Yet another move by the government that Joe Rogan isn’t a fan of.
Last month, the comedian and podcaster let it be known that he didn’t see eye-to-eye with President Trump about Canada becoming the America’s 51st state. And now, the host of The Joe Rogan Experience is partially pumping the brakes on the mass deportations that have taken place since Trump took office (since January 20, ICE has racked up 113,000 arrests and went through with 100,000 deportations).
That might seem a little surprising since Joe Rogan was one of the many influential media personalities that attended Donald Trump’s inauguration back in January. But to play devil’s advocate, the podcast host has generally avoided stating any sort of political affiliation as he’s risen in his media career, or at the very least, he’s tried not to concretely side with one party over the other.
Prior to 2020, it did seem as though the podcaster leaned more on the Democratic side. He sort of (but not really) endorsed Bernie Sanders a while back. However, in the past couple of years, Joe Rogan has seemed to move towards the middle of the aisle – and one could make an argument that he helped out the Republican Party by interviewing JD Vance and Donald Trump on his podcast prior to the 2024 Election.
One could also argue that the Democratic Party has moved even further left in recent years, pushing more moderate Democrats into what seems like the Republican side of the spectrum. Folks like Bill Maher have made this argument. And there’s definitely an argument to be made for Joe Rogan as well… though this time around, Rogan is directly going against something that President Trump has been outspoken about.
In a recent episode of The Joe Rogan Experience, Rogan spoke with Francis Foster and Konstantin Kisin – the hosts of the podcast Triggernometry. Towards the end of their conversation, which covered a lot of ground politically, the topic of the mass deportations came up.
Rogan first made it clear that he’s not entirely against deporting illegal immigrants. He’s more so a supporter of keeping the borders safe and secure:
“There’s not this giant line of people that are just assuming they can get in and walk through. And they were just letting them do that. There’s no reasonable argument why that makes any sense. No matter how kind you are and compassionate, no matter how much you believe these people from a third-world country deserve the American dream, that’s great.
But let’s find out if they’re murderers. Let’s find out if they’re gang members… Inevitably, if you have an open border, a percentage of them are going to be criminals. Especially if they are coming from crime infested parts of the world.”
It was later in the conversation when Rogan voiced his concern about how fast the ICE deportations have taken place. He really opened up the can of worms with his two guests when he said this:
“You’ve got to get scared that people that are not criminals are getting lassoed up and deported and sent to an El Salvador prison.”
That’s when the podcast turned to the alleged story of a barber that was working in the U.S. legally and was arrested and deported during one of ICE’s sweeps – specifically the one that targeted violent Venezuelan gang members. (Rogan was apparently referring to makeup artist Andry Jose Hernandez Romero, was sent to a El Salvador prison after being detained in August under the Biden administration because his crown tattoo was suspected to be a gang identifier).
“When you do things quickly, and you do things aggressively, that’s how you get sh*t done. But that’s also when mistakes get made. I think a human being being plucked out of nowhere and ending up in a country he’s never been in, in a maximum security prison with gang members… that seems like a bad thing to happen.”
Joe Rogan added to the conversation by confirming that it’s a horrifying situation, and suggesting that the accidental deportation of someone that’s lawfully in the U.S. should not be controversial:
“It’s horrific. And that’s not controversial at all. This is the thing… measure twice, cut once. This is crazy that that could be possible. That’s horrific, and it’s bad for the cause. Again, the cause is, ‘Let’s get the gang members out.’ Everyone agrees. But let’s not get innocent, gay hairdressers get lumped in with the gangs.”
You can hear more on the matter in the latest episode of The Joe Rogan Experience:
The post Joe Rogan Says Donald Trump Might Need To Slow Down Mass Deportations: “Measure Twice, Cut Once” first appeared on Whiskey Riff.