On July 13, at a rally in Butler, Pa., Trump had only spoken for a few minutes before shots rang out. Thomas Crooks, 20, fired eight rounds at the former president, grazing his right ear with the first shot while killing one rallygoer and severely wounding two others, all of whom were seated behind the former president.
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Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle resigned after 10 days due to bipartisan outrage over agency failures.
Less than two months later, would-be assassin Ryan Wesley Routh, 58, was arrested after getting within a few hundred yards of Trump while he was golfing at Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach, Florida, on September 15. Routh was set up behind a hedgerow overlooking a green with an AR-style rifle, and he appeared to be waiting for Trump to get close enough before firing.
Secret Service agents spotted the rifle barrel sticking out of the hedgerow and engaged Routh, who fled the scene before being arrested a short while later.
Trump gave Rogan a glimpse of the scar he received from Crooks’ bullet. “It zicked right there,” Trump said of the mark behind his right ear.
Rogan responded, “It healed up pretty f–king good.”
“It’s not like some of the wrestlers, some of the UFC fighters… it was sort of like a top shot. The thing’s taken off a little bit,” Trump continued. “But it makes me a tougher guy.”
FULL PROGRAM HERE:
Rogan, 57, suggested that the assassination attempts might not have occurred if the media—and Democrats like his rival Vice President Kamala Harris and twice-failed presidential candidate Hillary Clinton—didn’t equate Trump with Adolf Hitler and fascism.
“They love to take things out of context and distort them,” Rogan said. “The rhetoric is that you’re Hitler, and in order to stop Hitler, you have to do whatever it takes.”
Trump recorded the interview at his studios in Austin, Texas, just hours before it went live on “The Joe Rogan Experience” YouTube channel.
The interview, which lasted nearly two hours and 58 minutes, garnered just over 800,000 views within an hour of its publication. Trump began the back-and-forth talking about his two different lives — that as a successful businessman and host of the hit TV series “The Apprentice” before transitioning into politics and winning the presidency in 2016 when few thought he had a chance against Clinton.
“I had a very wonderful life but I wanted to do this,” the GOP nominee said, explaining how producers wanted to extend his contract on the “hot show” to stay on primetime TV. “Somehow, they put me in a poll, and I blew everybody away.”
It’s not clear how the interview came together, but Trump and Rogan have known each other for some time. Rogan is a regular broadcaster at UFC and MMA fights, which Trump has frequently attended.
Trump has participated in numerous podcasts during the final stretch of the campaign and co-hosted a streaming conversation with X owner Elon Musk in August, which the billionaire claimed reached 1 billion viewers.
The former president and Harris are in a tight race, as most swing-state polling shows them nearly even.