Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s three-hour interview with America’s number one podcaster, Joe Rogan, has been released.

In a wide-ranging meeting, the former president discusses everything from the “biggest mistake” of his tenure in the White House, what he told the leader of North Korea and whether alien life exists.

Two years ago, Rogan described Trump as “an existential threat to democracy” and refused to have him on his show. But the pair appeared friendly on Friday as they discussed their shared interest in the Ultimate Fighting Championship and mutual friends like Elon Musk.

The Republican’s campaign hopes the interview will strengthen his influence with male voters, who make up the core audience of the Joe Rogan Experience, which has 14.5 million Spotify followers and 17.5 million YouTube subscribers.

Trump took a major detour to visit Rogan in Austin, Texas, making him appear nearly three hours late for a rally in Traverse City, Michigan, a key state where both he and his Democratic opponent Kamala Harris, they campaigned hard. .

Trump told Rogan that the “biggest mistake” of his 2017-2021 presidency was “picking some people I shouldn’t have picked.”

“Neocons or bad people or disloyal people,” he told Rogan, referring to neocons, the policymakers who support an interventionist US foreign policy.

“A guy like Kelly, who was a bully, but a weak person,” Trump added, referring to his former White House chief of staff, John Kelly, who told the New York Times this week that he believed his former chief it was “fascist”. trends.

Trump also described his former US national security adviser, John Bolton, as “an idiot” but useful at times.

“It was good in a way,” Trump said. “He’s crazy.

“And every time I dealt with a country, when they saw this crazy job behind me, they were like, ‘Oh man, Trump’s going to war with us.’ He was with Bush when they went wrong in the Middle East.”

Trump said he met the North Korean leader Kim Jong-un “very well” despite some nuclear saber-rattling between the two initially, when Trump said he told him, “Little Rocket, you’re going to burn in hell.”

“By the time we were done, we had no problem with North Korea,” Trump said.

Trump said he urged Kim to stop building up his “substantial” weapons stockpile.

“I said, ‘Do you ever do anything else? Why don’t you go take it easy? Go to the beach, relax.

“I said, ‘You always build nukes, you don’t have to. Relax!’ I said, “Let’s build some apartments on your shore.”

Trump also claimed that Russia would never have invaded Ukraine if he had been president.

“I said, ‘Vladimir, you’re not coming in,'” he told Rogan, referring to the Russian president. Vladimir Putin. “I used to talk to him all the time.

“I can’t tell you what I told him because I think it would be inappropriate, but one day he will tell you, but he would never have gone in.”

Trump said Putin invaded Ukraine because “number one, he doesn’t respect Biden at all.” The White House has previously accused Trump of cozying up to foreign autocrats.

Asked for evidence to support his bogus claims that the 2020 presidential race was stolen from him by mass voter fraud, Trump told Rogan: “We’ll do it another time.

“I would bring papers you wouldn’t believe, so many different papers. That election was so crooked, it was the crookedest.”

Rogan pressed for evidence.

Trump claimed ballot irregularities in Wisconsin and that Democrats “used Covid to cheat.”

“Do you ever want to present this (evidence)?” Rogan asked.

“Uh…” Trump said before discussing how 51 former intelligence agents aligned with Joe Biden falsely suggested that stories about his son Hunter Biden’s laptop were Russian disinformation.

“I lost, like I didn’t lose,” Trump said, quickly correcting himself.

Trump attacked his political opponents and praised his allies, many of whom are likely to appeal to Rogan’s fans.

He called his rival, Vice President Kamala Harris, a “very low IQ person” and described California’s Gavin Newsom as “one of the worst governors in the world.”

Trump said Elon Musk, who has appeared on Rogan’s podcast in the past, was “the greatest guy.”

He also said he was “fully” committed to bringing Robert F Kennedy Jr into a potential new Trump administration.

The former independent presidential candidate, who has a close friendship with Rogan, dropped out in August and endorsed the Republican nominee.

Trump said he disagreed with Kennedy on environmental policy, so he would instead ask the vaccine critic to “focus on health, do what you want.”

Trump said he did not rule out the existence of life in space.

“There’s no reason not to believe that Mars and all these planets don’t have life,” he said, referring to discussions he’s had with airline pilots who have seen “very strange” things in the sky.

“Well, Mars — we’ve had probes there and rovers, and I don’t think there’s life there,” Rogan said.

“Maybe it’s the life we ​​don’t know about,” Trump said.

Trump said some senior figures at NBC tried to talk him out of running for president in order to keep his show The Apprentice.

“They wanted me to stay,” he said. “All the top people came to see me, tried to talk me out of it, because they wanted to extend me.”

Trump has appeared in 14 episodes of The Apprentice since 2004, but NBC cut ties with him after he launched his 2015 presidential bid, citing his “derogatory” comments about immigrants.

Trump has been under pressure from Democrats to release her medical records after Harris released hers earlier this month, which concluded she was in “excellent health” and fit for the presidency.

Trump’s team said at the time that his doctor described him as in “perfect and excellent health,” without sharing his records.

Trump did not address the topic directly in Friday’s podcast.

But he told Rogan that during an exam, for which he did not give an appointment, doctors described his ability to run on a steep treadmill as “unbelievable”.

“I’ve never been one who could, like, run on a treadmill. When I was doing a medical exam, they asked me to run on a treadmill and then I make it steeper and steeper and the doctors said it was at Walter Reed (hospital), they said, “It’s unbelievable !” I tell you, I felt like I could have gone on all day.”

But he said treadmills are “really boring” so he prefers to stay healthy by playing golf.