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    • Rogan, Trump talk about aliens, North Korea in wide-ranging interview
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    Rogan, Trump talk about aliens, North Korea in wide-ranging interview

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    This story has been updated to add additional context.

    Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump recorded a nearly three-hour interview with the mega-podcaster Joe Rogan on Friday, discussing everything from aliens and life on Mars to election interference and foreign policy.

    Just days before the presidential election, Trump’s appearance on “The Joe Rogan Experience” marks part of his campaign’s game 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 35, according to a 2026 YouGov survey.

    Throughout the interview, Trump sought to appeal to key demographics with references to Ultimate Fighting Championshipmentions 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 like the idea of ​​you teaming up with Robert Kennedy.”

    Rogan signaled Kennedy’s supporthis 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 talks to appear on Rogan’s podcast, but a spokesperson for her campaign said that would not be possible due to scheduling issues. Rogan told Trump he still thinks Harris could appear on the show.

    Here’s a breakdown of some of the key moments and takeaways from Trump’s lengthy conversation with Rogan.

    Are there aliens?

    Rogan asked Trump if he had been given information about alien life while he was president. Trump said he interviewed pilots who said they saw strange objects while in the air.

    “There’s no reason not to believe that Mars and all these planets don’t have life,” Trump said. Rogan gave up easily, arguing that the US has had probes and rovers on the surface of Mars for decades. Scientists have so far found no direct evidence of life on the red planet.

    “I don’t think there’s life out 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.”

    Pentagon earlier this year released a 63-page report concluding that there was no evidence of aliens or alien technology on Earth. The report found that there is no reason to believe that the US government is hiding information about aliens.

    “The enemy within” vs. Kim Jong Un

    Trump repeated his concern that “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 into North Korea.

    “I tell people that we have a bigger problem, in my opinion, with the enemy within. And it drives them crazy when they use that term. But we have an enemy within,” Trump later said.

    Trump has previously used the phrase “enemy within” in reference to his own political opponentsincluding former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., who is running for Senate.

    A replacement proposal income tax with rates

    Rogan and Trump touched on several policy topics during the interview, including taxes and the environment.

    At one point, Rogan asked Trump if he was serious about his suggestion to eliminate income taxes and replace them with CHARGES.

    Trump replied: “Sure, why not?”

    Trump argued for a return to the pre-1909 era, when there was no federal income tax. On Rogan’s podcast, he praised former President William McKinley for signing a law in 1890 that raised tariffs, the tax rate on foreign goods, to about 49 percent.

    Some economists attribute the tariffs to McKinley the sinking of the US government into a deficit and depression a few years later in 1893.

    Today, replacing the income tax with a tariff policy could substantially increase the current federal deficit. The federal government only collected under $2.18 trillion in income taxes in 2023, representing approximately 49% of total revenues. Trump’s tariffs are expected to generate about $300 billion a year — about nine times less than income tax revenue.

    Trump repeats 2020 election denial

    At one point in the interview, Rogan repeated Trump’s claims that there were “a lot of crooked things,” during the 2020 presidential election. He asked Trump, “How do you think you got robbed? Everyone’s always interrupting you.”

    At first, Trump said he would prefer to have the conversation “another time,” saying he would bring “so many different documents” to support his arguments. But when pressed by Rogan for examples of election interference, Trump reiterated claims denied of wrongful acts of state governments and fraud.

    Rogan wondered if Trump planned to ever present evidence of the interference, but the conversation quickly turned to a discussion of Hunter Biden, who was convicted on three counts of murder in his federal gun trial.

    Trump and the podcast host later discussed unfounded concerns about mail-in voting vulnerabilities and voting machine security.

    “Let’s talk about potential vulnerabilities for elections and electoral fraud. One of them is postal ballots. The other is if someone can break into the voting machines,” Rogan said.

    The use of postal voting has been on the rise since the 1980s and has expanded during the COVID-19 pandemic. Mail-in voter fraud is rare. All postal ballots are checked and counted and are related to an eligible voter.

    Voting machines have also been used for decades. The older machines have raised concerns about hacking, although election officials say such performance it 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” to roles in the White House and his cabinet.

    Namely, Trump was talking about John Kelly, his former chief of staff and former secretary of Homeland Security, and John Bolton, Trump’s former national security adviser.

    Kelly in interviews with the New York Times said that Trump exposed the tendencies of a fascist and confirmed reports that Trump spoke positively of Adolf Hitler. Kelly told the Times that Trump “commented several times that ‘you know, Hitler did some good things too.’

    Bolton said Trump was posing “HAZARD” if he is re-elected president.

    During the interview, Rogan downplayed reports of Trump’s Hitler comments.

    He told Trump: “They have continually labeled you as this horrible threat to democracy and Hitler. They kept saying you would be a dictator, ignoring the fact that you were not a dictator during the four years you were actually president.”

    Trump said he was “the opposite of a dictator.”

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