Joe Rogan: A Conspiracist for the Trump Era
He pretends to be a non-partisan truth-seeker while flooding the zone with MAGA lies
Joe Rogan, a UFC commentator and comedian who hosts the most popular podcast in the United States and possibly the world, has developed a reputation as an anti-tribal and fiercely independent voice who is beholden to no political party or faction. In the eyes of his regular guest Jordan Peterson, Rogan is “the most powerful journalist who’s ever lived,” and he has managed to gain such broad appeal because he “just asks questions.” But the notion that Rogan is an honest broker of information who has an overriding commitment to the truth is absurd. In fact, he has only one consistent mission: attempting to debunk mainstream media narratives by entertaining conspiracy theories. He’s more of a populist than a non-partisan—and he’s definitely no truth-seeker.
Nothing illustrates this better than his warmly favorable treatment of both Donald Trump and RJK Jr., along with the parade of other cranks he features who peddle outlandish conspiracy theories and constantly congratulate themselves for being “anti-establishment” or “heterodox.” The effect, whether he intends it or not, is to overwhelm our epistemic infrastructure and pave the way for dangerous populist demagogues.
The Most Popular MAGA Pundit in the World
In his much-discussed interview with Trump last week, Rogan’s approach was to first encourage Trump to air his typical barrage of conspiratorial falsehoods—and then to endorse them himself. Take, for example, the segments on elections and voting, which were always shaped by Rogan’s MAGA-friendly framing. When Rogan told Trump that “a lot of weirdness ... was going on during the 2020 elections,” he was basically affirming Trump’s Big Lie and ignoring the fact that the 2020 election was the most scrutinized contest in American history. The rest predictably followed:
Trump claimed that “old-fashioned ballot screwing” had taken place, such as “people ... dropping in phony votes.” Rogan agreed.
Trump claimed “the Russia hoax” swayed the 2020 election. Rogan agreed.
Trump claimed the temporary suppression of the Hunter Biden laptop story also swayed the election. Rogan agreed.
Trump claimed Democrats weaponized the justice system against him. Rogan agreed.
Trump alleged that Democrats are opposed to certain forms of voter ID “because they want to cheat.” Rogan responded: “It doesn’t make sense any other way.” Voter ID laws are a solution in search of a problem, given that there is little evidence of widespread voter fraud, but Rogan preferred to attribute to Democrats the most sinister motivation imaginable. Rogan also said “mail-in ballots are a problem” and worried about vote-counting machines getting hacked—a version of a famously discredited conspiracy theory for which Fox News had to pay $787 million in a settlement with a voting systems firm for pushing it on its airwaves.
When the discussion turned to the topic of denying election results, it was the perfect opportunity for Rogan, the interviewer renowned by fans as a tenacious truth-seeker, to press the most high-profile election denialist American politics has ever seen. That’s not what happened. Instead of challenging Trump’s years-long insistence that he actually won the 2020 election, or his enlisting of attorneys like Sidney Powell to claim communist-designed voting machines rigged the contest against him, or his attempts to overthrow the election by sending fake slates of electors to Washington, or his incitement of an insurrectionary mob at the U.S. Capitol to halt the certification of the vote, Rogan brought up ... the Russia investigation. Democrats are especially prone to denying election results, he told the man who believes he beat Hillary Clinton in the popular vote in 2016 and Joe Biden in the Electoral College vote in 2020.
But the segment on elections and voting wasn’t only about 2020. Consider their exchange about Haitian migrants in Springfield, Ohio. After Trump declared that Democrats had turned Springfield into a “horror show” by “dropping” immigrants into the community, Rogan’s follow-up wasn’t to press Trump for corroboration, given that state Republican officials said this was nonsense and have asked Trump to stop endangering an innocent minority group. Instead, Rogan asked Trump to hypothesize about what must be motivating Democrats to allow a flood of immigrants into the country. As if that was not a loaded enough question, Rogan then proceeded to say this: “One of the things that’s been very clear is that they’ve moved a large percentage of these migrants—they’re coming across the border illegally—[into] swing states.” Never mind that the Haitians in Springfield are legal. In one fell swoop, Rogan managed to seamlessly transition from asking a question about immigration to asserting the Great Replacement conspiracy theory that Democrats are importing illegal voters to steal elections—exactly Trump’s view.
