Ever since ur-podcaster Joe Rogan endorsed President Donald Trump in 2024, just before Trump eked out a narrow victory over then-Vice President Kamala Harris, many punch-drunk Democrats have stumbled around looking for a “liberal Joe Rogan” to appeal to his legion of disaffected younger male fans. So amid the current, broader trend of bro-casters expressing buyers’ remorse about their Trump support two years ago, Rogan’s souring on Trump stands out.
On “The Joe Rogan Experience,” the most popular podcaster in America has slammed Trump over Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents’ brutal tactics, even comparing them to the Nazi gestapo. He accused the administration of “trying to gaslight” the public with its lack of transparency over the Epstein files, and he said “a lot of people feel betrayed” by Trump launching a war on Iran despite their somewhat delusional projections that he was the “no new wars” candidate.
Yet even as Rogan has discovered regrets about Trump, he has not extended that critical thinking to one of the primary forces that drew Rogan into Trump’s political orbit in the first place: anti-vaccine crank Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., health and human services secretary.
The disparity between Rogan’s influence and his critical thinking skills is vast.
In August 2024, Rogan declared himself a “fan” of Kennedy, who, at the time, was running for president as an independent on a science-averse “Make America Healthy Again” platform. The podcaster praised the environmental lawyer as “much more reasonable and intelligent” than the rest of the field and lauded Kennedy’s conspiracy theory-laden book, “The Real Anthony Fauci.” (Backlash from Rogan’s MAGA-leaning fanbase, which previously saw Kennedy as a threat to Trump, led the longtime UFC commentator to sheepishly clarify that his praise of Kennedy’s “civility and intelligence” was “not an endorsement.”)
Kennedy appeared on Rogan’s show in February, pleading with him to return to the MAGA fold. Though the podcaster rejected those entreaties, there is no question, however, that Rogan is still MAHA to his core.
This week, Rogan tried to connect a friend receiving an mRNA vaccine and then dying of an aggressive cancer shortly thereafter. He said last month that he would not even speak to his former friend, fellow podcaster and one-time “Intellectual Dark Web” cohort Sam Harris, until Harris admitted he was wrong about Covid-19 vaccines being overwhelmingly safe and effective at preventing serious illness (Harris was not wrong). In May 2025, Rogan absurdly estimated that just the Covid vaccine produced by Pfizer probably caused “a conservative range of 470,000 to 600,000” deaths.
The disparity between Rogan’s influence and his critical thinking skills is vast.
Rogan may have picked up on the vibe shift away from Trump, sensing the historically unpopular president and inveterate liar bamboozled many of his 2024 supporters. He recently declared that many of those still in the MAGA camp represented “a movement of a bunch of dorks.” And good for Rogan for taking the bold stand that it’s bad for a president to send lawless secret police into American cities to commit wanton violence with zero accountability.
But perhaps he should extend that soul-searching to the damage he has done to America by spreading anti-science lies and continuing to boost the societally destructive efforts of the worst Kennedy.
According to a new Politico poll, “A plurality of Americans question the safety of vaccines, support reducing the number administered and believe that people’s right to decide what they put in their bodies is more important than preventing the spread of disease.” Chillingly, Politico reported that 39% of respondents said “they’d rather allow vaccine-preventable diseases like measles [to] return, in order to protect people’s freedom to decide what to put in their bodies,” while 47% “said the return of such diseases wasn’t a risk worth taking.”
Rogan may have picked up on the vibe shift away from Trump, sensing the historically unpopular president and inveterate liar bamboozled many of his 2024 supporters.
The lesson here ought to be that people should not take political guidance from podcasters — no matter their political persuasions — who produce hundreds of hours of content per month, much of it of a nonpolitical nature. The format incentivizes them to take maximalist positions, and they rarely face consequences from their audience for getting it wrong. Typically, they just move on to the next thing.
As for Rogan, it seems like he wants to put some daylight between his Trump endorsement and the sadistic brutality of ICE and Border Patrol, as well as Trump’s misadventure in Iran that has made the theocratic regime more extreme and more influential on the global stage than if Trump had just done nothing. But his most lasting legacy will quite likely be the fallout from his relentless spreading of anti-vaccine brain poison.
When the next measles outbreak makes it to your hometown, call it “The Joe Rogan Experience.”
Anthony L. Fisher is a senior editor and opinion columnist for MS NOW, often covering free speech, civil liberties and extremism. He was previously the senior opinion editor for The Daily Beast and a politics columnist for Business Insider.