On Joe Rogan Experience #2220, the UFC commentator sat down with political commentator Konstantin Kisin and writer Francis Foster, and shared the story behind the podcast episode with Donald Trump getting banned and how it finally got fixed. As per the 57-year-old, it was through Elon Musk‘s help that they were able to bring the episode on X and get it back on YouTube. He said, “If you Google’d ‘Rogan Trump,’ you could only get clips; you couldn’t find the full episode. We reached out to them, and they fixed it, but Elon was furious and contacted Daniel Ek at Spotify, and they put it on X as well. Now it has more views than ever.” He even thanked Musk by tweeting a clip of the tale with the caption, “Thx @elonmusk @Spotify”

Several viewers had accused YouTube of censoring the much-anticipated three-hour-long podcast episode between former President Donald Trump and Joe Rogan. After being posted on Friday, the most current edition of The Joe Rogan Experience podcast has already had over 33 million views, making it one of the most-viewed podcast appearances for either President Trump or Vice President Kamala Harris during the 2024 election cycle.

The video had reportedly been shadowbanned just a few moments after it was first posted on YouTube. As a result, it would not show up in the search results or on the uploader’s profile, and users could only watch it by using a direct link. According to the UFC commentator, it was due to a technical issue with Spotify, and it surely affected the viewership reach of the recent edition. This surely drew the ire of Tesla CEO and Trump supporter Elon Musk, who took things up directly with the Spotify co-founder.

Musk too confirmed Joe Rogan‘s story as he re-tweeted the clip of Rogan narrating the tale. Not just that, he also tagged Spotify co-founder Daniel Ek and thanked him for the help. As he wrote, “Much appreciated, my friend! @eldsjal.” However, despite the help, Rogan still thinks that this wasn’t an error and was a deliberate move by the streaming site, or at least by an employee in the organization. Rogan said on the podcast, “There’s no way it was a mistake. That’s too convenient. But it could have been a rogue engineer or something.” 

Well, Republican supporters would be glad that Elon Musk and Joe Rogan were able to bring back the episode that many thought would be banned forever. But what about Kamala Harris’ appearance on the podcast? Wasn’t she supposed to be a guest on the podcast as well? Well, it seems like that won’t be the case anymore since there has been an issue that led to the cancellation of the plan.

Kamala Harris won’t be a part of the Joe Rogan Experience

Democrat representative Kamala Harris was slated to be a guest on the world’s biggest podcast way before there was even a confirmation about a Donald Trump appearance. With Rogan’s history of being against the ideologies of Trump, it seemed like fans would be getting to see Harris as the only candidate who would feature on the show. However, fate had something else in the plan as the complete opposite took place. The Republican candidate’s appearance on the show truly stunned many – especially since JRE caters to the key demographic of young male voters, and Trump already enjoys their majority support as per recent polls.

So why did Harris decide not to appear on the show that would help her win their votes? Well, that’s all because of a schedule clash. Revealing the reason on his X, Rogan said that the Harris campaign wanted him to travel to the presidential candidate for the podcast and could only shoot for an hour. However, the JRE host simply denied the conditions. He wrote, “Also, for the record, the Harris campaign has not passed on doing the podcast. They offered a date for Tuesday, but I would have had to travel to her, and they only wanted to do an hour. I strongly feel the best way to do it is in the studio in Austin. My sincere wish is to just have a nice conversation and get to know her as a human being. I really hope we can make it happen.” 

Soon, Harris campaign spokesperson Ian Sams gave a statement to Reuters that the situation occurred because of the lack of time available as per schedule. “We talked with Rogan and his team about the podcast. Unfortunately, it isn’t going to work out right now because of the scheduling of this… period of the campaign.” Well, it truly would’ve been interesting to see Kamala Harris chat with Joe Rogna on the show, But what do you think? Did the Harris campaign miss a major chance here? Let us know in the comments.