Nearly 400,000 people tuned in to comedian Joe Rogan’s highly anticipated sit-down with former President Donald Trump within a half-hour of the interview’s release Friday night.
Trump, 78, began his nearly three-hour appearance on “The Joe Rogan Experience” by discussing his “two different lives” — referring to his time as a businessman and host of “The Apprentice” reality TV show before his subsequent foray into politics in 2015.
“Being president is a very dangerous business,” Trump said, citing the two assassination attempts on his life.
“I had a very wonderful life but I wanted to do this,” the GOP nominee said, explaining how producers wanted to extend his contract on the “hot show” to stay on primetime TV.
“Somehow they put me in a poll, and I blew everybody away.”
Trump recorded the discussion at Rogan’s studios in Austin, Texas, just hours before the interview went live on “The Joe Rogan Experience” YouTube channel.
The interview is about two hours and fifty-eight minutes long.
“The Joe Rogan Experience” has an estimated 14.5 million followers on Spotify, Bloomberg News reported this year.
Trump has appeared on several podcasts in the home stretch of the campaign and co-hosted a streaming conversation with X owner Elon Musk in August that the billionaire leader of Tesla and SpaceX said reached 1 billion viewers.
The ex-president and his Democratic rival, Vice President Kamala Harris, 60, are neck-and-neck in most swing-state polling.
