Joe Rogan’s biggest controversies: From smoking weed with Elon Musk to hosting conspiracy theorist Alex Jones – as podcast host is credited with helping Donald Trump win

He is arguably the world’s most controversial and popular podcaster, credited with helping Donald Trump win back America.

Joe Rogan’s dozen-or-so words supporting the President-elect was far more powerful than any of the A-listers such as Oprah and Beyonce who rolled out for Kamala Harris, one leading Republican figure told MailOnline this week.

Some American voters queuing at polling stations on Tuesday admitted they were backing Trump for the White House because Ms Harris had declined to go on Mr Rogan’s Spotify smash-hit show.

One said they were ‘on the fence’ until Rogan endorsed Trump on Monday. 

The broadcaster’s listenership is predominantly male and under the age of 35 – and The Joe Rogan Experience averages at least 11million listeners per episode. His show is downloaded 200 million times a month and he also has an army of 16.4million followers on YouTube and 18.9million on Instagram. 

This week he backed the Republican nominee after sitting down with Trump’s other new and big supporter, Elon Musk, who had told him the country would be ‘f***ed’ if Harris won.

But it wasn’t so long ago that the world’s most famous podcaster had called Trump f***ing dangerous’ after the January 6 riots and suggested that Michelle Obama would be ‘the greatest president we had in our lifetime’.  

In 2020 the podcaster came out for Bernie Sanders, the self-proclaimed democratic socialist who helped develop the Green New Deal.

The decision to back Trump was just another extraordinary twist in Joe Rogan’s career, which has taken him from stand-up comic and UFC commentator to the king of world podcasting. 

On that journey there have been many controversies – from his choice of guests including Sandy Hook conspiracy theorist Alex Jones to smoking cannabis with Tesla boss Musk. And he has also been forced to apologise for some of his own views and language on his hit show.

Donald Trump

In late October Joe Rogan posted his three-hour-long interview with Donald Trump, who spoke about UFOs, the John F. Kennedy assassination files, the border and healthy food in the US.

The interview amassed a staggering 17million YouTube views in less than 24 hours. 

As well as the above, Trump opened up about his relationship with Kim Jong-Un and said that he had got to know North Korea’s leader ‘very well’ – despite having previously called him a ‘Little Rocket Man’ who was going to ‘burn in hell.’

Trump also stated that Russia would never have invaded Ukraine if he had been president.

‘I said, ‘Vladimir [Putin], you’re not going in,’ he told Rogan, adding: ‘I used to talk to him all the time.

‘I can’t tell you what I told him because I think it would be inappropriate, but someday he’ll tell you, but he would have never gone in.’

Trump also claimed that Putin invaded Ukraine because ‘number one, he doesn’t respect Biden at all’.

The former president also revealed he felt he had made ‘bad choices’ whilst discussing previous appointments to his cabinet.

He attributed the ‘success’ of his presidency to his decision-making when choosing officials to serve in his administration.

‘The one mistake… I will say it always comes back to the same answer, the biggest mistake I made… I picked some people that I shouldn’t have picked,’ he said.

And this week Rogan came out for Trump after sitting down with Elon Musk for a two-hour interview.

‘If it wasn’t for him (Musk) we’d be f***ed,’ Rogan wrote on X just hours before the polls open.

‘He makes what I think is the most compelling case for Trump you’ll hear, and I agree with him every step of the way.

‘For the record, yes, that’s an endorsement of Trump. Enjoy the podcast’.

It’s a drastic reversal from the podcaster’s 2020 support for Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., a self-proclaimed democratic socialist who helped develop the Green New Deal.

On Monday Rogan sat with the Tesla billionaire in a wide-ranging conversation for two hours and 45 minutes. 

In the episode the Tesla chief details the case for Trump to Rogan who seems enraptured by Musk’s matter-of-fact explanations. 

‘If Trump doesn’t win, this is the last election,’ Musk said.  

‘I think you’re right,’ Rogan retorts immediately.

‘I think a lot of people are waking up and realizing that who have been lifelong Democrats,’ Rogan continues. 

Smoking weed with Elon Musk

Musk had sent Tesla stock briefly tumbling after he was filmed taking a marijuana and tobacco joint from Joe Rogan and having a tentative puff while discussing Tesla’s plans for an airplane.

The world’s richest man came under a government microscope because of ‘one puff’ in September 2018.

It later emerged that he had to prove to the US federal government that he was not a drug addict after he publicly smoked marijuana on the Joe Rogan Show.

The video quickly went viral as one of the world’s richest and most influential men was seen consuming drugs on camera. 

Although the drug is legal in California – where the incident took place – the one puff by Musk knocked billions off Tesla’s value, with shares falling more than nine per cent. 

