Penn Jillette on What Trump is Really Like | Joe Rogan

Well, yeah, see I, you know, I got a lot of, I got a lot of shit for this. And I talked about it a little bit on my podcast, but you know, I was in the room with Trump a lot. You know, I did two tours. I did two tours of duty. Tell me about that. What is that like? Because I was supposed to do that show and I passed on it. Yeah. I was like, I don't want to live in New York for three months or whatever it was. Yeah. It just seemed like a... It's wise either way. It was a, it was a primetime television show. So it sold tickets and that is our job. Right. And that's what we do. And I went on with one idea in my head, you know, Annie Duke, you know, the poker player? Yeah. She had been on the year before and I said, why am I going on? I mean, I'm not going to sell tickets and that's, that's just a done deal. But why am I going on? What's my real goal? And she said, go on and show that atheists can be kind. That'll be your only goal for the whole show. Oh. Because they're going to jump on you for being an atheist and they'll jump all over you for that and just show that you're the one that gets mad the least. So the one that you're, you're the nicest guy on there and you're the hardcore atheist. And I went, okay, that's a good goal. But then you sit in the room and I don't know how well you know the president of the United States. I don't want to know him at all. Yeah. You spend about two or three hours every other day sitting in a room across the table like this with a table you can't put your hands on. Why can't you put your hands on? Because it might mar it. Oh, that's hilarious. Put a hand print on it. They literally tell you don't put your hands on the table. Don't put your hands on the table. And you have to sit up straight. And the camera, if you're like the team captain, which by the way, they hate it if you call them team captain, they like to have it, you know, some sort of business jargon. And you're in a set. And that's the thing that everybody else on the show would say, we're going into the boardroom now. And I'd say, no, we're going onto the boardroom set. So it wasn't a real boardroom? No, of course not. Was it in the sound stage? It was in the Trump Towers, but they'd taken over a floor and NBC guts it and puts up this shit. And then you got your camera, that's your hero camera that's over your shoulder that's shooting Trump. So you can't lean into the camera. And they want a little piece of you so you can't lean out of the camera. So that you've got about two hours where you sit up straight and you can't move side to side and you can't put your hands on the table and you listen to someone speak for two hours that they're going to try to edit out to get three minutes where he sounds okay. Okay. What does he have to say for two hours? He will talk. He would talk. I mean, things obviously have changed, but he would talk about, uh, I was reading this blog on the internet that said I didn't sell my property for enough and I bought it for $3 million and I sold it for 4 million. Isn't that a profit? Isn't that a profit? What do you think? Isn't that a profit? Yeah, that would be a million dollars profit. Well, they said I sold it for too less, too little. Okay. Who was this? There's somebody on the internet. Okay. So you know, he'd be arguing in front of us with perhaps a 18 year old guy on the internet who thought that Donald Trump should have made more from a real estate deal. And this is something he really concentrates on. He seems to, um... Still to this day. Yeah, obsessed with what anybody says about him anytime. That's so odd. And I thought, and I want to say this very clearly, um, I thought he was wonderful at his job. You know, if you had someone who was actually a business person on that show, it would be the worst show in the world because Bill Gates would make proper decisions. Right. And there'd be no surprises. You want someone capricious and crazy with no filter. That's what you want. Right. And that's what we got. So he makes arbitrary decisions that you try, you know, the human brain tries desperately to make those make sense and that ends up being some kind of entertainment. And so I actually, actually Donald Trump Jr. said to me, you know, of all the people we've had on this show, you seem like the only person who's ever liked my father. He said, you actually seem to like him. And I said, you know, I have a fascination and a respect and a affection for people who are able to get out of their filters. And I said, some people do that with pure genius, like Bob Dylan. Some people do it with bravery, like Lenny Bruce. Some people do it with drugs, you know, Neil Young, perhaps, Jimi Hendrix, perhaps. And most people do it with a mixture of stuff. But I said, Thelonious Monk said, the genius is the one who is most like himself. And I said, with some sort of mental problems coupled with greed and a lack of compassion, your father has somehow found a way to throw off the filters. And I will listen to Tiny Tim talk on tape for hours, because I like that little bit of Asperger's and all that other stuff. I'm not assuming, I'm not qualified to, but I'm saying that it's possible. It's possible. For sure. I can hear him talk forever. I can listen to Lenny Bruce. You know, Hal Willner has those hundreds of hours of him just ranting onto his tape. I think I don't like people on drugs that much, but boy, I do. And I listen to Lenny Bruce talk forever. And Donald Trump had the dark side of that. You know, it was almost like when I was hitchhiking around the country and, you know, homeless and shit, and you'd end up at a biker place and, you know, some clubhouse and some guy's just holding court and ranting. I've always been interested in the people who were out on the margins, you know? And what Donald Jr. took as affection, I guess was a bit of affection, but it's also that if you have thrown off some filters, I'll listen to you talk. And so that was that. It was very, very strange. And then I really did spend a lot of time kind of sticking up for Donald Trump, saying, yeah, there's interesting stuff there. And yeah, he's crazy and he's venal and he's empty. You know, really weird stuff that you've never seen before. You have never seen someone who has never laughed sincerely and never made a joke. Never laughed sincerely. No, he will laugh in a bully way. Ha ha, you look kind of fat, Joe. Really? Yeah, he'll do that. But he won't laugh at himself. Oh, no. And also, but never even a joke. But he says funny things on Twitter. Did you see the thing he did on Twitter the other day where he put a picture of Trump Tower in Greenland and he said, I promise not to do this? Yeah, yeah. I mean, I laughed. That was funny. Just a giant Trump Tower in the middle of Greenland. I never saw it. I mean, I saw that too. But you never saw him in person. I never saw him in person. I also never saw him showing the enjoyment or understanding of music. And those two things are two things that I connect with people very much on.