Far-right agitator and former Trump lieutenant Steve Bannon has come out raging against Joe Rogan after the controversial podcaster condemned the former president as an “existential threat” to democracy in the US.
Mr Rogan, whose enormously popular show has hosted multiple controversial guests espousing extreme views and spouting baseless and – critics say – harmful misinformation, said earlier this week that he had turned down Donald Trump as a guest many times.
“I’m not a Trump supporter in any way, shape or form,” he said on the Lex Fridman Podcast. “I’ve had the opportunity to have him on my show more than once. I’ve said no, every time. I don’t want to help him. I’m not interested in helping him.”
Mr Rogan is not a liberal-aligned commentator, and has numerous times spoken approvingly of right-wing politicians, including many who operate with Mr Trump’s blessing.
Nonetheless, Mr Bannon – who is facing trial on contempt of Congress charges – was disdainful. Speaking on his relatively marginal podcast-cum-livestream show The War Room, he laid into both Mr Rogan and his millions of fans during a segment about rap music posted to Spotify by Highland Park mass shooter Robert Crimo.
“Joe Rogan’s trash-talking Trump, where’s Joe Rogan – taking the $100m blood money from Spotify – where is he about Spotify putting this guy’s rap videos up and making money off him?”
“You’ve got Joe Rogan over there trash talkin’ Trump, ‘I don’t want to give Trump any platform’ – no offence, he doesn’t need your platform. He doesn’t need your low-information voters, okay? Trump deals with high-information people.
“Your audience couldn’t handle War Room,” he sniped, “couldn’t follow it, start talking, um, inverted yield curve, your eyes would cross.”
Crimo’s violent and threatening musical works and videos, many uploaded under the name Awake the Rapper, have been removed from various online platforms.
The wildly popular Mr Rogan’s multi-million dollar deal with Spotify has been the subject of controversy for some time. Matters came to a head at the start of 2022 when he featured an anti-vaccination guest, leading several big-name artists to pull their work from Spotify altogether.
