Joe Rogan said on his podcast Friday that he disagrees with President Donald Trump’s approach to talking about his adversaries, referencing Trump’s remarks at Charlie Kirk’s memorial, when the president said, “I hate my opponent, and I don’t want the best for them.”
“I don’t agree with any of that,” Rogan told guest Mariana van Zeller, a journalist for National Geographic Channel, adding of the president, “He’s a nut.”
Newsweek has reached out to the White House for comment via email on Friday.
Why It Matters
Rogan, credited with partially boosting President Donald Trump’s popularity ahead of the 2024 election, has also at times criticized the Trump administration, particularly over Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids. Millions of people listen to Rogan’s podcast, with over 20 million subscribers on YouTube.
Rogan’s comments come more than a month after conservative activist Charlie Kirk, 31, was fatally shot during a question-and-answer session at Utah Valley University on September 10. Trump and top administration officials spoke at a memorial service in Arizona, where the president’s remarks contrasted with those of Erika Kirk, Kirk’s widow, who said “The answer to hate is not hate. The answer we know from the Gospel is love, and always love. Love for our enemies, and love for those who persecute us.”
Earlier this week, Rogan, who backed Trump’s 2024 presidential run, said on his show that not all Trump supporters favor every White House initiative.
What To Know
On the Friday episode of his podcast, The Joe Rogan Experience, Rogan emphasized the need for more nonviolent figures, telling van Zeller, “We need another Martin Luther King, we need someone who is like an adamant expresser of nonviolence as the only option and then we all need to embrace that because there are too many punch-a-Nazi people out there.”
He continued, stating, “Any kind of violence is the worst thing that we can do to each other,” and noted that the way to “at least to minimize that violence” is “by never having violent rhetoric, by never encouraging violence.” Rogan went on to say, “The way to counter hateful rhetoric, is love.”
Van Zeller noted that the president did not take that approach while on stage at Kirk’s memorial last month, notably calling out his hate for his enemies, with Rogan chiming in, “I don’t agree with any of that.”
He then called the president “a nut,” adding that “But it’s also the only way that that guy survived what he did, what he went through, what they try to put him through, you have to be a kind of nut, they tried to put him in jail they tried to make a fake Russia collusion thing,” he said in reference to what Trump has long called a political witch hunt against him by Democrats.
What People Are Saying
Rogan has previously differed with Trump on his immigration approach, saying in an October podcast episode: “When you’re just arresting people in front of their kids, and just, normal, regular people who have been here for 20 years. That everybody who has a heart can’t get along with that. Everybody who has a heart sees that and goes, ‘That can’t be right.’”
Erika Kirk said during her husband’s memorial service in September: “My husband Charlie, he wanted to save young men, just like the one who took his life…that young man, I forgive him.”
President Donald Trump said in a speech to senior military leaders in Virginia in September: “America is under invasion from within, we’re under invasion from within. No different than a foreign enemy, but more difficult in many ways because they don’t wear uniforms. At least when they’re wearing a uniform you can take them out. These people don’t have uniforms.”
