Senator JD Vance of Ohio criticized what he called “gender transition craziness,” spoke dismissively of women he claimed were “celebrating” their abortions and said that studies “connect testosterone levels in young men with conservative politics” during a three-hour episode of “The Joe Rogan Experience” that was released on Thursday.
Mr. Vance criticized transgender and nonbinary people at length during the conversation, saying that he would not be surprised if he and his running mate, former President Donald J. Trump, won what he called “the normal gay guy vote.” And he suggested that children in upper-middle-class white families saw becoming trans as a way to improve their odds of getting into Ivy League colleges.
“If you are a, you know, middle-class or upper-middle-class white parent, and the only thing that you care about is whether your child goes into Harvard or Yale, like, obviously, that pathway has become a lot harder for a lot of upper-middle-class kids,” Mr. Vance told Mr. Rogan. “But the one way that those people can participate in the D.E.I. bureaucracy in this country is to be trans.”
Mr. Vance hit on a number of culture-war flashpoints and conservative cultural grievances as he spoke for more than three hours on Mr. Rogan’s immensely popular podcast, the latest in a series of interviews that he and Mr. Trump have done on podcasts aimed at young men. Mr. Rogan’s show is likely to be one of Mr. Vance’s most-watched campaign appearances: Mr. Rogan has 14.5 million followers on Spotify and 17.6 million on YouTube, many of them young men.
At one point, Mr. Vance suggested that liberal women were publicly celebrating their abortions — “baking birthday cakes and posting about it” on social media — a notion Mr. Rogan pushed back on.
“I think there’s very few people that are celebrating,” Mr. Rogan said.
Mr. Rogan challenged Mr. Vance on abortion rights.
“For a lot of people, one of the issues is that men are making decisions for what women can and can’t do,” he said. “And one of the more concerning aspects of this is, like, say if you live in a state like Texas where there’s a limit to when you can get an abortion — I think it’s like six weeks, which a lot of people think at that point in time you can’t even tell whether or not you’re pregnant, and this puts a lot of women in, like, very vulnerable positions. And then there is this thought that they could go to another state where it is legal and have an abortion, but they could be possibly prosecuted for that in their state. That’s concerning to me.”
Mr. Vance said that he had not heard of any women being arrested for traveling to have an abortion. “I don’t like the idea, to be clear, of people getting arrested for freely moving around the country,” he said.
At another point, Mr. Vance mocked liberals as unhealthy and overweight.
“Have you seen all these studies that basically connect testosterone levels in young men with conservative politics?” Mr. Vance asked Mr. Rogan. “Maybe that’s why the Democrats want us all to be, you know, poor health and overweight is because it means we’re going to be more liberal, right? If you make people less healthy, they apparently become more politically liberal.”
Mr. Rogan and Mr. Vance flitted among a wide range of subjects during the podcast, sometimes touching on conspiracy theories. At various points, they spoke of the debunked claim that wind turbines have caused an uptick in whale deaths, coronavirus origin theories, tales of big-tech censorship and big-pharma manipulation and the motives of the gunman who nearly killed Mr. Trump in Butler, Pa., in July.
The Harris campaign moved to highlight Mr. Vance’s more incendiary statements, amplifying his comments on abortion and the “normal gay guy vote,” as well as an aside where Mr. Vance spoke of experiencing side effects — what he described as “the sickest that I’ve been in the last 15 years” — after getting the coronavirus vaccine. (In 2022, Mr. Rogan was criticized for spreading misinformation about the coronavirus; performers including Neil Young and Joni Mitchell removed their music from Spotify to protest the platform’s support of Mr. Rogan.)
Mr. Vance at times touched on softer topics. He discussed raising his three children, his failed attempts at cooking for his wife, Usha, a vegetarian, early in their relationship, and his journey to becoming Mr. Trump’s running mate.
He also said that “Boyz n the Hood,” a 1991 crime drama centered on gang culture in Los Angeles, had been very influential on his worldview by teaching him the importance of fatherhood.
And he spoke about watching Netflix after the Republican National Convention. “We’re sitting there watching, like, some stupid show — ‘Emily in Paris’ on Netflix or something,” he said, before correcting himself.
“Sorry, I don’t mean to call that a stupid show — I actually think ‘Emily in Paris’ is a masterpiece,” Mr. Vance said, prompting laughter from Mr. Rogan.
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