Former President Donald Trump sat down with podcaster Joe Rogan on Friday for a three-hour interview and said that his biggest mistake during his time in the White House was choosing “bad people” to serve under him.
While speaking on “The Joe Rogan Experience,” Trump was asked about previous appointments to his cabinet and if he felt like he made “bad choices.” Trump responded by touting the “success” of his presidency and his Supreme Court picks before suggesting that his “one mistake” was his own decision-making process in choosing officials to serve in his administration.
“The one mistake… I will say it always comes back to the same answer, the biggest mistake I made…I picked some people that I shouldn’t have picked,” said Trump, prompting Rogan to ask if he was referring to “neocons.”
“Yeah, neocons, or bad people, or disloyal people,” Trump responded.
Newsweek reached out for comment to Trump’s campaign via email on Friday night.
Trump then specifically called out John Kelly, his longest-serving White House chief of staff, and John Bolton, his national security adviser. Kelly and Bolton are among the many former Trump officials who have become highly critical of the ex-president since serving under him.
Kelly, a retired U.S. Marine Corps general, was quoted earlier this week by The New York Times and The Atlantic as saying that he personally witnessed Trump expressing an affinity with NAZI German dictator Adolf Hitler and offering praise for “Hitler’s generals.” Trump denied making the remarks and called Kelly a “totally degenerate” suffering from “Trump Derangement Syndrome” in a post to Truth Social.
Trump suggested that he was the victim of a “bully” in the form of Kelly during his Rogan interview.
“You’re reading about them a little bit today, a guy like Kelly, who was a bully,” said Trump. “A bully but a weak person… He’s bad.. Bolton was an idiot.”
Rogan and Trump also discussed the role of police officers in America, the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, the July assassination attempt on the former president’s life and his distrust of polls.
While the campaign of Vice President Kamala Harris reportedly negotiated last week with Rogan’s team about a possible interview on his podcast, it was announced on Friday that the Democratic candidate would not be appearing.
Harris campaign spokesperson Ian Sams said during an MSBNC appearance that the interview was not “going to work out right now because of the scheduling of this period of the campaign.”
The vice president, who held a record-breaking campaign rally in Texas on the same day that Trump spoke to Rogan, was recently interviewed for the podcasts “Call Her Daddy” and “All the Smoke,” in addition to radio shows hosted by Howard Stern and Charlamagne tha God.
Rogan’s podcast has around 14.5 million listeners per episode, according to Digital Music News. The show’s audience skews heavily male, a demographic that polls suggest the vice president is increasingly struggling with as Election Day quickly approaches.
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