Trump reveals why Kamala Harris’ biggest mistake of the presidential campaign had to do with Joe Rogan

Donald Trump spelled out some of the tactical blunders that he thinks rival Kamala Harris made in her failed election campaign against him – beginning with her decision to get in the race.

‘Taking the assignment. Number one, because you have to know what you’re good at,’ Trump said, getting in a dig when asked about her worst mistakes in in interview with Time Magazine.

Then Trump, who flooded the zone with interviews – some friendly and some less-so –  ripped Harris’ media strategy.

He faulted her for skipping traditional media interviews as her campaign locked down during its first weeks.   

‘I think they made a big tactical mistake by literally not talking to the press, even if a really friendly…a friendly interview, and they turned everybody down. They wouldn’t do the basic,’ Trump said.

‘And people, including me, would start to say, is there something wrong with her? What’s wrong? Why wouldn’t you do some basic interviews?’

‘And then she had some pretty failed interviews, and maybe it was highlighted more than it would. In other words, if she did those same interviews, but she did another 15 interviews, you know, you wouldn’t have really noticed it that much.’

In the end, Trump beat her in all seven battleground states – although post-election post-mortems identified other factors.

Those included lavish spending by the Harris campaign, along with faulty field operation efforts, all while being saddled with the baggage of an unpopular administration. 

Harris never held a formal press conference during her campaign.

She did hold multiple informal ‘gaggles’ with the press, and some were off the record. After avoiding formal interviews for weeks she held some high-profile ones, sitting down with ’60 Minutes’ in October, and MSNBC and CBS. 

When she did do interviews, some of her halting or ‘word salad’ answers got parsed. 

Trump – who would speak for 90 minutes or more at rallies and sat for some lengthy interviews while rolling out controversial statements like pardoning January 6 defendants – said the scarcity worked against her. 

‘I think that when she wouldn’t talk to anybody, it shone a light on her … And people said, Is there something wrong with her? Why would they? I mean, I’m doing this interview with you. I did interviews with, if I had the time, anybody that would ask, I’d do interviews,’ he told Time.

‘I think the Joe Rogan interview, you know, that went on for almost three and a half hours,’ Trump said. 

Trump gave a three hour interview with the podcaster, which made him late for an outdoor rally in northern Michigan – then picked up Rogan’s valuable endorsement.

Harris turned down an appearance with the popular podcaster, who has millions of followers, after talks broke down. 

‘I had a rally that I was two and a half hours late for in Michigan. It was very cold. And, you know, we didn’t lose anybody,’ Trump said, although supporters streamed out of the rally after an announcement that he would be hours late. 

‘But I explained to him, Listen, I just did an interview. We got to win this thing and – but I was two and a half hours late. I didn’t know it was going to be three. I thought it was going to be an hour or something,’ Trump continued.

‘She put so much emphasis on interviews. Somebody thought there was something wrong, and I don’t think she ever recovered from that,’ he said.

Trump shared his musings on a day he was taking yet another victory lap on the road to his second term. He was named Time’s ‘man of the year’ – seizing an honor he received once before in 2016.

His affection for the magazine was such that he took framed covers with him to Mar-a-Lago that later turned up when he became embroiled in a probe into his handling of classified documents probe.

On Thursday, he also rang the bell at the New York Stock Exchange, appearing with wife Melania and daughters Ivanka and Tiffany.