Joe Rogan Forced to Delete Episode Segment After Being Duped by Fake COVID Tweet

Joe Rogan was forced to apologize Thursday after he unknowingly used a doctored tweet as fodder for a recent episode. The 55-year-old offered his “sincere apologies,” adding that the entire segment had been edited out of the show, which was released earlier this week. “[W]e initially decided to post a notice saying we got tricked, then later thought it best to just delete it from the episode,” he tweeted, without further explanation of what led to the changed decision. Rogan and his guest, the far-right author Bret Weinstein, spent 11 minutes discussing the ‘insane’ missive, which accuses antivaxxers of doing “everything out of hate.” “Like, I don’t hate anyone,” Rogan countered in the deleted segment. “I am a loving person. I do it on purpose. I go outta my way to be as charitable and as kind as possible.” The obviously doctored post was falsely attributed to Florida intensive care specialist Dr. Natalia Solenkov, who suffered “relentless harassment over it,” according to Washington Post journalist Taylor Lorenz, who outlined the situation in a Wednesday thread. As of Thursday, Solenkova’s Twitter account was private, and her profile picture had been changed to a black circle.