Over the course of a three-hour interview—aside from the occasional question that briefly touched on an issue that might make Trump uncomfortable, like the deficit during this first term—Rogan never really pushed back. He allowed Trump to make one absurd claim after another, such as his assertion that he’s up 30 points with young voters (a recent Harvard poll found that he’s down 20 points among registered voters under 30 years old). This was the pattern throughout the conversation: Rogan would ask a question with an ideologically friendly bent, decline to challenge Trump’s disastrous attempt to answer it, and then ultimately land in the same place as Trump. If, as Rogan asserted, “the media ... acts as a propaganda arm for the Democratic Party,” what are we supposed to call this?
The RFK Jr. Walkback
Although it would be hard to tell given the sweetly welcoming tenor of the Trump interview, Rogan’s preferred presidential pick was actually someone else. In an August podcast, he declared RFK Jr. his favorite candidate: “He’s the only one that makes sense to me.” Rogan’s assessment was that RFK Jr.—who believes childhood vaccines cause autism, HIV might not cause AIDS, and that public health measures during the Covid pandemic were comparable to the Holocaust—is “more reasonable and intelligent” than the other candidates. He credited RFK Jr.’s book, The Real Anthony Fauci, with opening his eyes to a vast conspiracy in which pharmaceutical companies and the U.S. government are pumping the population full of unnecessary drugs for profit.
His “endorsement” of RFK Jr. generated an intense backlash among the large number of Trump supporters who listen to the Joe Rogan Experience, along with bitter criticism from Trumpist pundits. MAGA luminary Catturd, for instance, called Rogan a “fucking idiot.” Before long, the discourse shifted to MAGA’s reaction to Rogan’s endorsement: “MAGA Chaos Ensues as Joe Rogan Refuses to Endorse Trump,” declared The New Republic. “Trump & MAGA turn on Joe Rogan after praise for RFK Jr,” ran a headline on CNN. On Truth Social, Trump posted: “It will be interesting to see how loudly Joe Rogan gets BOOED the next time he enters the UFC Ring???”
The MAGA revolt activated Rogan’s sense of self-preservation. “For the record,” he announced alongside a video clip of his comments about RFK Jr., “this isn’t an endorsement. This is me saying that I like RFK Jr. as a person, and I really appreciate the way he discusses things with civility and intelligence.” Rogan also took part in the familiar MAGA ritual of groveling and flattery after offending Trump: “I also think Trump raising his fist and saying ‘fight!’ after getting shot is one of the most American fucking things of all time.” Now that RFK Jr. has dropped out of the race and endorsed Trump—who is assuring that the anti-vax conspiracist will definitely be a part of his administration, with a focus on public health—Rogan no longer has to choose between the two.
Rogan closed his clarification/apology about RFK Jr. with his standard refrain whenever he generates controversy: “I’m not the guy to get political information from.” But he is the guy many Americans get their political information from, and he has become increasingly partisan during this election cycle. That’s precisely why Trump was so bothered, and why RFK Jr. was so profusely thankful: Rogan’s voice carries weight, and no amount of but-I’m-just-a-comic evasions can change that.
Rogan’s embrace of RFK Jr. isn’t ultimately down to his personal charms—Rogan is dependably supportive of health and wellness conspiracism just generally. During the Covid pandemic, the Joe Rogan Experience was among the most formidable engines of misinformation about the disease, alternative treatments, and vaccine safety, with appearances by conspiracists like Bret Weinstein, Robert Malone, and Pierre Kory. He regularly invites conspiracists onto his show to pump out hours of uninterrupted anti-vaccine propaganda. Alex Jones—one of the most prolific and notorious conspiracy theorists of our time, who accused the grieving families of Sandy Hook victims of being crisis actors who were part of a plot to take Americans’ guns—has been a guest many times. Conspiracy theorists like Weinstein who rant about the horrors of vaccine injuries, the life-saving properties of ivermectin, and the totalitarian machinations of the WHO for long stretches, are honored guests.
