The influential podcast host Joe Rogan has endorsed Donald Trump for president, writing on social media that his choice had been influenced by “the great and powerful Elon Musk”.
Musk “makes what I think is the most compelling case for Trump you’ll hear, and I agree with him every step of the way”, Rogan wrote on X. “For the record, yes, that’s an endorsement of Trump.”
Rogan shared his endorsement along with a link to a nearly three-hour interview with Musk, posted on Monday, in which the billionaire expressed fears Kamala Harris would shut down X, which he owns. The Harris campaign has not said it would dismantle X.
“I view this election as the fork in the road of destiny,” said Musk, who has campaigned and raised money for Trump.
Musk repeated accusations that undocumented immigrants were being bussed or flown into swing states, doubling down on a claim that has repeatedly been refuted – even by the conservative thinktank the Cato Institute.
Rogan, 57, is a former mixed martial arts commentator, comedian and gameshow host whose show, The Joe Rogan Experience, is Spotify’s No 1 podcast offering.
The great and powerful @elonmusk.
— Joe Rogan (@joerogan) November 5, 2024
If it wasn't for him we'd be fucked. He makes what I think is the most compelling case for Trump you'll hear, and I agree with him every step of the way.
For the record, yes, that's an endorsement of Trump.
Enjoy the podcast pic.twitter.com/LdBxZFVsLN
In an era of distrust in traditional media outlets, Rogan’s outsider persona, and long conversations with famous and infamous guests, from Kanye West to Edward Snowden to Alex Jones, has won him a massive, largely male audience.
During their recorded conversation, Musk repeated many of Trump’s favorite talking points. He and Rogan agreed with one another for much of the interview and lamented what they see as a crackdown on freedom of speech at the hands of those seeking to tamp down on hate speech and misinformation, particularly Democrats and the “legacy media”.
He also forecasted the fate of his social network after the election. “If Trump wins, we’ll see most of the [advertiser] boycott lift. If Kamala wins, we’ll see that boycott get stronger. They’ll shut it down. There’s no way a Kamala regime would allow X to exist.”
Rogan’s views and interviews have previously sparked condemnation, and even a boycott of Spotify, which reportedly signed a $100m deal in 2020 to host his podcast, and finalized a new multiyear deal, reportedly for $250m, earlier this year.
Over time, Spotify has reportedly removed past controversial episodes of Rogan’s show, including those featuring the conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, and far-right extremists Milo Yiannopoulos and Gavin McInnes, the founder of the Proud Boys.
In January 2022, a group of 270 US doctors, scientists, professors, and other healthcare professionals wrote an open letter to Spotify, raising concerns about Rogan’s podcast and what they called its “concerning history of broadcasting misinformation, particularly regarding the Covid-19 pandemic”.
In early 2022, the musician Neil Young demanded that the streaming platform remove his music, arguing that “Spotify is spreading fake information about vaccines,” and citing Rogan’s show and his many claims about the coronavirus vaccine, as well as about Covid lockdowns.
Spotify responded to the controversy by promising to direct listeners to accurate information about Covid-19, and by making its internal guidelines for its creators public.
In 2022, Rogan publicly apologized for repeatedly using the N-word on his show, an apology prompted by a compilation video of all the times the white host had used the offensive racial slur.
Rogan’s night-before-the-election Trump endorsement is not the first time one of his shows with Musk has made news headlines. Tesla shares suffered and some Tesla executives resigned in 2018 after Musk infamously smoked a joint on the live webcast of Rogan’s show in 2018.
Read more of the Guardian’s 2024 US election coverage:
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