Joe Rogan – host of the world’s most popular podcast said that politicians made decisions to keep the economy closed during the coronavirus pandemic to hurt President Trump.
He made the statement on his Friday episode while talking with guest Brendan Schaub, starting a little after the 35-minute mark. (“The Joe Rogan Experience” episode #1535 released Jan. 29, 2020.)
“When I talk to politicians, who will talk to me both on the record and off the record, there [were] decisions that were made that were trying to fuck Trump over. Real clear. They didn’t want the economy to rebound,” Rogan said. “They made political decisions and they thought they could get away with it. We have to get rid of those people. All those people that made those kinds of decisions, we have to get rid of them.”
Rogan, who moved to Austin from California in 2020 in part due to the restrictive lockdowns, said he talked with Texas Governor Greg Abbott, who said that the economy must reopen so people can go back to work. Rogan also referenced a previous conversation he had on his podcast earlier in the pandemic with Elon Musk, in which the billionaire inventor said that people must make things, or the economy doesn’t work.
On that episode (“The Joe Rogan Experience” episode #1470, released May 7, 2020), Musk said that several people “have this absurd view that the economy is like some magic horn of plenty. Like it just makes stuff. There’s just a magic horn of plenty and the goods and services, they just come from this magic horn of plenty.”
The Tesla and SpaceX founder went on to say, “If you don’t make stuff, there’s no stuff. Yeah. So if you don’t make the food, if you don’t process the food, you don’t transport the food, medical treatment, getting your teeth fixed, there’s no stuff. They’ve become detached from reality. You can’t just legislate money and solve these things. If you don’t make stuff, there is no stuff, obviously. We’ll run out of the stores, run out of the… the machine just grinds to a halt.”
Musk made the comments starting at about the 1 hour 21-minute mark. During that conversation, Rogan observed that the pandemic, while bad, is not nearly as deadly as initially feared, and he said that the government failed to adjust. He also questioned at that time whether the response was being politicized to hurt Trump’s re-election chances.
“I think this has been politicized in both directions, really. Which is not great,” Musk said. Musk also said he thought the government overreached. “I think there’s the question of where do civil liberties fit in this picture? And what can the government make you do, what can they make you not do, and what’s okay? And I think we went too far.”
A few minutes earlier in that same interview (at about the 1 hour 17-minute mark), Musk shared his views about the lockdowns. He said, “A lot of people died to win independence for the country and fight for the democracy that we have. And we should treasure that and not give up our liberties too easily. And I think we probably did that, actually.”
“The Joe Rogan Experience” is the most popular in the world; the show was reportedly downloaded more than two billion times in 2019. It is now available for free exclusively through Spotify.
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