Is Joe Rogan turning on Trump? The touchy subject that forced the world’s most influential podcaster to break from the President

When Joe Rogan threw his weight behind President Donald Trump with a shock endorsement on the eve of the 2024 election, it was seen as the final nail in Kamala Harris’s coffin.

Rogan has a combined 52.5 million followers on Spotify, Instagram and YouTube and is beloved by young men, the very demographic Trump was seeking to win over in the final days of his campaign.

But just five months later, Trump’s most influential supporter seems to be having second thoughts, explosively breaking from Trump on three key issues.

In recent weeks, Rogan has slammed the Trump administration’s tariffs on Canada as ‘ridiculous’, its deportation policies as ‘horrific’, and its handling of the war secrets group chat scandal as ‘so dumb’.

The clashes started in March, when Rogan, 57, used his podcast, The Joe Rogan Experience, to rant about Trump imposing tariffs on Canada and his desire to make Canada the 51st state.

‘I can’t believe there is anti-American, anti-Canadian sentiment going on. It’s the dumbest f****** feud,’ Rogan said during the March 14 episode.’ ‘I just want America and Canada to get along, I think it’s ridiculous. And I don’t think they should be our 51st state.’

A week later, Rogan took things a step further, slamming Trump’s approach to the mass deportation of immigrants, after reports emerged that innocent people had been mistakenly rounded up and thrown into maximum security prisons in El Salvador alongside gang members and criminals.

‘You got to get scared that people who are not criminals are getting, like, lassoed up and deported and sent to, like, El Salvador prisons,’ Rogan said. ‘This is kind of crazy that that could be possible. That’s horrific. And that’s, again, that’s bad for the cause.’

In the same episode he bashed Trump’s handling of the Signal-gate scandal, which saw top Trump officials mistakenly include the editor-in-chief of The Atlantic in a group chat where they shared sensitive information about an impending strike on Houthi rebels.

Trump has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing and has fiercely defended the officials involved.

Rogan was disappointed by his response, which he said appeared to be a case of: ‘Never admit your fault. Never admit you’re wrong.’

‘That’s such a crazy mistake,’ Rogan ranted, adding: ‘That’s such a checks-and-balances mistake. Like, double-check, yes. It’s like, you know, when you go on the road, like, do I have my toothbrush?’

The White House has stayed silent in the face of the criticisms and refused to comment on the growing rift between Trump and Rogan when approached by the Daily Mail.

The recent clashes are a sharp contrast to the two men’s cozy alliance in the days leading up to the election, when Rogan welcomed both Trump and ‘First Buddy’ Elon Musk onto his podcast.

Sharing his interview with Musk on X on November 4, Rogan wrote: ‘The great and powerful @elonmusk. If it wasn’t for him we’d be f****d. 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,’ he added.

Trump, who was onstage in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, for his penultimate rally at the time, was thrilled.

‘It just came over the wires that Joe Rogan just endorsed me, is that great,’ he said. ‘Thank you, Joe. That’s so nice. And he doesn’t do that, he doesn’t do that stuff.’

Rogan’s own naysayers have been quick to leap on his apparent repositioning from Trump supporter to critic, lambasting him for a stance that they deemed ‘irresponsible’ from the get-go.

On Monday, author Sam Harris slammed Rogan for what appears to some to be his about-face on Trump’s policies, saying that Rogan himself had ‘helped put [Trump’s] lies into the most plausible possible shape’ by having him on the podcast right before the election.

‘It is irresponsible. I mean, it is directly harmful,’ Harris added, ‘Our society is as politically shattered as it is in part because of how Joe has interacted with information.’

But, while Rogan’s critics may crow, the truth is that, on closer examination, the podcaster’s recent critiques of Trump are less of a shock than some would have us believe.

Rogan has always claimed to have a voice entirely his own. He has never strongly aligned himself with any political party and has historically supported a huge range of policies.

Indeed, Rogan has consistently rejected the notion that he is a Republican and, in the lead-up to the 2020 Democratic primaries he even seemed to endorse Bernie Sanders, saying: ‘I’ll probably vote for him… I like him a lot.’

In 2022 he re-iterated his liberal beliefs, saying: ‘I was on welfare as a kid. I think it’s important. I think having a social safety net is crucial. We should help each other. We’re supposed to be one big community. I’m a bleeding-heart liberal when it comes to a lot of s**t.’

Instead of being aligned with one party, Rogan claims to choose who he supports based purely on their views and policies.

‘I don’t consider myself a Republican. I don’t consider myself a Democrat, either,’ said Rogan in January, ‘I consider myself an American.’

‘The idea that I have to ignore things that make sense to me because it’s coming from the wrong team is just stupid,’ he added.

As we have seen in the last five months, his approach makes it all but impossible to predict what – and indeed who – he is going to support from one issue to the next.

It’s anyone’s guess. Which leaves us with only one way to find out: tune into his podcast and see what he says next.