It has finally dawned on Joe Rogan that President Donald Trump doesn’t appear to have any evidence to back up the false claim that the 2020 election was stolen.
The podcaster gave Trump a huge platform when he was a guest on the show in the final week of the 2024 presidential election campaign, where he reeled off his widely-debunked grievance that the 2020 election was “fraudulent.”
Now, Rogan has shared his skepticism.
“I don't think they have any evidence,” Rogan told his guest comedian Dave Smith on Tuesday’s episode of the Joe Rogan Experience, referring to Trump’s 2020 claims.
“I think there’s a lot of speculation and there’s a lot of consideration about mail-in ballots. There’s a lot of shenanigans,” Rogan added. “There’s a good record of shenanigans and there’s the reality of any kind of electronics can be hacked.”
“It was one of the most interesting parts of your podcast with him was when you asked him about that, it was like he really didn’t have anything to back it up,” Smith interjected.
Rogan then criticized Trump for not having a “tight 10 minutes” prepared to present his evidence and argument.
“If that was you or if that was me, I mean, there was some reason why I knew that they did something and I could give you all the facts, I would have that ready for anybody,” Rogan said. “Because…you're, for four f***ing years they've been telling him he's crazy for questioning the election. So after four years I'd have a f***ing tight 10 minutes on the election where I could just rattle off at you and rock your world with it.”
Rogan’s interview, which pulled in 38 million viewers within three days of airing, and other podcast appearances within the so-called “Manosphere” have been credited with helping Trump clinch the presidency.
Rogan, who endorsed Trump after the episode aired, gave him the opportunity to explain his evidence for claiming the 2020 election was stolen from him.
“I want to talk about 2020 because you said over and over again that you were robbed in 2020,” Rogan said. “How do you think you were robbed?”
Trump then launched into a familiar tirade about judges not having “what it took to turn over an election,” mail-in ballots being insecure, and Democrats using “Covid to cheat.”
Rogan appeared to sympathize with Trump. “You get labeled an election denier,” he said, drawing similarities with being labeled an “anti-vaxxer if you question some of the health consequences that people have from the Covid-19 shots.”
More recently, Rogan has been calling out the man he endorsed for president. In July, the podcaster ripped into the Justice Department’s handling of the Epstein files.
“They’ve got videotape and all a sudden they don’t,” Rogan said. “You had the director of the FBI on this show saying, ‘If there was [a videotape], nothing you’re looking for is on those tapes,’” referring to FBI Director Kash Patel’s interview with Rogan in June.
He also criticized the Trump administration’s aggressive ICE raids on his show, appearing to suggest that they had taken things too far.
“The targeting of migrant workers — not cartel members, not gang members, not drug dealers. Just construction workers. Showing up in construction sites, raiding them. Gardeners. Like, really?” Rogan said. “I don’t think anybody would have signed up for that.”
