Joe Rogan is a person with political influence. The Joe Rogan Experience hosted Donald Trump shortly before his reelection in 2024 and reportedly was not particularly accommodating to the Kamala Harris campaign when she tried to do the same. Bernie Sanders has been on the pod twice, and Rogan has welcomed guests like Tulsi Gabbard, JD Vance, John Fetterman, and Kash Patel in recent years. His (arguably overblown) political sway is to the point that there was a whole bunch of pundit handwringing after the 2024 election that what we needed was a “Joe Rogan of the left.”
But, alas, you will not find such a figure in the Joe Rogan subreddit. A mod post on the subreddit first shared yesterday declared that “r/joerogan is not the place for politics anymore.” The post continues, “For too long this subreddit has been overrun by users who are pushing a political agenda, both left and right, and that stops today.” And while they acknowledge that “Joe has become increasingly political in recent years and that his endorsement of Trump may have helped get him elected,” the mods “are not equipped to properly moderate, arbitrate and curate political posts…while also promoting free speech.” That’s always the rub, isn’t it?
In fairness, there were quite a few straightforward political posts on the subreddit, at least compared to those of other comedians/podcasters. The preceding days had seen clips of Gavin Newsom interviews and screenshots of New York Times headlines about Trump’s connections with Epstein (an issue that sure seems to be coming to a head right now!). But the post has obviously been met with quite a bit of mocking, given that, again, Rogan discusses politics on his show constantly. A followup post pointed out that Rogan’s episode on Tuesday with Theo Von was approximately 46.3% political discussion, and even went through the trouble of time stamping each section of the pod that would not be allowed as a topic of discussion in the subreddit. There’s also been at least one highly-upvoted joke: a graphic of a marijuana leaf with the text, “I have no opinion on whether or not this should be legal.”
