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🌊 The Co-Opting of Joe Rogan
Rogan was the titan of non-partisan media. Is he still?
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By Max Frost
The breaking down of American media into left and right had at least one positive outcome: The rise of non-partisan independent creators.
The list of such creators is long: News outlets like us, YouTube vloggers and journalists like Peter Santenello, and podcasters like Tim Dillon. What all of us have in common is a skepticism of authority and commitment to principles over partisan or corporate interests.
For years, one man sat at the top of this hill: Joe Rogan.
Does he still?
Throughout the last decade, Rogan’s heterodox takes have made him far and away the world’s most popular podcaster. While the mainstream media repeatedly labeled him “conservative,” his listeners knew he was anything but: An atheist psychedelic enthusiast who opposed foreign military intervention and professed a deep skepticism of political institutions, his views did not neatly fit in any political box.
In the same conversations, Rogan would defend the second amendment and criticize wokeness while calling for universal health care and stating his intent to vote for Michelle Obama or Bernie Sanders. While the media jammed Rogan in the “right-wing” box during the pandemic, that was because Rogan hosted critics of lockdowns and skeptics of mRNA vaccines. These people sat along the entire political spectrum.
Rogan did become increasingly critical of progressive policies, including the surge in illegal immigration and participation of trans women in women’s sports. Yet these views, while not progressive, were not Republican – they were in line with large majorities of Americans. As Rogan said in 2022, “I’m not a Trump supporter in any way, shape or form. I’ve had the opportunity to have him on my show more than once, I’ve said no every time…I don’t want to help him, I’m not interested in helping him.”
In the lead-up to the 2024 election, that changed: Viewers watched Rogan become increasingly pro-Trump in real-time, as he became increasingly skeptical of the war in Ukraine, immigration policy, and Democrats’ alleged threat to free speech. In October, Rogan hosted Trump for an unedited three-hour interview (Kamala Harris rejected an invitation to come on the show).
Then, the night before the election, Rogan released an interview with Elon Musk. In it, he said:
I view this election as a turning point, like a fork in the road of destiny. That is incredibly important. You know, I’ve not been politically active until this election. And the reason I’ve been politically active this election is because I think if we don’t elect Trump, I think we will lose democracy in this country. We will lose the two party system. And let me explain why. There’s only like six, six or seven swing states. The margin of victory in those states is small, often like 10 or 20,000 votes. What the Democrat administration has been doing is importing vast numbers of illegals into swing states.
If taken at his word, Rogan therefore endorsed Trump not out of partisan politics, but an interest in democracy.
Yet a non-partisan explanation is tough to find for his most recent interview.
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Editor’s Note
To our Rogan listeners: What do you think? Did the interview seem out of line? Or was it no different than anything else Rogan has done? We’re curious to hear from you. Let us know by replying here.
And as always, find our past five stories here:
We got mixed reviews in response to yesterday’s article on the hypocrisy around the two new books documenting the media’s coverup of Biden’s cognitive decline. We share a few of those emails below.
Myah wrote:
Something I LOVE about your newsletter is the honesty and nonpartisan.
This newsletter sounded like it was from Fox News in Alabama. So disgraceful and not the neutral reporting I look forward to reading.
Editor’s Reply: We appreciate the criticism, but not the put down of the great state of Alabama. And we respectfully disagree: Criticizing an egregious cover-up by left-wing media doesn’t make us Republican anymore than criticizing an egregious cover-up by right-wing media would make us Democrats. If Fox News covered up Trump’s cognitive decline, helping his opponent win the election, and we called out Fox, would that make us liberals? We think no, it would make us honest.
Nick from Vermont wrote:
Wow, this book is the epitome of a tone deaf, almost "laughing in your face" heap of culpability. It's the equivalent of a firefighter who is an arsonist on the weekend, then writes a book about chasing the arsonist. This level of callous disregard for logic or accountability is exactly why many people lack either of those attributes. Keep up the great work, we really appreciate your objectivity.
And Chrystine wrote:
There were incremental moments since Covid that pushed me away from identifying as “liberal.” I recognize the term now not as a belief system but as shorthand for a Democratic political agenda. The bumbling attempt to prop up Biden and position him as a savior was the last paper straw—I face-palmed my way straight to November 2024.
People around me didn’t seem to grasp why the decision felt so hard. As much as I wasn’t sinking my teeth into Trump, I couldn’t accept the farce I was witnessing. Others welcomed Biden as the best option. And once Kamala was set up, they jumped on the “first woman” narrative and left Biden in the dust.
When I mentioned how sad it was what they’d done to him, I got the same recycled lines: shock at his diagnosis or praise for his bravery in stepping aside. No one questioned why the party wouldn’t have spent the last four years looking for a fresh new face to throw into the ring instead.
What I see now sickens me. You can’t have an opinion—let alone a critical one—without being labeled as “the problem.” I’d love to see coverage of how other countries handle multi-party systems, because I’m holding out hope that by the next cycle, the independents will finally enter the chat.
Thank you for reading, and we’ll see you tomorrow.
–Max and Max