THE JOKE'S ON US

Joe Rogan and the MAGA Podcast Bros Are Having Second Thoughts

You don’t get to walk away from the funhouse you built when people are wandering around lost inside, writes Michael Ian Black

Opinion

We’re starting to see a few miserly mea culpas emerging from the loose-knit collection of podcast influencers who went to bat for Trump in 2024: Joe Rogan is shaking his head in disbelief at the events unfolding in the Strait of Hormuz. Andrew Schulz is feeling “misled.” These guys—and many others like them—allowed themselves to be seduced by the lies for the clicks. Now they feel played. What frustrates me most about these podcasters is all of them seem to possess genuine curiosity about the world. But they’ve chosen to place their faith in the least credible people, because those people feed them a story they want to believe. And now that they’re seeing what they’ve wrought, they want our grace? Well, I’m inclined to give it to them. But it’ll require something beyond a rueful monologue about how “things got weird.” Admit that you were wrong not just about Trump, but about the epistemology that got you there. Admit that entertaining every crackpot theory doesn’t make you an iconoclast—it makes you a sucker. And do something radical for the podcast age: start telling their audiences the truth, even when it’s boring, even when it’s complicated, and even when it doesn’t get nearly as many clicks as the lie.

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