given information about extraterrestrial life while he was president. Trump said he had interviewed pilots who said they had seen strange objects while in the air.
“There's no reason not to think that Mars and all these planets don’t have life,” Trump said. Rogan pushed back slightly, arguing that the U.S. has had probes and rovers on Mars’ surface for decades. Scientists so far have not found direct evidence of life on the red planet.
“I don't think there's any life there,” Rogan said, to which Trump replied: “Well, maybe it's life that we don't know, but maybe it's a different kind of life.”
The Pentagon earlier this year released a 63-page report concluding that there was no evidence of aliens or extraterrestrial technology on Earth. The report found that there was no reason to believe the U.S. government is hiding information about aliens.
"Enemy from within" vs. Kim Jong Un
Trump repeated concerns that the “enemy from within” the country poses a more dangerous threat than foreign governments – this time talking about North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un.
“I got along great with him,” Trump told Rogan during the interview. Trump was the first president ever to step foot inside North Korea.
“I say to people, we have a bigger problem, in my opinion, with the enemy from within. And it drives them crazy when I use that term. But we have an enemy from within,” Trump later said.
Trump has previously used the phrase “enemy from within” in reference to his political opponents, including former House speaker Nancy Pelosi and Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., who is running for the Senate.
A proposal to replace income tax with tariffs
Rogan and Trump touched on several policy topics during the interview, including taxes and the environment.
In one instance, Rogan asked Trump if he was serious about his suggestion to eliminate income taxes and replace them with tariffs.
Trump responded: “Sure, why not?”
Trump has argued for returning to the period before 1909, when there was no federal income tax. On the podcast with Rogan, he praised former President William McKinley for signing a law in 1890 that increased tariffs, the tax rate on foreign goods, to roughly 49%.
Some economists credit McKinley’s tariffs with plunging the U.S. government into a deficit and depression a few years later in 1893.
Today, replacing income tax with a tariff policy could substantially increase the current federal deficit. The federal government collected just under $2.18 trillion in income taxes in 2023, accounting for roughly 49% of its total revenue. Trump’s tariffs are expected to generate around $300 billion a year – about nine times less than the revenue received from income tax.
Trump repeats 2020 election denial
Rogan at one point in the interview echoed Trump’s claims that there was a “a lot of crooked stuff,” during the 2020 presidential election. He asked Trump: “How do you think you were robbed? Everybody always cuts you off.”
At first, Trump said that he’d rather have the conversation "another time,” saying that he would bring in “so many different papers" to back up his arguments. But when pressed by Rogan for examples of election interference, Trump repeated debunked claims of wrongful acts by state governments and fraud.
Rogan questioned whether Trump planned to ever present evidence of interference, but the conversation quickly changed course into a discussion about Hunter Biden, who was convicted on three felony counts in his federal gun trial.
Trump and the podcast host later discussed unfounded concerns about vulnerabilities with mail-in voting and the security of voting machines.
“Let's talk about the potential vulnerabilities for elections and election fraud. One of them is mail-in ballots. The other one is if someone can break into voting machines,” Rogan said.
Use of mail-in voting has been on the rise since the 1980s and expanded during the COVID-19 pandemic. Voter fraud by mail is rare. All mail-in ballots are verified and counted and are linked to an eligible voter.
Voting machines have also been used for decades. Older machines have prompted concerns about hacking, though election officials say such a feat would be difficult.
Doubling down on criticism of Kelly, Bolton
Trump told Rogan that the “biggest mistake” he made during his presidency was appointing officials he “shouldn’t have picked” for roles in the White House and his cabinet.
Namely, Trump was talking about John Kelly, his former chief of staff and one-time Secretary of Homeland Security, and John Bolton, Trump’s former National Security Adviser.
He called Kelly a "bully but a weak, weak person," and said Bolton was an "idiot."
"Every time I had to deal with a country, when they saw this whack job standing behind me, they said, 'Oh man, Trump's going to go to war with us,'" Trump added of Bolton.
Kelly in interviews with the New York Times said Trump exhibited tendencies of a fascist and confirmed reports that Trump had spoken positively about Adolf Hitler. Kelly told the Times that Trump “commented more than once that, ‘You know, Hitler did some good things, too.’”
Bolton has said Trump poses “dangers” if he is elected president again.
Rogan during the interview downplayed the reports about Trump’s Hitler comments.
He told Trump: “They continually labeled you as this horrible threat to democracy and Hitler. They kept saying you're going to be a dictator, ignoring the fact that you weren't a dictator for the four years where you were actually the president.”
Trump said that he was “the opposite of a dictator.”
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Rogan, Trump talk aliens, North Korea in wide-ranging interview