A senior advisor to Vice President Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign suggested that she didn’t appear on The Joe Rogan Experience because the popular host was using her as “leverage” to get President Donald Trump as a guest.

Four staffers from Harris’ campaign appeared on the podcast Pod Save America on Tuesday. Stephanie Cutter, the campaign’s senior advisor for strategy messaging, said that Harris wanted to appear on the show, but the timing didn’t work out.

Since Rogan refused to travel, Harris had to appear in person at his Austin, Texas studio. The campaign hoped that Harris could do The Joe Rogan Experience while she was in Houston for a rally with Beyoncé, Mediaite reported. However, that was also the day that Trump was taping his episode.

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“We were hoping to fit it in around that ultimately weren’t able to do it. As it turns out, that was the day that Trump was taping his Joe Rogan, which they had never confirmed to us, we just kind of figured that out in the lead up to it,” Cutter said.

Another campaign staffer, senior advisor David Plouffe, President Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign manager, suggested that the attempts to set up an interview with Harris may have been intended to convince Trump to appear on the show instead.

“Yeah, Dan, so what’s clear is we offered to do it in Austin, people should know that. It didn’t work out. Maybe they leveraged that to get Trump in studio, I don’t know, and then, you know, we were obviously not going to be back in Texas, but offered to do it on the road,” Plouffe said.

Rogan himself said when the Trump interview was released that a Harris interview was still a possibility, and confirmed that he insisted that she come to his studio.

“Also, for the record the Harris campaign has not passed on doing the podcast. They offered a date for Tuesday, but I would have had to travel to her and they only wanted to do an hour. I strongly feel the best way to do it is in the studio in Austin. My sincere wish is to just have a nice conversation and get to know her as a human being. I really hope we can make it happen,” Rogan said at the time.

Though Rogan ultimately endorsed Trump the day before the election, in the months leading up to it, he praised Harris. In September, Rogan said “she’s nailing it,” referring to her campaign and debate performance. Rogan was also briefly on the outs with Trump after endorsing his one-time third party opponent Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

The Joe Rogan Experience has 14.5 million followers on Spotify, according to Bloomberg, and another 18 million on YouTube. Trump’s interview with Rogan currently has 50 million views, Mediaite reported. Many pundits have suggested that not appearing on the show cost Harris the election.

Some have placed blame on staffers uncomfortable with her appearing on Rogan’s show after Jennifer Palmieri, one of second gentleman Doug Emhoff’s senior advisors, told Financial Times that there were worries about a Democratic Party backlash. Rogan is a controversial figure who spread COVID-19 misinformation during the pandemic. He’s also used his show to platform conspiracy theorists like Alex Jones.

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Americans are nearly equally split on whether or not former President Donald Trump should be imprisoned over the Stormy Daniels hush-money case, according to a new poll.

Slightly more people, 40%, think Trump shouldn’t go to jail, compared to 39% who say he should, according to a recent Pew Research Center poll released Monday. The difference between the two groups is well within the margin of error. Another 20% say they’re not sure. Though 9,720 people were polled via telephone and the web, only 4,842 chose to answer this specific question. The margin of error on the full sample is 1.3%, though it goes up to approximately 1.9% for the reduced sample size on this particular question.

After being convicted on all 34 counts of falsifying business records, whether or not Trump will go to prison for the crime has been hotly debated. It’s up to New York Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan, who is scheduled to sentence Trump on November 26, delayed from the initial date of September 18. Trump could be put on probation, or even given a suspended sentence—which means he would still be guilty, but not be sent to jail at that time.

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Neama Rahmani, former federal prosecutor and president of the West Coast Trial Lawyers firm in California, says the non-jail options are most likely. He said in an interview with Newsweek that Merchan appears reticent to jail Trump, as he declined to do so when Trump violated his gag order 10 times. Rahmani also pointed out the difficulty with jailing a former president.

“Incarceration with Secret Service protection is even less likely and a logistical nightmare,” he said.

Regardless of sentencing, Trump is likely to appeal, and likely to be free while the appeal winds its way through the courts, according to the New York Times. And in fact, on Monday, Trump’s lawyers argued to delay the sentencing further, as his team attempts to get the case sent to federal court, Newsweek reported.

There is at least one person who is arguing for Trump to be sent to jail: Stormy Daniels herself. In June, she told the UK tabloid the Mirror, how she’d like to see Trump sentenced.

“I think he should be sentenced to jail and some community service working for the less fortunate, or being the volunteer punching bag at a women’s shelter,” she said.

“I don’t know what the sentencing could be or what Trump will even understand. It’s like when you have a child, and sometimes you take the electronics away from them, but if your child is very artistic, they don’t. They don’t care. They’ll just go colour their colouring books, and then you have another child that, you know, they don’t want to go outside. You gotta ground them or like take away electronics or don’t let them have dessert. You have to find the punishment that not just matches the crime, but is fair and just, and that impacts that particular person. Who knows what that is with Trump,” Daniels added.

Former President Donald Trump suggested Democrats put President Joe Biden back in play as the nominee a day before the scheduled debate with Vice President Kamala Harris by claiming Harris was doing poorly in the polls, asking “How about a Biden comeback?”

On Monday, Trump posted to his social media platform Truth Social, calling out Harris’ Saturday afternoon campaign stop at Penzeys Spices in Pittsburgh.

“Comrade Kamala Harris goes to an ultra Left Wing, Trump Hating, spice shop, which I hear has terrible, overpriced product, and calls for ‘unity.’ As people begin to realize that she is a Marxist, FAR MORE LIBERAL than Crazy Bernie Sanders, or even Elizabeth ‘Pocahontas’ Warren, her poll numbers are beginning to crash. Who are they going to put in next? How about a Biden comeback?” Trump wrote.

READ MORE: Trump Late Night Rant Signals Plan to Evade Harris Debate as Rules Come Back Into Play

Penzeys Spices is a Wisconsin-based chain of spice stores that has gone viral in the past for making anti-Trump statements, according to the Tufts Daily. The store has sold a “January 6 Box” of spices which included blends named “Justice” and “Outrage.” Penzeys has also posted signs in its windows, including a “Welcome Future Fake Electors” sign at its Milwaukee location during the Republican National Convention in the city. Its website even has a page titled “About Republicans” slamming the party.

Though Trump is likely accurate in calling Penzey’s Spices “Trump Hating,” his other claims are more suspect. Harris is much closer to the center than Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA). Both Sanders and Warren are regarded as progressive, while Harris has been labeled a “reliable ally of the Democratic establishment” by the New York Times.

While Harris’ political momentum has stalled in the most recent polling, according to Politico, it hasn’t reversed, and the outlet reports that she’s still gaining popularity. NPR has also pointed to Harris’ previous debate performances and her past as a prosecutor as boons in Tuesday’s debate that could put her above Trump.

But regardless of whether she wins or loses the debate, it would be difficult for her to do as poorly as Biden did during his June 27 debate with Trump. Less than a month after that disastrous debate, Biden exited the race. Though Trump ultimately agreed to tomorrow’s debate with Harris, Trump made an attempt to change the venue to Fox News from ABC, and even initially pulled out before changing his mind.