Rogan’s Selective Skepticism
One reason Rogan boosters like Peterson use words like “humble” to describe him is because he doesn’t regularly challenge guests he’s broadly aligned with. He rolls out the red carpet and lets them deliver long, self-indulgent speeches and then fawns over them. He’s amiable and doesn’t spew off-putting, angry soliloquies like Alex Jones. During his most recent appearance, Peterson would rant for 20 unbroken minutes at a time making claims like “globalist utopians are willing to sacrifice the poor for the sake of the planet.” What was Rogan’s response? High praise for his “nuanced, complex perspective” on the subject.
These aren’t one-offs. This is Rogan’s modus operandi. When Bret Weinstein showed up to discuss what he believes is an “invasion” of Chinese migrants at the southern border, Rogan demanded to know why the Biden administration is “letting it happen.” Weinstein suggested that vaccine mandates in the U.S. military were meant to expel soldiers who think for themselves and replace them with immigrants who are “capable of acting on behalf of tyranny against Americans.” Rogan’s response? “Holy shit. Then you have a real coup.”
It isn’t that Rogan never challenges his guests—he certainly does it if they try and dispel some of this nonsense and suggest, say, that the risks posed by Covid outweigh those of vaccines. But Rogan’s selectiveness operates both at the front end—overwhelmingly booking guests whose openness to conspiratorial thinking matches his own—and at the back end, being a more combative questioner toward those disinclined to take the conspiratorial line.
Heterodox Media Has a Right-Wing Conspiracism Problem
Rogan has presented his podcast as a counterweight to the “establishment” media. That means he regularly platforms figures that traditional outlets won’t because they don’t meet basic journalistic standards. He evades accountability by always pointing out that he’s a mere comedian and entertainer, a clever rhetorical shield. This grants him the latitude to speculate as recklessly as he wants, indulge some of the wildest conspiracy theories around, and consistently get basic facts wrong while allowing his guests to do the same. So long as his audience laps it up, he has no reason to approach things any differently. But that’s also why the backlash from Trump’s MAGA base was so threatening to him: that’s an occasion in which he risked losing his audience.
Rogan has become wholly captured by his audience even as he maintains the pretense that he’s a fair-minded and inquisitive political observer who is capable of seeing through what he regards as the sinister machinations and distortions of both major political parties. That’s why, when the wave of MAGA resentment came crashing down on him when he endorsed RFK Jr., he caved.
Kamala Harris’ supporters never expected Rogan’s endorsement, and there’s no Democratic equivalent of Catturd to chastise Rogan for supporting a third-party candidate. Nor does Rogan have much of a non-right audience. So all his incentives lean in the direction of becoming a right-wing conspiracy theorist—especially since, right now, there are more conspiracies on the right.
Indeed, there are few, if any, MAGA conspiracy theories that Rogan hasn’t amplified. Last year, he suggested that Jan. 6 was a “false flag” operation in which “intelligence agencies were involved in provoking people into the Capitol.” He defended Arizona’s Republican senatorial candidate, Kari Lake’s, debunked claims about voter fraud in her state’s gubernatorial race: “All that Kari Lake stuff in Arizona they tried to dismiss, it doesn’t look like that’s invalid. It looks like there’s real fraud there.”
Rogan, of course, isn’t the only one. There is an entire industry of self-styled “heterodox” thinkers who have gravitated toward the right. Peterson, Rogan’s frequent guest, was once merely critical of campus identity politics and other forms of “wokeness.” He’s now a committed political partisan indistinguishable from a standard-fare Fox News commentator (e.g., characterizing Harris as “a master of chaos and deception” who is full of “envy” and “spite”; or describing Trump’s indictments as a “horrible” form of political “persecution”). Rogan and Peterson are part of an alternative media community providing an intellectual permission structure for people to support MAGA under the guise of “independent thought,” “heterodoxy,” or “classical liberalism.”
But Rogan plays a crucial role in this right-wing alternative media ecosystem. Because he has always presented himself as non-partisan, millions of listeners trust that he doesn’t have an agenda. Heterodox intellectuals and influencers like Peterson constantly decry traditional media as captured by elite interests, and they present shows like the Joe Rogan Experience as the alternative. But when Rogan and his guests shower praise on Trump and relentlessly attack his political opponents, they prove that they aren’t the anti-establishment crusaders they claim to be—they’re just supporting one establishment over another.
