America's Joe Rogan Problem
Male Podcasters like Joe Rogan, Theo Von, and Andrew Schulz might have helped Trump win the election. Now most of them say they were fooled.
Opinion.
Joe Rogan, Theo Von, and Andrew Schulz. America’s most popular male podcasters rallied around Trump in 2024, mostly based on vibes. Now, as the consequences trickle in, most of these powerful men are turning their backs on Trump, saying, “I didn’t vote for this.”
This statement is not just simply untrue; it reveals the character and nature of America’s most popular male podcast shows. These men are not only refusing to accept the consequences of their own actions. They are refusing to admit that they helped create America’s most dire political crisis of the 21st century.
The Battle for Young Voters
It’s 2024, and the election is only a few months away. It’s an election of two contrary characters. Kamala Harris, a former prosecutor with years of experience in all three branches of government, faces off against Donald Trump, a convicted felon who tried to overturn a fair election just three years earlier.
Against all odds and moral judgment, Trump became the Republican nominee once more, turning a simple election for Republicans (Nikki Haley dominated General Election polls) into a close call. Why? Because Trump’s list of outrageous scandals and criminal offenses is so long that it would disqualify him from most actual jobs.
That is also the reason Trump refused to do interviews with any news network that wasn’t Fox News or even further on the right, breaking years of precedent. Kamala Harris answered questions, even those from a historically hostile network like Fox News. Trump, however, did not expose himself to a fair interview about all his scandals. The only time he did, during the debate against Harris, he embarrassed himself on national television, which caused his poll numbers to slump. He refused to take part in a second debate, but there was a voter group that doesn’t follow traditional news as much: Young Voters. Young voters can decide elections, and they get their news from other sources, like Podcasts. In order to make gains among young voters, a group that voted against him in large numbers twice, Trump had to expose himself to questions on America’s most popular podcast shows.
An Embarrassing Farce
It is crucial to understand that most of the podcasts he went on did not deal with politics regularly. Podcasts like The Theo Von Show have built their audience through comedic entertainment, not through a structured analysis of political events.
Nevertheless, if you get to interview a former President of the United States, who is the central figure in the debate about America’s character, you probably should try to talk about important issues, preferably after doing some solid research. Alex Cooper, host of the podcast “Call Her Daddy”, showed how such an informative interview can be conducted without losing its appeal to regular listeners. Her podcast usually features conversations about sexuality and dating, and when she interviewed Kamala Harris, she connected the show’s character with important issues of the 2024 election, like abortion rights. The interview proved that podcasters who are not trained journalists can sit down with politicians and talk about important matters with substance in a way that connects to the younger audience.
When Donald Trump sat down with Theo Von or Andrew Schulz, all that substance was missing. That is particularly disturbing given that Trump was a highly disputed figure running for President. A man who was, among other things, found guilty of 34 felonies by a jury in New York just a few months earlier. Many journalists likely dreamed of interviewing Donald Trump in a fair and unscripted session ahead of the election. There are just too many great questions you can ask him. Questions that Fox News won’t ask.
Why did you try to overturn the 2020 election by installing fake electors and asking the Secretary of State of Georgia for “11.000 votes”? Why did the Secret Service have to forcefully stop you from joining the January 6th riot? Why did you say COVID would just go away in April of 2020? Why did you call Epstein a “terrific guy” and joke about his taste in younger women? Why did you tell the porn star you slept with that she reminds you of your daughter, Ivanka?
Those are just some of the questions that I would ask him. You don’t have to be a journalist to know about these issues. Some, like Trump’s attempt to steal the 2020 election, are public knowledge; others take about five minutes of research. Even if these podcasters were just too afraid to ask such, admittedly uncomfortable, questions, which is unlikely, they could have asked about anything specific. What is your healthcare plan? Kamala Harris wants to relieve new home owners, what is your plan for the middle class? Why do you want to raise tariffs if all economists agree that that would raise prices?
But no, these male podcasters weren’t interested in any substantial conversation. They rode the wave of pro-Trump vibes among young men, endorsing Trump to their masses. Their interviews were a collection of anecdotes, softball questions, and friendly jokes, all of which gave Trump ample opportunity to repeat his talking points that Democrats ruined everything, without ever having to explain anything in detail.
Trump’s plans were clear ahead of the 2024 election. Project 2025 was out there for anyone to read. Now, Trump is doing everything Harris warned us he would do. He is doing everything the media said he planned to do, and he is doing everything his team said he would do. That’s why no Trump voter gets to say “I didn’t vote for this”. Theo Von or Andrew Schulz, who endorsed Trump to their audience of millions of young male voters, don’t get to say that either. They voted for and endorsed mass deportations, crackdowns on free speech, high tariffs, and they also endorsed Epstein’s best friend. The question is, did they do that knowingly because it promised them views and success, or do they just not know anything about any issue? Unfortunately, there is a strong case for the latter, because these famous male podcasters follow the example of the most famous male podcaster in the US, Joe Rogan. And if anyone has ever watched any Joe Rogan clip, they’ll know that facts, research, or education were never important.
The Joe Rogan Problem
Joe Rogan is America’s most prominent podcaster. He draws about up to 20 million listeners per episode, 70-80% of them are men. His rise in the 2010s has inspired many other male podcasters like Schulz and Von. Both Schulz and Von primarily focus on comedic and relaxed talk-episodes, which can be offered as an excuse - albeit a very poor one - for their softball interviews with Trump. Joe Rogan, on the other hand, has talked politics before. His podcast “The Joe Rogan Experience” prides itself on inviting experts and people from all kinds of fields onto the show. Here, the listeners can learn about anything from space, history, to politics. Unfortunately, these years of interviews with, at times, renowned experts, have not made Rogan a good interviewer. On the contrary, they prove just how unqualified he is to talk about complicated matters. How so?
