Joe Rogan's interview with JD Vance: 5 takeaways

Republican vice-presidential nominee JD Vance sat down with popular podcaster Joe Rogan on Wednesday for a lengthy interview discussing his initial reaction to the assassination attempt against former President Donald Trump, views on transgender rights and his favorite Netflix guilty pleasure, among a wide range of topics.

Rogan hosts the most listened to podcast on Spotify, “The Joe Rogan Experience,” with roughly 14.5 million followers. His audience is predominantly composed of young men – a key voting demographic Trump and Vance are trying to turn out to vote in the 2024 election.

Vance’s appearance on the show comes less than a week before the contentious 2024 election and just days after Rogan spoke with Trump about everything from aliens to election interference.

Rogan often signaled agreement with Vance throughout the more than three-hour-long friendly conversation, and on several occasions questioned Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris’ fitness for office.

More: From Joe Rogan to Greg Gutfeld, conservative comedy’s influence grows

Vance frequently discussed his wife and two daughters throughout the show and at one point he described himself as a “pretty boring guy.” Along with in-depth policy discussions, Vance also gave insight into his personal life and said he believes the show ‘Emily in Paris’ on Netflix is “a masterpiece.”

Here’s are key moments from the podcast episode.

Anti-trans rhetoric

Rogan and Vance spoke at length about transgender rights early in the conversation, specifically about gender-affirming care for minors and whether people should be allowed to play on sports teams that match their gender identity.

“I'm the father of a two-year-old daughter,” Vance said. “I don't want her going into athletic competitions where I'm terrified she's gonna get bludgeoned to death because we're allowing a six-foot one male to compete with her in sports,” Vance said.

Vance also suggested that wealthy parents might go so far as to coerce their children to undergo gender surgeries to get into better colleges and universities.

“If you are a middle-class or upper-middle class white parent, and the only thing that you care about is whether your child goes into Harvard or Yale, obviously that pathway has become a lot harder for a lot of upper-middle class kids,” he said, adding that “the one way that those people can participate in the DEI bureaucracy in this country is to be trans.”

Vance later argued that he wouldn’t be surprised if Trump won “the normal gay guy vote because again, they just wanted to be left the hell alone.”

“Now you have all this crazy stuff on top of it that they’re like, ‘No, no, we didn’t want to give pharmaceutical products to 9-year-olds who are transitioning their genders,’” Vance said.

Biden 'garbage' comments

Vance joked during the interview that he believes President Joe Biden is “trying to help” Donald Trump win the election, referring to comments Biden made earlier in the week that suggested Trump supporters were “garbage.”

Biden received blowback from Republicans and some Democrats for the comments, which the White House has said were about one supporter in particular – a comedian at a Trump rally who called Puerto Rico a “floating island of garbage.”

Vance asserted that the comment had to be an attempt to help Trump, given the criticism Biden has since received.

“After we win, I'm gonna be convinced that Joe Biden was trying to help us the whole time,” Vance said. He also referenced a moment where Biden jokingly put on a Trump 2024 hat during a visit to Pennsylvania on 9/11.

Vance also told Rogan that he’d bet $20 that Biden was planning to vote for Trump and $100 that his son, Hunter Biden, would also back the Republican nominee over Kamala Harris.

Biden endorsed Harris after he stepped out of the 2024 race in July and has been a vocal supporter of Harris’ campaign ever since.

Climate change

During a prolonged discussion about the environment, Vance asserted that he “didn’t have a strong view about what the carbon footprint ultimately does,” appearing to waffle about whether human-caused climate change exists.

“It's interesting that the environmental movement in America, the only thing that it talks about is the carbon footprint, and it never talks about . . . why do we have the highest rates of obesity in the world right now,” Vance said.

Rogan added that it was “disturbing” that “there's also profit that's being made off the green movement,” and name-checked Bill Gates who has invested billions of dollars in climate technology solutions.

The podcaster also brought up an unproven statement from his interview with Trump: that wind-turbines, a form of clean energy, are negatively affecting and even killing whales. There is no evidence to support those statements. Most whale deaths humans are aware of are caused by boats and entanglement in fishing gear.

Where was Vance during Trump assassination?

Vance told Rogan that he was mini golfing with his family in Ohio when he learned that Trump had been shot in the ear during his Butler, Pa. rally in June.

"I actually thought they had killed him because when you first see the video he grabs his ear and then he goes down," Vance recalled after seeing the video of Trump's July 13 rally. "I'm like, 'Oh my God, they just killed him.'”

Just days before, Vance said Trump had told him he was a front-runner for vice presidential nominee. Trump had floated announcing the news at the rally, but had decided against it.

Vance, who is a Marine veteran, said his immediate reaction to the news of the assassination attempt was to load his guns.

"At first I was so pissed, but then I go into like fight or flight mode,” he said. “I grab my kids up, throw them in the car, go home and load all my guns. And basically stand like a sentry in our front door, and that was my reaction to it.”

Rogan talks Harris

Rogan at serval points throughout the podcast expressed skepticism about Harris’ candidacy for president.

“It's just strange that everyone's accepting that this person who is the least popular vice president ever is now the solution to the problem,” he told Vance, arguing that "the media machine in just a few days, did this 180 and just sold her as the solution.”

“As long as they keep her from having these conversations where she's allowed to talk, they're able to pull this off, and the fact that it’s happening without a primary should be really concerning to people,” he said of Harris’ campaign.

Harris faced criticism for not doing many interviews in the first few months after taking over the Democratic Party nomination from Biden. Since then, she has embarked on a media blitz with appearances on several podcasts, daytime talk shows and news programs.

At one point, Harris was in talks to appear on Rogan’s show. The podcaster said earlier this week that that Harris’ had agreed to appear on his podcast, but that he had declined the terms of the interview because he would have had to travel and wanted to speak with her for more than an hour.

"My sincere wish is to just have a nice conversation and get to know her as a human being," Rogan said about the possibility of interviewing Harris. "I really hope we can make it happen."

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Key moments from JD Vance interview with Joe Rogan