In many ways, Rogan is the perfect embodiment of the Trump-era podcaster. As polarization has surged, the collective value Americans place on objective journalism and fact-based discourse has diminished. Trump can insist that the 2020 election was stolen and claim that the rioters who beat up cops on Jan. 6 were patriotic and peaceful, and if your animus toward the “establishment” is strong enough, it can lead you—as millions of Americans have been led—to accept these claims at face value. And Rogan can help you do so, the actual facts be damned. Trump has weaponized a fractious and exhausted political culture by spouting so many falsehoods that it’s difficult for people to distinguish between what’s real and fake. In Steve Bannon’s words, he has flooded the zone with shit—and Rogan has helped him uncork the sewer pipe.
Enabling Authoritarianism
After the assassination attempt on Trump, Rogan reposted a video published by Weinstein accusing the Biden administration of “inviting the murder of their political opponents.” Weinstein also condemned what he described as the “ruthless weaponization of the courts and the abridgment of First Amendment rights, all in an effort to avoid a free and fair election.” Like many in the MAGA movement, Rogan has convinced himself that Democrats pose the gravest threat to American democracy. Why is it that so many in the alternative media are willing to ignore the blatant authoritarianism of the Republican nominee for president? These figures say they’re fighting a corrupt establishment, but a former president and major party nominee—who has been a political force in the United States for nearly a decade—is the very definition of a corrupt establishment, at this stage.
One explanation for this ostensible contradiction is that Trump’s norm-violating behavior is the point for Rogan and much of his audience. When Trump declares “I am your retribution” and vows to purge the “deep state,” it’s exhilarating to those who consider themselves crusaders against the liberal establishment—but who have fully embraced the new MAGA establishment. It doesn’t matter that Trump is the most powerful Republican in the country who has remade the party in his image—to his “heterodox” supporters, he’s a permanent outsider who drives all the right people crazy.
Rogan is a populist, just like Trump. He has amassed a huge audience by presenting himself as an everyman who isn’t captured by elite interests and tells it like it is. But like other populists, Rogan uses the language of liberalism to undermine liberalism. He trumpets his commitment to free expression as an excuse to host cranks and grifters who spread paranoid conspiracy theories, increase partisan hatred, and contribute to the already-dire lack of trust in liberal institutions. He claims to be concerned about the state of American democracy, but he supports evidence-free assertions about rigged elections, promulgates conspiracy theories about Jan. 6, and refuses to hold Trump accountable for his attempt to steal an election. He constantly complains about the lack of standards and objectivity in traditional media, but he holds himself to no standards whatsoever and provides a platform to countless conspiracists who are even less scrupulous than him. That’s what makes him so dangerous.
Rogan’s politics have become a mirror image of MAGA conspiracism, and if this fact wasn’t obvious before he sat down with Trump, it’s obvious now. Authoritarian demagogues like Trump recognize the immense value of a platform like Rogan’s—when you’re flooding the zone with shit, it’s helpful that the most popular podcaster in the world has no sense of smell.
© The UnPopulist, 2024
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“ I didn’t Read too far beyond the opening salvos”
Perfect. No notes. You are clearly a free thinker.
What a ridiculous premise this article is written on.
Rogan's open forum discussion allowed the truth of the pandemic to be discussed when NOBODY else was allowing it. People were LITERALLY DEPLATFORMED for questioning the mainstream narrative, which ended up being false and almost everything Rogan questioned helped uncover the conspiracy.
The lab-creation / leab leak theory, the efficacy and safety of the Covid vaccines, the Hunter Biden laptop story suppression, the suppression of truthful information by the Biden administration across all social media - these ALL ended up being lies supported by the Democratic party, and discussions were suppressed except for a few places like Rogan's show and then Twitter after Musk bought it.
Peter Daszak's "unanimous" false declaration through one of the most reputable medical science publications The Lancet? Supported by Dems, Fauci and Social Media and it ended up being a fabricated fiction, corrupting the reputation of The Lancet.
You people should be ASHAMED of yourselves for continuing to push lies and suppress truths while smearing people like Musk and Rogan with slanted opinion pieces which serve no other purpose than to denigrate good people.
And yes, the Hunter Biden laptop story suppression absolutely affected the outcome of the 2020 election. But don't investigate WHY it was suppressed. Don't question who was actually behind the lie.
Just blame the messenger who helped expose the lie. This is like Communist Russia all over again.
Ashamed of yourselves.