Joe Rogan says Trump’s supporters feel ‘betrayed’ by Iran war
The influential podcast host described the conflict as a sharp reversal from the policies the president had campaigned on.
Joe Rogan, an influential podcast host, said on his show Tuesday that the war in Iran was “crazy” and had left Americans feeling “betrayed” by President Donald Trump, describing the conflict as a sharp reversal from the policies that the president had campaigned on.
“It just seems so insane,” said Rogan, who endorsed Trump in 2024 and said he still texted with him on occasion. “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.”
Rogan gave Trump a boost in the final days of his 2024 campaign, taping a friendly three-hour interview with him and then delivering an endorsement on the eve of the election. But he has sometimes criticized the president since he returned to office and has appeared increasingly skeptical of the administration in recent months.
In December, Rogan described a new plaque in the White House criticizing former President Joe Biden as “so crazy.” And in January he said the shooting of Renee Nicole Good by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent in Minneapolis seemed “all kinds of wrong,” comparing the federal immigration crackdown in Minnesota’s largest city to the actions of the Gestapo of Nazi Germany.
Still, Rogan’s criticism Tuesday was unusually direct.
Contrasting the war in Iran with the U.S. military operation in January that captured the Venezuelan president, Nicolás Maduro, Rogan said that “neither thing made any sense” but that Maduro’s capture was “at least clean.”
“They go in, kidnap him, get him out,” he said. “This one’s nuts.”
A spokesperson for the White House, Anna Kelly, said in a statement that the president was “courageously protecting the United States from the deadly threat posed by the rogue Iranian regime — and that is as America First as it gets.”
Rogan’s show, “The Joe Rogan Experience,” is the most popular podcast on Spotify. His political views are complex: He endorsed Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., the progressive firebrand, in the 2020 Democratic presidential primary, and he says he is not registered with a political party. His show is far from strictly political, instead offering a mix of comedy, ramblings and meditations on topics as arcane as quantum mechanics.
But Rogan’s right-leaning views on some issues, along with his vast reach — his latest podcast had already logged more than 350,000 views on YouTube as of Wednesday morning — have made him an important voice in conservative politics.
His criticism arrives as the 12-day-old war threatens political peril for Trump’s party in this year’s midterm elections.
Opinion polls show that the conflict is unpopular with most Americans, and a surge in oil prices driven by the war has put Republicans on the defensive. On Wednesday, the average price of a gallon of gasoline in the United States was $3.58, according to AAA, up 38 cents in a week. The war has clogged a vital sea passage to the Persian Gulf through which a fifth of the world’s oil supply travels.
A number of prominent conservative podcasters have strongly objected to the war, including Tucker Carlson, Megyn Kelly and Candace Owens, who released an episode this week titled “Donald Trump Has Betrayed America” that logged more than 2 million views on YouTube.
But perhaps no podcaster of any political stripe has the reach and influence of Rogan.
Trump has acknowledged Rogan’s importance in the past.
“He’s the biggest there is,” Trump said in 2024.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
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