Podcast host Joe Rogan insists that he wanted to “stay out” of the 2024 presidential election until his hand was forced by fury over “liar” Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, the Democratic vice presidential nominee.
During an episode of The Joe Rogan Experience podcast released last week, Rogan said that false past statements by Walz concerning his military service record and the timing of a visit to Beijing’s Tiananmen Square inspired him to become involved in the election.
Rogan, who hosted President-elect Donald Trump on his podcast and endorsed the Republican candidate shortly before the election, argued during the more than four-hour podcast that it would have been “nuts” to allow Walz to become vice president.
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“I wanted to stay out of the presidential election s*** because it’s so gross,” Rogan said. “I felt like I had to. I felt like this is so nuts. When that Tim Walz guy … it’s so nuts that guy was going to be the vice president. You’re telling me this whole thing is fake, then. You’re telling me that you don’t care if someone is a liar?
“You don’t care if they lied about their military rank, where they served?” he added. “You don’t care if they lie about Tiananmen Square? There’s too many things, this is so crazy. You would get fired if you were an assistant manager at a f***ing oil change company. Jiffy Lube would fire you!”
Newsweek reached out for comment to the office of Walz via email on Tuesday night.
Walz, who was selected as the running mate of Vice President Kamala Harris in early August, quickly faced criticism during the campaign for falsely stating during a campaign stop years earlier that he carried a weapon “in war” during his decades-long career in the Army National Guard.
While Walz did not carry a weapon in war, he did serve in Europe as part of a security force amid the war in Afghanistan. The governor also claimed more than once that he was teaching in China during the Tiananmen Square massacre, although he arrived months later.
Walz and the Harris-Walz campaign later issued statements saying that he had misspoken on both occasions.
Rogan’s remarks about the governor motivating him to back Trump were met with some backlash on social media, with several critics arguing that the president-elect has a far more prolific history as a teller of “lies” than Walz.
“Fact check: Donald Trump is the biggest liar in American history. The Washington Post reported that Donald Trump made a total of 30,573 false or misleading claims during his time in office,” the Republicans Against Trump account wrote in a Tuesday post to X, formerly Twitter.
“Joe Rogan saying he ‘had’ to endorse Trump after watching Tim Walz lie is the most damning indictment yet of Rogan’s slide into the disinformation echo chamber of far-right fascism,” wrote singer-songwriter Bill Madden. “Does this colossal alpha-a**hole not know that Trump is most prolific liar in American history?”
“Trump lies 24/7 about things small and large. Lying doesn’t bother Joe Rogan,” progressive commentator Matthew Sheffield wrote. “This is just him making excuses for his own ideological bias.”
“Imagine pretending you voted for Trump because you were bothered by *checks notes* dishonesty. Lol,” wrote former MSNBC host Mehdi Hasan.
