Elon Musk has claimed that Donald Trump won the presidential election because he went on Joe Rogan’s podcast and was “a normal person.”
The billionaire Trump ally told right-wing commentator Tucker Carlson that if Harris had also gone on Rogan’s show, it “would have been game over.”
“Nothing would do more damage to Kamala’s campaign than going on Joe Rogan because she’d run out of nonsequiturs after about 45 minutes,” Musk said on a live broadcast from Mar-a-Lago on November 6.
“Hour two and three would be a complete melted puddle of nonsense so it would just be absolute game over. But on the [other] hand Trump is… he’s there and there’s no talking points, he’s just being a normal person he’s having a conversation.”
Trump’s 18-year-old son Barron is said to have encouraged the Republican candidate to experiment with a new audience by engaging with YouTubers and podcasters who are sympathetic towards the MAGA movement during his campaign.
His three-hour appearance on The Joe Rogan Experience, which aired in the penultimate week of his election campaign, has been viewed by more than 46 million people.
Musk concluded that the Rogan interview “really [made] a difference.”
Rogan publicly endorsed Trump on the eve of the election, after Musk had also appeared on the podcast.
“People look at, like, Joe Rogan’s podcast which is great, and Lex Fridman and the All-In podcast and, you know, to a reasonable-minded smart person who’s not, like, hardcore one way or the other,” the richest man in the world told the former Fox News host.
“They just listen to someone talk for a few hours and that’s how they decide whether you’re, you know, a good person whether they like you.”
The SpaceX CEO has been tapped for a role within Trump’s second administration after financially and publicly backing him in the election campaign.
The podcasts Trump appeared on during the election are part of the so-called “manosphere” that may well have helped him win the election. Trump, a multibillionaire and among the ranks of America’s richest people, was the first Republican to win the popular vote alongside the Electoral College since George W. Bush in 2004.
According to Associated Press exit polling, Trump decisively won the male vote, with 52 percent support among 18- to 44-year-old men, and 56 percent backing among those 45+ men.
It marks a major flip from 2020, when President Joe Biden at least managed to pull in a slim majority of young and early middle-aged men, drawing on Democrats’ typical popularity with youth voters.
Trump did even better with non-college graduate white men, earning more than two-thirds of their vote, according to The Washington Post.
He also made major gains among Latino men, surprising Democratic leaders who assumed Trump’s repeated demonization of immigrant communities might ward off their support.