Musk was forced to reassure investors and the public that he was not ‘on weed’ shortly afterwards. 

In 2020 Spotify was forced to defend allowing Infowars conspiracy theorist Alex Jones to appear as a guest on Joe Rogan’s podcast, saying it won’t censor conservative voices just because some may not agree with them. 

Spotify banned Jones from having his own podcast on the platform for his opinions including claiming the Sandyhook massacre was a hoax. 

In the show  he talked about a wide range of theories, including relating to Robert Maxwell, his daughter Ghislane and jeffrey Epstein.

But Spotify staff became upset.  

In a memo to staff, Horacio Gutierrez, the company’s chief legal officer and head of global affairs, said that the platform would not ban people from going on others’ shows just because staff may not agree with their views.

‘Spotify has always been a place for creative expressions. It’s important to have diverse voices and points of view on our platform’, he said.

Tucker Carlson

For years the two men appeared to resist appearing together amid rumours of some kind of rift. 

But this year Tucker Carlson, free from working for Fox News, went on The Joe Rogan Experience.

In it Carlson said that Alex Jones is a supernatural prophet who has tapped into a force that allows him to predict the future.

He said: ‘He’s channeling something.

‘I’ve asked him about it. “How did you do that?” At length, during dinner on my barn recently. We’re talking about this. “How’d you do that?” “I don’t know. It just came to me”. And that’s real. That is real. The supernatural is real and I don’t know why it’s hard for the modern mind — I guess because it’s a materialist mind — to accept that’.

He went on: ‘There are people called prophets, and there are people who were prophets who weren’t called prophets, but there are people who have information or parts of information, bits of information, visions of information come to them and then they relay it’. 

Covid-19

Joe Rogan hit the headlines in 2022 after he was accused by singer Neil Young of ‘spreading Covid misinformation’ via his Spotify-hosted podcast The Joe Rogan Experience (JRE).

Much of the controversy was sparked by two recent episodes of the podcast in which Rogan spoke with an acclaimed cardiologist and expert virologist, both of whom were critical of the way in which the pandemic has been handled in the US.

Rogan criticised the American government and the CDC’s approach to the pandemic since late 2020, speaking out against vaccine mandates, vaccine passes and enforced mask wearing, while cautioning healthy young people under pressure to get jabbed.

He was alsovocal about the government’s reluctance to discuss any other potential treatments of Covid-19 besides the vaccine, and questioned why public health organizations have been so quick to encourage vaccine uptake without extolling the benefits of improving one’s baseline health. 

Afterwards he said that listeners should take his words with a grain of salt because he ‘talks sh*t for a living.’

‘I talk sh*t for a living – that’s why this is so baffling to me. If you’re taking vaccine advice from me, is that really my fault?’ Rogan asked fans

Row with Harry and Meghan 

In August Joe Rogan used his new Netflix stand-up show to savagely lampoon Prince Harry, calling him a ‘b**ch’ and joking about the royal taking magic mushrooms.

The podcast star, 57, also mimicked the Duke of Sussex’s British accent as he accused the California-based Windsor of ‘talking s**t about me’ – a reference to the Sussexes’ public concerns about ‘Covid misinformation’ on the vaccine-sceptic’s Spotify show.

Harry and Meghan revealed they reached out to the music streaming giant to ‘express our concerns’ in 2022 – but did not split with the firm, who later declined to renew Meghan’s podcast Archetypes and the couple’s $20million exclusive deal.

On Mr Rogan’s new live stand-up show Burn the Boats, released on Netflix in the UK and US this summer, Joe mercilessly laid into Harry.

He said: ‘I got cancelled so often during Covid that sometimes I would find out by accident. This is a true story. One time I just woke up I’m in my underwear I plop down, turn the TV on and Prince Harry’s talking s**t about me. I’m like I just woke up. I’m vulnerable. I’m in my underwear and there is a prince on TV talking about me’.

Mocking Harry’s accent he said to howls of laughter from the crowd: ‘He’s like “Joe Rogan is giving out dangerous vaccine misinformation”. And my first thought was “f**k did I?’. 

He also mocked Harry by imagining what it would be like to take drugs with him – and then fantasised about hammering him over their row over vaccines while high on hallucinogens. 

New Jersey-born Mr Rogan said he would get Harry tipsy and then encourage him to get high with him.

‘Could you imagine doing mushrooms with Prince Harry? You imagine if you could trick that guy into doing mushrooms with you’, he said.

‘The moment you see him chew it and swallow it. There’s a moment when you do mushrooms, like 20 minutes after you swallow it, when you know you can’t throw it up anymore. 

‘And you’re like “Oh no it’s going to happen” and you’re sitting eye to eye with the prince. And here’s the thing. Mushrooms take about 40 minutes to kick in, but about 35 minutes in you hear them coming. You hear footsteps in the distance. Meanwhile, Prince Harry is tripping balls’. 

