Podcast host Joe Rogan walked back his assertion that a school installed a litter box in a girls’ bathroom for a student “who’s a furry,” saying that he made the statement without proof.
“I don’t think they actually did it,” Rogan said. “I think there was discussions about doing it because there was one particularly wacky mother, but there is — it doesn’t seem that there’s any proof that they put a litter box in there.”
Rogan, who has amplified conspiracy theories about Covid-19 treatments and vaccines over the last two years, made the statement in a conversation with former Rep Tulsi Gabbard on his podcast in last month. He claimed that his friend’s wife was a teacher the school that had installed the litter box.
“Goodness,” Ms Gabbard, who recently left the Democratic Party and has been campaigning for Republican candidates, said at the time.
On Wednesday, author Michael Shermer told Rogan that the litter box story was an “urban legend” being used to attack Democratic candidates on issues concerning gender. Republican candidates have targeted Democrats over their support for transgender rights in races across the country during the midterm election cycle.
Rogan said that he did not have proof about the story he told Ms Gabbard, but was sympathetic to the story because he encountered a furry convention at a hotel in Pittsburgh a decade ago.
“It was about 10 years ago or so, there was a UFC in Pittsburgh, and when we went there, as we landed and were driving from the airport to the hotel, we see all these people with mascot outfits on,” Rogan said. “We were like, ‘What is going on?’ And we talked to this guy, and he said, ‘There’s a furry convention in town.’”
Rogan is not the only public figure who has repeated the claim about schools installing litter boxes in recent weeks. On Wednesday, Republican Senate candidate Don Bolduc repeated the claim about litter boxes to NBC News and said that Sen Maggie Hassan, his Democratic opponent, is responsible for the “craziness” in schools.
In Minnesota, Republican gubernatorial candidate Scott Jensen has also on multiple occasions claimed that students are using litter boxes in schools without offering any concrete evidence.
“Why do we have litter boxes in some of the school districts so kids can pee in them, because they identify as a furry? We’ve lost our minds,” Mr Jensen said at a campaign event in September. “We’ve lost our minds.”
