Once a MAGA poster boy, Joe Rogan has been straying from the party line of late. Between publicly slamming Donald Trump on his podcast, The Joe Rogan Experience, over the abandoned Jeffrey Epstein files and calling out the government’s LA immigration raids, Rogan has seemed markedly less right-wing than usual.
Addressing his 14.5 million listeners, Rogan pulled no punches during a scathing rant about the president on his podcast in July. ‘They’ve got videotape and all of a sudden they don’t,’ he said while speaking about the department of justice’s recent announcement that there is ‘no incriminating client list’ in the Epstein files and ‘no credible evidence found that Epstein blackmailed prominent individuals as part of his actions’.
‘Like, what?’ the podcaster continued. ‘Why’d they say there were thousands of hours of tapes of people doing horrible s**t? Why’d they say that? Didn’t Pam Bondi say that?’ In May, US attorney general Bondi told journalists the FBI was reviewing ‘tens of thousands of videos’ that she alleged showed Epstein – the disgraced financier and sex offender who died in prison in 2019 – ‘with children, or child porn’.
It's no secret that Trump and Epstein were good friends for many years. In June, Trump’s former right-hand man, Elon Musk, alleged that Trump himself was on the elusive incriminating client list. At the end of July, The Wall Street Journal also reported that the president was informed by Bondi that his name was one of hundreds of names mentioned in the justice department documents relating to Epstein. However, the White House has continued with its deflection strategy and called the story ‘fake news’.
In other attempts to bury the story, Trump has called the Epstein scandal a ‘waste [of] time and energy’, described Epstein as ‘somebody that nobody cares about’ and has even accused former president Barack Obama of ‘treason’ and attempting to undermine the result of the 2016 presidential election and pitched it as the ‘bigger story’. The latter warranted a rare response from Obama who called out the ‘constant nonsense’ and ‘outrageous claims’ coming from the White House. ‘These bizarre allegations are ridiculous and a weak attempt at distraction,’ he said.
A distraction, or so it seems, from the government’s Epstein U-turn and the ruptures it has caused in the MAGA base. A well-documented friend to foe, Musk has posted or reposted criticisms of Trump’s handling of the Epstein files more than 35 times on X.
Right-wing commentator Tucker Carlson is another MAGA ally turning on Trump. At a political conference in Florida at the start of July, Carlson made a 45-minute speech criticising the Trump administration and the conservative establishment at large. He spoke about everything from the unsatisfying end to the Epstein scandal to the government’s close ties to Israel. While he did not criticise Trump by name, he accused the White House’s attitude towards the Epstein story as something he would expect from the liberals they campaigned against. ‘And I think that’s really at the heart of why the Epstein thing is so distressing,’ he said. ‘The fact the US government, the one I voted for, refused to take my question seriously, and instead said, “case closed; shut up, conspiracy theorist,” was too much for me. And I don’t think the rest of us should be satisfied.’
Carlson’s objections are useful in understanding Rogan’s too. It is not that these former reliable MAGA voices are becoming more liberal, but rather that they feel ignored and undermined by their leader. Unfortunately for Trump, this still results in a weakened support base, even if their politics remain largely aligned.
It’s a far cry from last October when Trump spent three hours on The Joe Rogan Experience, or November when the pair were spotted arm in arm when Trump won the election, or indeed in January when Rogan attended Trump’s inauguration. In the months that have followed, Rogan has called out the government’s ‘horrific’ deportation of a professional make-up artist and hairdresser to a prison in El Salvador, labelled the Trump-sanctioned LA immigration raids ‘insane’ and called out the White House’s hypocrisy on Epstein. He’s even hosted Bernie Sanders on his podcast; someone he endorsed as the Democratic candidate back in January 2020. And in July, he urged the Texas Democrat James Talarico to run for president saying, ‘We need someone who is actually a good person.’
So does all of this mean Rogan is in the midst of a liberal makeover? Or even that he’s returning to his long-buried liberal roots? It’s unlikely. He might have described himself as ‘socially liberal’ in 2019 and been described as ‘libertarian-leaning’ by CNN in 2020, but this is still a man who has called Vladamir Putin ‘impressive’ and hosts majority conservative guests on his podcast where he has a majority conservative audience.
In fact, according to data analysis published on Substack, Rogan hosted a higher proportion of conservative guests on his podcast last year than the three years prior. Between 2020 and 2023, he hosted 65% conservative guests, 27% liberal and 8% libertarian. Last year, he hosted 80% conservative, 12% liberal and 8% libertarian. Whether that was down to the pressure of the election – one where Rogan was openly and proudly in favour of Trump returning to office – or the nature of his show and sway of his audience is unclear. All we know is that, despite locking horns with Trump’s cabinet and ranting about the government on his podcast, there is no real evidence to suggest Rogan is swinging towards the left. At least not yet.
Nikki Peach is a writer at Grazia UK, working across entertainment, TV and news. She has also written for the i, i-D and the New Statesman Media Group and covers all things pop culture for Grazia (treating high and lowbrow with equal respect).