Trump visits Texas to record Joe Rogan's podcast and criticize Harris on immigration

LAS VEGAS – Former President Donald Trump is traveling to Texas on Friday – his first public campaign event in the state since winning the Republican nomination – to sit down with the country's most listened-to podcaster, giving him another opportunity to highlight the hypermasculine tone that has a large part his run for the White House in 2024.

The Republican presidential candidate will hold a press conference in Austin and meet with podcaster Joe Rogan in his studio. It is only the second time he has campaigned in the state, following a visit to Dallas in May to address members of the National Rifle Association. On Friday, his Democratic opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris, will also visit Texas for a rally on abortion rights with superstar Beyoncé.

Trump has made masculinity a central theme of his campaign, appearing on podcasts aimed at young male voters and addressing surrogates who sometimes use crude language.

At a Trump rally on Wednesday, former Fox News commentator Tucker Carlson called Democratic vice presidential candidate Tim Walz a “weak man” and compared Trump's return to the White House to a father coming home “mad!” and ready to punish his misbehaving children.

“When Dad comes home, do you know what he says?” Carlson asked. “You were a bad girl. You were a bad little girl and now you’re getting a good spanking.”

Rogan and Trump have a complicated relationship. Rogan previously said that he declined to host Trump on his podcast, but that he didn't want to do so because he didn't want to help him.

Earlier this year, Trump criticized Rogan after the podcaster said that then-candidate Robert Kennedy Jr. was the only running candidate who made sense to him. Kennedy has since suspended his bid, supported Trump and joined him in the election campaign.

“It will be interesting to see how loudly Joe Rogan gets booed the next time he steps into the UFC ring???” MAGA2024,” Trump wrote on his social media page in August.

The podcaster is known for his hour-long interviews on The Joe Rogan Experience, which is ranked #1 in the US according to Spotify charts. He calls women “chicks” and once laughed when a comedian friend described how he repeatedly forced young female comedians to have sex.

Trump will also hold a press conference to discuss border security. In the final stretch of the race, he escalates his already dark and apocalyptic rhetoric against illegal immigration.

During a rally in Arizona on Thursday, Trump railed against Harris over the Biden administration's record at the border, which he said has “unleashed” an “army of migrant gangs” who are “waging a campaign of violence and terror against our citizens.” “.

“We are like a garbage can to the world,” Trump said, adding a new insult to a litany he uses to describe the state of the nation under the Biden administration.

At a Turning Point event in Las Vegas later in the day, Trump claimed cities had been “raid and conquered” by violent immigrants, adding: “We have a lot of cities that haven't been infected yet.” Trump has long repeated the tropes on immigration, portraying migrants as vectors of disease stemming from the COVID-19 pandemic.

Trump sees immigration as the issue that won him the White House in 2016. He accuses Harris of committing “an evil betrayal of America” and even of orchestrating “the most egregious betrayal ever perpetrated on our people by any leader in American history.” although crime has decreased.

While migrants have been charged with some of the high-profile crimes that Trump continues to highlight, research has shown that immigrants — including those who entered the country illegally — are accused of fewer violent crimes than U.S. citizens.

He has also promoted false theories that Democrats would register immigrants without legal status to vote.

While Harris visited Houston for her rally with Beyoncé, Trump and his allies made illegal immigration the centerpiece of their opposition Friday morning. They pointed to the murder of a 12-year-old Texas girl, Jocelyn Nungaray, whose body was found in June. Prosecutors have illegally charged two Venezuelan men with murder in the United States.