During the 2024 presidential race, Joe Rogan was often described as "Trump-curious." The vodcast host endorsed Donald Trump, but he isn't a straight-down-the-line MAGA Republican. And he has been highly critical of Trump's immigration policies, even comparing U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids to "Gestapo" tactics. Now, according to The Atlantic's Michael Scherer, things are getting "messy" between the Rogan camp and a Trump official who could end up heading the U.S Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

The skirmish, according to Scherer, involves the psychedelic drug ibogaine.

"The world's most popular podcaster, Joe Rogan, reached out privately in April to the world's most powerful man, Donald Trump, to discuss the healing power of ibogaine, a psychedelic made from the root bark of a Central African shrub that researchers are studying as a treatment for addiction and trauma," Scherer reports in The Atlantic. "Trump responded by text, 'Sounds great. Do you want FDA approval? Let's do it,' Rogan announced, weeks later, when he stood behind the president in the Oval Office for the signing of an executive order on psychedelic therapies. 'It was literally that quick.' But it wasn't that simple."

Scherer continues, "After hearing from Rogan, the president told his team at the Department of Health and Human Services to change the policy, and the team sent a draft executive order to the White House Domestic Policy Council. That's when things got messy. In the days that followed, Rogan's allies engaged in battle with a mid-level White House health adviser, Dr. Heidi Overton. As a deputy assistant to the president who focuses on health policy, Overton ran a process to revise the draft in coordination with other stakeholders, including the Departments of Justice and Veterans Affairs."

Supporters of the Make America Health Again (MAHA) movement, according to Scherer, were "furious" and believed that Overton "had undermined Trump's own desires." Overton, Bloomberg News reported in late June, was being considered to head the U.S. Food & Drug Administration (FDA).

"The friction, which has not been previously reported, became so intense that Rogan and W. Bryan Hubbard, the CEO of Americans for Ibogaine — a nonprofit that champions the drug's therapeutic benefits — threatened to pull out of the signing ceremony if they did not have a say in Overton's final edits, according to three people familiar with the events," the Atlantic journalist explains. "Overton's efforts on the Domestic Policy Council shrank the roughly 1400-word HHS (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services) draft to about 900 words by the time Trump signed his name."

Scherer noted the intensity of the conflict in a July 24 post on X, writing, "Joe Rogan and his allies threatened to not show for Oval Office signing ceremony on psychedelics this spring, amid fight with White House staffer now a finalist to run FDA."

A MAHA supporter, interviewed on condition of anonymity, was highly critical of Overton — describing her as an "unelected bureaucrat" who "sought to use her pen to override the intended exercise of presidential power."

But White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt defended Overton, telling The Atlantic that "the president adores her."

White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles defended Overton as well and told The Atlantic, "Any suggestion that Heidi Overton or the Domestic Policy Council is slowing things down is being made by an uninformed person. Things move at a light speed in this administration."

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