Podcasting as the future for campaigning:
This is one area where I think Trump is too old and inflexible to adapt. If you sat Trump down in one of these now-standard formats, just two people shooting the shit with only the skeleton of a discursive agenda directing the exchange, Trump would rapidly get antsy if the conversation didn't focus constantly and directly on him. I admit my observation may have something to do with my personal dislike of the man, but all evidence suggests that Trump is at his most effusive when he's talking about his favorite subject: himself. That's not a knock against Trump's priorities and orientation as president, but I think his megalomania is a character flaw that would become impossible to ignore in, say, a Rogan-like format. If Trump ever did Rogan, I think someone else would have to be there—like Joe Biden—to keep Trump talking. Biden's presence would provide Trump the opportunity to cite his achievements versus Biden's non-achievements. But having Trump on Rogan with no one else there to spar with? I don't see that going well at all.
Consider, too, that at the beginning of his term, Trump did take a stab at putting out short, scripted, state-of-the-nation YouTube vids about 2-3 minutes in length, but that effort dried up within a few months (I actually liked those videos and wished he had continued making them). I don't think the man is psychologically predisposed to "Fireside Chat" formats. Give him a crowd he can play to, that reacts to him; give him a microblogging format on which to publish misspelled, ungrammatical rants, and keep him talking about himself. That's Donald Trump's comfort zone.
Despite what I just said, Trump is going to interview one-on-one with Tucker Carlson during the GOP-nominee debates. By this point, Trump has done enough one-on-one interviews to know how to navigate the format (he's a media guy, after all). But there's a formal, almost ritualistic tinge to these interviews that would be absent in a more free-form Rogan podcast, and that lack of formality, in my opinion, makes all the difference. So don't look forward to seeing Trump on Rogan anytime soon.
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