Here’s What Joe Rogan Used to Say About Trump and Immigration

Do you remember when Joe Rogan wasn’t the semi-official mouthpiece for an entire political party? More importantly, does he remember?

Contrary to his current function, Joe Rogan wasn’t always an eager and willing propagandist who explicitly endorsed and supported the richest man in the world and the power-hungry President of the United States. In fact, there was once a time when the most popular podcaster on Earth urged the public to be wary of billionaires who, like Rogan’s current buddies Donald Trump, Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk, use their immense influence and unchecked power to control media narratives and distort facts about our fragile democracy instead of inviting them to bro down on The Joe Rogan Experience.

Of course, that era had already ended by the time Rogan blasted a few dozen doses of ivermectin into his bloodstream. The current version of the UFC commentator and stand-up comedian wields his unequaled influence to spread ultra-conservative talking points that are completely untethered to reality regarding the actions of the Trump administration and the secret Democratic plot to sway future elections with the support of illegal immigrants, a group of people who famously have neither the right nor the ability to vote.

However, as we remember and as the TikTok account @dailyradical recently pointed out in a viral clip from a 2016 JRE episode, Rogan used to distrust Trump and treat undocumented people as, well, people:

The above video comes from a JRE episode featuring controversial neuroscientist and anti-Muslim author Sam Harris that Rogan released on June 1, 2016, back when a possible Trump presidency was still a farcical notion to so many people and Rogan himself was politically independent. Rogan and Harris spent a full hour dissecting Trump's demagogy as they denounced Trump’s statements about entire groups of people as dehumanizing — but that was long before Rogan’s BFF Musk aligned himself with the Republicans and the entire undocumented immigrant population became a monolithic group of politically motivated criminals who need to be rounded up and put into camps.

“Younger joe would hate old joe,” a former JRE fan lamented in the comment section of the above video.

Another posited, “Once you’re super rich, you don’t rock the boat. You’re in the boat.”

“I miss compassionate Joe,” one more added.

Whether it was the COVID-era vaccine mandates that turned Rogan into a callous, unquestioning conservative or he simply decided that there was more money to be made on the winning team, the result of the last decade of JRE is clear: The Rogan we have today isn’t one who sees borders as arbitrary lines and migrant workers as human beings. 

We liked Rogan better when the only aliens he’d conspiracy-theorize about came from outer space, not south of the border.