Highlights of Trump's Joe Rogan Interview

Two hours and 58 minutes. That's how long Joe Rogan's latest podcast ran, with a very special (and talkative) guest: Donald Trump, who chatted at length on The Joe Rogan Experience on Friday—so long that his own rally in Traverse City, Michigan, later that evening was "significantly delayed," reports the Hill. Trump traveled to Austin, Texas, for his sit-down with Rogan at the latter's studio, where they talked about everything from aliens to Trump's appointments while he was in office. Some standout comments, per Politico, the New York Times, and NBC News:

• Women of The View: "Some of these women ... they're so stupid," Trump said of Joy Behar, Whoopi Goldberg, and the other hosts of the ABC talk show—including Alyssa Farah Griffin, who served in his administration, including as Vice President Mike Pence's press secretary.

• Alien life: "There's no reason not to think that Mars and all these planets don't have life," Trump asserted. When Rogan noted that various probes and rovers hadn't yet found signs of life on Mars, Trump replied, "Maybe it's life that we don't know about."
• Polls: He thinks there's "probably a lot of fraud" involved. "You know how polls are done?" he said. "Oh, I'm going to get myself in trouble." He noted, "I really don't believe too much in them."
• Former staffers: Trump said he "picked some people that I shouldn't have picked" to serve in his administration the first time around, singling out former chief of staff John Kelly as a "bully" and former national security adviser John Bolton as an "idiot," though he conceded he had a grudging respect for Bolton: "He was good in a certain way, he's a nutjob. Every time I had to deal with a country, when they saw this whack job standing behind me, they said, 'Oh man, Trump's gonna go to war with us.'"
• On descriptions of him as a dictator: "I was actually the opposite of a dictator," he said of his time in the Oval Office. "I was a very straight guy."
• Being 'robbed' in 2020: Rogan wanted to know why Trump felt that way, noting, "Everybody always cuts you off." The former president made the spurious claims that "the judges didn't have what it took to turn over an election" and that Democrats "used COVID to cheat."
• An interesting tax proposal: Was Trump serious about a previous comment he'd made about getting rid of all federal income tax and replacing it with tariffs? "Yeah, sure," Trump told Rogan. "Why not?"
• Speaking style: Rogan praised the former president for not speaking in "bulls---, pre-prepared politician lingo." "One of the beautiful things about you is that you free-ball," Rogan said. Trump noted, "You need at least the attitude of a comedian when you're doing this business. ... It's a very tough business."
• Will he run a fourth time? Trump told Rogan that "if I win ... this will be my last election," acknowledging he'd be ineligible to run for a third term. However, Trump wouldn't say if he'd run again if he loses.
• Delayed rally: Trump showed up three hours late in Traverse City, Michigan, for a planned campaign rally, with attendees left huddling in the cold on the tarmac at Cherry Capital Airport. The AP notes that "many" of his supporters left before he got there.

(More Joe Rogan stories.)