Joe Rogan doesn’t seem to study for the topics he talks about with his guests, apart from preparing a few questions. He has no expertise on the matters the guests discuss and therefore has no means to check the accuracy of the claims that are made on his show, even though it is unbelievably easy to fact-check or look up claims. In his Interviews, Joe Rogan and by that the quality of his show, are completely at the mercy of the guest he has on. If the guest he has on is an expert, things tend to go well. For example, he invited Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson to talk about physics, aliens, and the universe. The interview is watchable because Tyson is a renowned physicist and is well educated in the topics the two discussed, but Rogan doesn’t have any control over that.
If another guest, who is not a scientist, comes on the show and makes wild claims about the universe, Rogan should have the duty to check the claims for his twenty million viewers. Unfortunately, he doesn’t seem to care. An example of this is when actor Mel Gibson came on the show and the two talked about climate change. Now, it is perfectly okay to talk about political and scientific matters when chatting with actors, but Rogan should have checked Gibson’s claims about climate change, which go against what all scientists in the world say, but he didn’t. When Mel Gibson ridiculously argued that melting Arctic ice doesn’t cause sea levels to rise because water doesn’t spill from a glass when you put ice in it (Yes, he actually said that), Rogan had the chance to be a real journalist. He had the chance to think and refute that insane claim, but he didn’t. Instead, he said “Yeah” and laughed. He might not know a lot about anything, but even Joe Rogan can look stuff up on the Internet. By refusing to do that, he exposes millions of young listeners to insane, and sometimes even dangerous, lies.
With that knowledge, you probably guess how the Trump interview went. An interview that has 60 million views on YouTube alone. Like Schulz’s and Von’s interview with Trump, it was a friendly chat with almost no critical questions, during which Trump made at least 32 false claims. That equals about one false claim every 5 minutes, or at least one false claim for each issue the two talked about (the interview took three hours). While Rogan did ask Trump to explain his claims about the 2020 election - Trump went on to say that he has documents to prove it was rigged - he never asked any follow-ups or challenged Trump on his fraudulent claims. This stretched across all the issues the two discussed. From tariffs replacing income taxes, the damage of COVID-19 vaccines, or the fight against ISIS. Rogan repeatedly failed to properly follow up on false claims. In all fairness, he did push back against Trump’s claims about an issue he cares about personally: the environment.
Did he ask about Trump’s criminal conviction? No. Did he ask about the comments Trump made regarding his daughter, Ivanka? No. Did he ask about Epstein? No. About the costs of tariffs for consumers? No. About the planned mass deportations? No. About project 2025? No. About sexual assault allegations? No. About January 6th? No
Did he endorse him? Yes.
Devoid of Logic and Facts
Rogan’s chat show is often devoid of facts and detached from reality. Since the COVID pandemic, it has also drifted rightwards as Rogan has repeatedly promoted COVID-related conspiracies.
For Rogan, the Trump endorsement is at least somewhat sensical. If he really drifted towards extreme conspiracy theories during the pandemic and endorses far-right views, why not endorse a far-right, conspiracy-prone president? For podcasters like Theo Von and Andrew Schulz, it looks more dire. Schulz stated that Trump is doing “the exact opposite” of what he said he would do. Either that is a form of denial to avoid a feeling of shame, or Schulz really was that uninformed and uneducated about the election. If so, then why did he enthusiastically endorse Trump? This explanation also begs another question: Why do men, who know so outrageously little, get such an audience? Well, for one, Schulz is following in the footsteps of his idol, Joe Rogan, who doesn’t have a great record of competence either.
Rogan did not understand that melting ice raises sea levels. He mistook an AI-video of Gov. Tim Walz dancing awkwardly as real, even though it was clearly labeled as “AI-generated”. He hosted nazi-apologists who spread lies about World War II, and he failed to push back against them.
British conservative columnist Douglas Murray criticized Rogan for letting people air blatant conspiracies to his audience without any pushback, often under the disclaimer that it’s something interesting to think about.
But I didn’t vote for this!
Whether Joe Rogan regrets his endorsement of Trump is unknown, but Schulz and Von seem to have abandoned Trump because he is doing the things that everyone said he would do. The national guard in US cities, the mass deportation of migrants, the attacks on free speech, and tax cuts for billionaires. Everything was predictable. Andrew Schulz, Theo Von and so many others can tell themselves over and over again that they didn’t vote for this, but that doesn’t make it true. They voted for this, for all of it.
They voted for ICE to kidnap people in broad daylight. They voted for billionaire tax cuts. They voted for health care cuts. They voted for senseless tariffs that are wrecking the economy, and they voted for Epstein’s best friend to bury the files.
Their endorsement of Trump to millions of young voters might have won Trump a very close 2024 election. And if there is even the slightest chance that we are at this dangerous point in history because America’s most famous podcaster doesn’t know that melting ice raises sea levels, well then, what’s the point of it all?
Picture Credits:
Joe Rogan: By Steven Crowder - CC BY 3.0,
Theo Von: By Zach Catanzareti Photo - erik jones theo von, CC BY 2.0,
Andrew Schulz: By Brilliant Idiots - CC BY 3.0