California Gov. Gavin Newsom says “little guy” Joe Rogan won’t have him on his podcast and is drifting into “irrelevancy.”
Newsom, 58, fired off an all-caps post mimicking President Donald Trump’s Truth Social style on Thursday as he tore into Rogan, 58.
“JOE ‘LITTLE GUY’ ROGAN IS TOO CHICKEN TO HAVE ME ON HIS FAILING PODCAST BECAUSE HE KNOW I’D CRUSH HIM, SO HE TAKES CHEAP SHOTS FROM THE PEANUT GALLERY AS HE GETS RELEGATED TO IRRELEVANCY,” the Democratic governor’s press office wrote on X, borrowing from Trump’s long-running penchant for assigning derisive nicknames to his rivals.
“ALL TALK, NO ACTION. I’M READY WHEN YOU ARE, ‘LITTLE GUY.’ OR KEEP HIDING!!!!” Newsom continued, signing off as “Governor GCN” in a nod to the president’s habit of ending posts with “President DJT.”
Newsom, who is seen as a potential 2028 presidential candidate, issued his post in response to an August 2023 clip in which Rogan declared that “nobody wants President Newsom.”
“Nobody believes in that guy. The guy’s a f---ing con man,” Rogan said in his conversation with Patrick Bet-David, a conservative podcaster who has railed against Newsom.
Rogan, who moved from California to Texas in 2020 in part due to the Lone Star State’s looser pandemic restrictions, then went on a bizarre rant about “nobody” believing that Newsom is a “real human.”
“Whether you like Trump or not, whether you think he’s corrupt or not, that’s a human being,” he said. “With Newsom, you’ve got like this construct, this cardboard cutout of a person.”
Rogan has kept up his attacks on Newsom into the second Trump presidency. But Newsom has consistently countered that the podcaster has declined to have him on the show.
“He’s been attacking me for years and years and years and won’t have me on the show,” he said on the Higher Learning podcast last October.
Looking at the camera, the governor said, “Joe, why won’t you have me on the show? He won’t have me on the show. It’s one way. And he has guests coming and attacking and bashing, but he will not have me on the show.”
Representatives for Rogan did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Rogan’s endorsement of Trump is thought to have helped swing young male voters to the president in 2024. But he appears to have buyer’s remorse, blasting Trump on everything from his administration’s handling of the Jeffrey Epstein files to its deportation drive to his war on Iran.
He once again ripped into Trump’s Iran war strategy last week, just days after Trump invited him to the Oval Office for the signing of an executive order expediting an FDA review for psychedelic drug treatment, a practice Rogan has supported.
