LAS VEGAS (AP) — Former President Donald Trump on Friday is heading to Texas — his first public campaign event in the state since receiving the Republican nomination — to sit down with the most listened-to-podcaster in the country, creating another opportunity for him to highlight the hypermasculine tone that has defined much of his 2024 White House bid.
The GOP presidential nominee will hold a news conference in Austin and meet with podcaster Joe Rogan at his studio there. It is only the second time he has campaigned in the state after a Dallas visit where he addressed members of the National Rifle Association in May. On Friday, his Democratic opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris, will also be visiting Texas for a rally on abortion rights with superstar Beyoncé.
Trump has made masculinity a central theme of his campaign, appearing on podcasts targeting young male voters and tapping surrogates who sometimes use crude language.
At a Trump rally on Wednesday, former Fox News commentator Tucker Carlson called the Democratic vice presidential nominee Tim Walz a "weak man" and compared Trump's return to the White House to a dad who comes home and "he's pissed!" and ready to punish his misbehaved children.
"When dad gets home, you know what he says?" Carlson asked. "You've been a bad girl. You've been a bad little girl, and you are getting a vigorous spanking right now."
Rogan and Trump have a complicated relationship. Rogan had previously said that he declined to host Trump on his podcast before, but that he did not want to do it because he did not want to help him.
Earlier this year, Trump criticized Rogan after the podcaster said that then-candidate Robert Kennedy Jr. was the only candidate running who made sense to him. Kennedy has since suspended his bid, endorsed Trump and joined him on the campaign trail.
"It will be interesting to see how loudly Joe Rogan gets BOOED the next time he enters the UFC Ring??? MAGA2024," Trump wrote on his social media site in August.
The podcaster is known for his hourslong interviews on "The Joe Rogan Experience," which is listed as No. 1 in the United States, according to Spotify's charts. He calls women "chicks" and once laughed as a comedian friend described repeatedly coercing young women comics into sex.
Trump ramps up his immigration rhetoric even more
Trump will also hold a news conference to talk about border security. He is escalating his already dark and apocalyptic rhetoric against illegal immigration in the race's final stretch.
During a rally in Arizona Thursday, Trump railed against Harris for the Biden administration's record on the border, which he said had "unleashed" an "army of migrant gangs" who are "waging a campaign of violence and terror against our citizens."
"We're like a garbage can for the world," Trump said, adding a new insult to a litany he's used 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 towns had been "invaded and conquered" by violent immigrants, adding: "We have a lot of towns that haven't yet been infected." Trump has long echoed tropes about immigration in portraying migrants as spreading disease, dating back to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Trump views immigration as the issue that won him the White House in 2016. He accuses Harris of perpetrating "a wicked betrayal of America" and having "orchestrated the most egregious betrayal that any leader in American history has ever inflicted upon our people," even though crime is down.
While migrants have been charged for some high profile crimes that Trump repeatedly highlights, research has shown that immigrants — including those who entered the country illegally — are charged with fewer violent crimes than American citizens.
He has also spread false theories that Democrats are registering immigrants without legal status to vote.
With Harris visiting Houston for her rally with Beyoncé, Trump and his allies Friday morning made illegal immigration the centerpiece of their pushback. They pointed to the killing of a 12-year-old Texas girl, Jocelyn Nungaray, whose body was found in June. Prosecutors have charged two Venezuelan men in the U.S. illegally with capital murder.