Republican vice presidential candidate J.D. Vance I spoke with a popular podcaster Joe Rogan Wednesday for a lengthy interview about his initial reaction to the assassination attempt on former president Donald Trumpopinions 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 approximately 14.5 million followers. His audience is primarily young men – a key demographic that Trump and Vance are trying to vote out 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 that’s going on.outsiders to election interference.

Rogan frequently signaled agreement with Vance throughout the friendly, more than three-hour conversation and repeatedly questioned Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris’ fitness for office.

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Vance frequently talked about his wife and two daughters throughout the series, and at one point described himself as a “pretty boring guy.” Along with in-depth political discussions, Vance also gave insight into his personal life and said he thinks the Netflix series “Emily in Paris” is “a masterpiece.”

Here are the key moments from the podcast episode.

Anti-trans rhetoric

Rogan and Vance spoke at length about transgender rights at the beginning of the conversation, particularly 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 to compete in sports where I’m afraid she’ll be bludgeoned to death because we allow a six-foot-tall man to compete with her in sports,” he said. Vance said.

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

“If you’re a white, middle-class or upper-middle-class parent, and all you care about is whether your child goes to Harvard or Yale, it’s clear that this path has become much more difficult for many members of the upper middle class. children,” he said, adding that “the only way these people can participate in the DEI bureaucracy in this country is if they are trans.”

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

“Now there’s all these crazy things on top of them saying, ‘No, no, we didn’t want to give pharmaceuticals to 9-year-olds who are changing genders,'” Vance said.

Biden’s ‘trash’ comments

Vance joked during the interview that he thought President Joe Biden was “trying to help” Donald Trump win the election, referencing comments Biden made earlier in the week that suggested Trump supporters were “trash.”

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

Vance claimed the comment must have been an attempt to help Trump, given the criticism Biden has since received.

“After we win, I will be convinced that Joe Biden was trying to help us the whole time,” Vance said. He also referenced a time when Biden I jokingly wore a Trump 2024 hat during a visit to Pennsylvania on September 11.

Vance also told Rogan that he would bet $20 that Biden planned to vote for Trump and $100 that his son, Hunter Biden, would also support the Republican nominee against Kamala Harris.

Biden supported Harris after she withdrew from the 2024 race in July and has been a strong supporter of Harris’ campaign ever since.

Climate change

During an extended discussion about the environment, Vance said he “didn’t have a strong opinion on what the environment should be.” carbon footprint it ultimately does,” seeming to question whether human-caused climate change exists.

“Interestingly, the American environmental movement only talks about the carbon footprint, and it never talks about it. . . why do we currently have the highest rates of obesity in the world,” Vance said.

Rogan added that it was “troubling” that “there are also profits being made through the green movement,” and name-checked him. Bill Gates which has invested billions of dollars in climate technology solutions.

The podcaster also brought up an unproven claim from his interview with Trump: wind turbines, a form of clean energy, negatively affect and even kill whales. There is no proof to support these statements. Most whale deaths that humans are aware of are caused by boats and fishing gear.

Where was Vance during Trump assassination?

Vance told Rogan that he go mini golf with your family in Ohio when he learned that Trump had been shot in the ear while in office. Butler, Pennsylvania rally in June.

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

Days before, Vance said Trump told him he was a front-runner for the vice presidency. Trump had announced the news at the rally, but decided not to.

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

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

Rogan speaks Harris

Rogan several times throughout the podcast expressed skepticism about Harris running for president.

“It’s just strange that everyone accepts that this person, who is the least popular vice president ever, is now the solution to the problem,” he told Vance, arguing that ” in just a few days, the media machine did a complete 180 and simply sold it.” as a solution. »

“As long as they prevent her from having these conversations where she is allowed to speak, they are able to achieve that, and the fact that this is happening without a primary should really worry people,” he said about Harris’ campaign.

Harris was criticized for not giving many interviews in the first months after succeeding Biden as the Democratic Party nomination. 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 Harris agreed to appear on his podcast, but declined the terms of the interview because he would have had to travel and wanted to speak with him for more than an hour.

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

This article was originally published on USA TODAY: Key Moments From JD Vance’s Interview With Joe Rogan