Ohio Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio) appeared on “The Joe Rogan Experience” Thursday, diving into a variety of issues like abortion, big pharma, and environmental over-regulation. Here are some takeaways from the podcast.
Trump VP Offer
Vance recalled that he met with former President Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago the morning of July 13, hours before the Butler assassination attempt, and he told Vance he had asked the gardener of his estate for advice on who would make the best vice president.
Vance recounted that Trump decided he wanted to announce his running mate selection later that day at Butler, but then backpedaled, saying he needed to plan the rollout better.
When Trump finally called Vance on July 15 to offer him the vice presidential nomination, the former president requested to speak to Vance’s young son. Trump read to the child a draft of a Truth Social post he was set to make, announcing Vance as his choice, to which the child approved.
At one point, Vance mused that he thinks President Joe Biden and his son Hunter both voted for Trump in this election.
Money in Politics
Vance and Rogan discussed a variety of controversial social issues—transgenderism, environmentalism, and the pharmaceutical industry—that Vance said are all influenced by money.
When evaluating social movements, Vance said that people need to apply more scrutiny to their potential hidden motives.
For instance, he noted that transgender drugs and operations are profitable to the pharmaceutical industry, as were COVID-19 vaccines—particularly because pharmaceutical companies are given broad immunity from liability for adverse reactions.
“We should just ask ourselves, ‘Who’s getting rich from this stuff?’ Maybe we should be skeptical of people getting rich from this stuff,” Vance said.
“The whole conduit of money into politics is fundamentally broken, we have to fix that.”
The two men agreed that the construction of wind turbines has gone too far, citing claims that Trump made on Rogan’s show last week that whales are dying in unprecedented numbers because of this technology.
Vance revealed that he had pushed for funding to study the effects on the people affected by the 2023 East Palestine chemical spill, but says he was ignored by fellow lawmakers. He promised that if there is another chemical disaster during a second Trump administration, they will “take the infrastructure of that study, and right away, we’re gonna try to establish a baseline.”
Abortion
The two also discussed abortion. Vance said he and Trump want to make it a state issue—so California can make its own laws while Alabama can do the same.
The Republican Nominee for vice president also said, in no uncertain terms, that Trump is “very against a national abortion ban. He wants this debate to happen organically and democratically.”
Harris Invite
Earlier in the week, Rogan said he invited Vice President Kamala Harris to come on the program, but her team couldn’t agree on the details. The podcaster said he refuses to travel for his show, instead preferring to have guests come to his studio in Austin so they can sit alone and have a conversation.
The host said he was hesitant to travel to her because he didn’t want her staff in the room with them waving their hands at him, as Bret Baier claims happened during a Fox News interview with Harris in October.
Election Day is Nov. 5.
Epoch Times reporter Joseph Lord contributed to this report.