To more laughter from the audience he said: ‘I’m going to hover over him and say: “Are you sure vaccines are safe?” B**ch you’re not a scientist’.

Apology for use of the N-word 

In 2022 Joe Rogan responded to an old clip that resurfaced from his podcast in which he used the N-word over 20 times, apologisng and calling it ‘the most regretful and shameful thing I’ve ever had to talk about publicly.’

Grammy-winning R&B singer India Arie posted the problematic clips, while explaining why she decided to part ways with the world’s most popular streaming service and calling for her followers to ‘delete Spotify,’ using the hashtag.

‘Hey ya’ll,’ the 46-year-old singer says in the first of a series of stories posted to her Instagram account. ‘I’m going to leave a short message here about why I decided to ask my music be pulled off of Spotify.

‘Check this out,’ Arie adds, before relaying a barrage of more than 20 clips of the longtime UFC commentator using the slur on his podcast – which then were posted to YouTube before Rogan signed with Spotify in 2020 – over the years, on several separate occasions, to her nearly 1 million followers. 

Rogan, in an Instagram video posted early Saturday, responded to the resurfaced clip by admitting ‘it looks f***ing horrible. Even to me.’

The UFC commentator promised the video consisted of ‘out of context’ bits from his long-running show, but said the video is ‘the most regretful and shameful thing I’ve ever had to talk about publicly.’  

He added: ‘I know that to most people, there is no context where a white person is ever allowed to say that word, never mind publicly on a podcast, and I agree with that now. I haven’t said it in years.’

The comedian argued that he was fascinated by the slur and often used it when quoting standup routines from the likes of Red Foxx and Lenny Bruce.    

‘It’s a very unusual word, but it’s not my word to use,’ he said. ‘I never used it to be racist, because I’m not racist, but whenever you’re in a situation where you have to say ‘I’m not racist,’ you’ve f***ed up, and I clearly have f***ed up.’

Rogan also responded to a clip that resurfaced of him calling a black neighborhood in Philadelphia that he saw a movie in ‘Planet of the Apes.’  

‘I was trying to make the story entertaining,’ he said. ‘I did not, nor did I ever say that black people are apes, but it sure f***ing sounded like that. It wasn’t a racist story, but it sounded terrible.’

‘I’ve said a lot of f***ing stupid s**t, which is okay, but not when you’re talking about race.’ 

Rogan wrapped up the nearly six-minute clip apologizing three times in hopes that his video would be a ‘teachable moment for anybody that doesn’t realize how offensive that word can be coming out of a white person’s mouth, in context or out of context.’ 

California wild fires

In 2020 Joe Rogan said that left-wing activists were starting California forest fires.

On his podcast, he said: ‘You want to talk about madness of crowds. That exemplifies that right now. They have arrested people for lighting forest fires up there. They have arrested left-wing people for lighting these forest fires.’

Rogan later said he was ‘duped’.

‘I need to make an apology and a retraction. I said something on the podcast about people getting arrested for lighting fires and I got duped. It’s wrong’, he said.

Kanye West

Kanye West sat down for an extended conversation on the Joe Rogan Experience in 2020 – where he revealed he believed he would be President one day..

He also touched on an array of hot-button topics including politics, race, religion, the music and entertainment industries and his much-publicized mental health issues. 

He said that he feels ‘a high power calling him to lead the free world.’ 

‘It was something God put on my heart back in 2015. A few days before the MTV Video Awards, it hit me in the shower,’ West recalled about his initial thought to run for president.

‘And when I first thought of it I started laughing to myself.  All this joy came over my body, through my soul. I just felt that energy; I felt that spirit.’

He went on to reveal how some friends, including people in the music industry and others, who ‘took it as a joke’ and gave him seemingly endless reasons why he couldn’t and shouldn’t run for president.

After a mention of Ronald Reagan’s path to the White House, Rogan went on to suggest a run for California governor as a way for West to gain experience en route to the presidency.  

‘I believe my calling is to be the leader of the free world. If it’s in God’s plan that part of my path is to be the governor, that’s fine. But my calling is to be the leader of the free world,’ he responded.

‘There couldn’t be a better time to put a visionary in the captain’s chair,’ he explained before adding, ‘I’m not here to down Trump or down Biden, I’m just here to express why God has called me to take this position. I manifest. I see things. I’m a great leader because I listen and I’m empathetic and I feel the entire Earth…  I do believe in world peace.’ 

While speaking uninterrupted for long stretches, West, at times, meandered off of topics and began elaborating about other subject matter.  

At certain points he suggested the likes of Bob Marley, Michael Jackson, Prince and Bruce and Brandon Lee had been murdered, among other claims.