Joe Rogan claims he was targeted by presidents

Podcaster Joe Rogan claimed on Wednesday that he was previously targeted by American presidents for spreading COVID-19 misinformation, although he declined to name names.

“Thank God I was on Spotify and thank God Spotify is not an American company,” Rogan said on Wednesday. “And also it helped that I was number one in, like, 90 countries and not number 90 in one country, you know? That helped. That helped a lot.”

He also said that presidents and former presidents were involved and contacted his employer, Spotify, a Swedish streaming service.

“I can’t even talk about it but there was presidents involved and former presidents involved that were contacting Spotify,” Rogan said. “Oh yeah. Trying to get me removed for vaccine misinformation. Yeah. And it turned out to be right. All of it. Not a single [person] apologized.”

Contrary to Rogan’s claim, the COVID-19 vaccines that he regularly denounced as unsafe have proved to be as effective and advisable to use as other conventional vaccines. Meanwhile his claims that COVID-19 can be treated through alternative methods like taking ivermectin have been thoroughly debunked.

“It was nuts, but it didn’t work,” Rogan said. “But they tried. They spent a lot of money, a loooot of money.”

Rogan is a right-wing streamer who has made the news repeatedly during the 2020s for using his platform to promote President Donald Trump, Trump’s supporters and reactionary billionaires like Elon Musk and Peter Thiel. He also makes scientifically inaccurate claims such as saying that man-made climate change is not a threat to the planet and that the pseudoarcheology promulgated by Graham Hancock is real. Additionally, he has repeatedly used his platform to advance racist ideas, such as saying Black brains are fundamentally different from white brains and that white nationalist politics should be normalized.

More recently, Rogan laughed supportively when former football player Josh Hokit won a heavyweight bout over fighter Derrick Lewis at Trump’s recent birthday bash.

"Shout-out to Trump for having the balls to put some s—— like this on," Hokit initially said, then continuing his monologue by claiming that “lastly, Michelle Obama is a man! Am I right, America?"

That was not the first time Rogan laughed along supportively when Hokit made racist comments about a Black woman. In January he did so after Hokit won a separate UFC match and proclaimed “P.S. Brittney Griner is a man!” Rogan laughed so hard that he struggled to hold on to his microphone.

“Brittney Griner catching strays,” Rogan later chuckled, which he then qualified by saying “she doesn’t deserve that.”

Rogan has also tended to laugh off other comments that others find offensive, such as him lightheartedly dismissing Trump comparing himself to Jesus Christ as the product of him using too much AI.