Joe Rogan has joined the chorus of podcasters speaking out against President Donald Trump’s attacks on Iran, saying in a recent episode, “It just seems so insane.”
While Rogan doesn’t identify as a Republican or Democrat, he endorsed Trump right before the 2024 election. His endorsement came after Trump appeared on his podcast, The Joe Rogan Experience, which is the most listened to podcast in the U.S., according to Spotify.
Trump said appearing on Rogan’s podcast, which has a large young, male audience, helped secure his election win. The president said during his second inauguration last year that his youngest son, Barron, “knew the youth vote” and told his father, “‘you gotta go out, do Joe Rogan.’”
But since Trump returned to the White House, Rogan has been critical of the president on several issues, including his joint military campaign with Israel against Iran. It’s been over a week since the U.S. and Israel began striking Iran. At least 1,230 people in Iran have been killed in the conflict, according to the Associated Press, and at least seven American service members are dead.
“It just seems so insane based on what he ran on,” Rogan told independent journalist Michael Shellenberger on his show Tuesday. “I mean, this is why a lot of people feel betrayed, right? He ran on ‘No more wars, end these stupid, senseless wars,’ and then we have one that we can’t even really clearly define why we did it.”
Trump claimed in a video after the U.S. began military action in the region that Iran posed an “imminent” threat to the American people due to its “nuclear ambitions” and pursuit of “developing the long range missiles that can now threaten our very good friends and allies in Europe, our troops stationed overseas, and could soon reach the American homeland.”
But a majority of American voters, 55 percent, do not think Iran posed an imminent threat to the U.S. before the strikes, according to a new Quinnipiac University poll.
“It just doesn’t make any sense to me, unless we’re acting on someone else’s interests — like particularly Israel’s interests,” Rogan speculated.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has long sought to stop Iran from developing nuclear weapons, which Israel sees as an existential threat to its existence.
Trump has insisted Israel did not back the U.S. into a corner with this military campaign, telling reporters, “I might of forced their hand.”
Rogan has also spoken out against Trump’s immigration crackdown and his administration’s handling of the files relating to the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
The popular podcaster called the fatal shooting of U.S. citizen Renee Good by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent “horrific” and said “now people are looking at [ICE] like murderous military people.”
Popular conservative media figures including Megyn Kelly and Tucker Carlson have also criticized the Iran war.
Carlson called the strikes “absolutely disgusting and evil,” in a statement to ABC News’ Jonathan Karl. Trump later told Karl, “Tucker has lost his way.”
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