Joe Rogan gets candid about his latest controversy.
The UFC color commentator, 54, addressed the issues surrounding his episodes in a video shared on his Instagram account today. He received tons of backlash when he aired some claims about the COVID-19 pandemic on his Spotify podcast, “The Joe Rogan Experience.”
His Side Of The Story
“Hello friends, I wanted to make a video to address some of the controversy that’s been going on over the past few days,” Rogan said in the almost 10-minute video.
He first thanked his supporters for the “love and support. I truly, truly appreciate it. And it’s been very nice to hear from you.”
The host continued, “I want to make this video first of all because I think there’s a lot of people that have a distorted perception of what I do, maybe based on sound bites or based on headlines of articles that are disparaging,” adding, “The podcast has been accused of spreading dangerous misinformation specifically about two episodes, a little bit about some other ones but specifically about to one with Dr. Peter McCullough and one with Dr. Robert Malone.”
Why He Invited The Doctors
Rogan explained the background of the two specialists, saying, “Dr. Peter McCullough is a cardiologist, and he is the most published physician in his field in history. Dr. Robert Malone owns nine patents on the creation of mRNA vaccine technology and is at least partially responsible for the creation of the technology that led to mRNA vaccines.”
With those points in mind, he concluded that Drs. McCullough and Malone “are very highly credentialed, very intelligent, very accomplished people, and they have an opinion that’s different from the mainstream narrative.”
Rogan said he invited the two specialists to his show because he wanted to “hear what their opinion is.”
Blaming Social Media?
The comedian also mentioned how social media is being controlled.
“The problem I have with the term ‘misinformation,’ especially today is that many of the things that we thought of as misinformation just a short while ago are now accepted as fact,” Rogan stated. “Like, for instance, eight months ago if you said if you get vaccinated, you can still catch COVID, and you can still spread COVID. You’d be removed from social media. They would ban you from certain platforms.”
He continued, “If you said, I don’t think cloth masks work, you would be banned from social media. Now that’s openly repeatedly stated on CNN. If you said I think it’s possible that COVID-19 came from a lab, you’d be banned from many social media platforms. Now, that’s on the cover of Newsweek. All of those theories at one point time were banned, were openly discussed by those two men that I had on my podcast — that have been accused of dangerous misinformation.”
He Makes Mistakes
Despite having the doctors on the show and discussing the issues with them, Rogan told listeners, “I do not know if they’re right. I don’t know because I’m not a doctor. I’m not a scientist. I’m just a person who sits down and talks to people in those conversations with them.”
Contrary to what everyone thinks, Rogan admitted that he “get things wrong” and tried to “correct them.”
“Do I get things wrong? Absolutely. I get things wrong, but I try to correct them. Whenever I get something wrong, I try to correct it because I’m interested in telling the truth. I’m interested in finding out what the truth is,” he said.
The commentator also pointed out that he doesn’t only listen to people who have the same perspective, but has invited various notable personalities who have different views.
Just Having ‘Conversations’
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“I’m interested in having interesting conversations with people that have differing opinions. I’m not interested in only talking to people that have one perspective. That’s one of the reasons why I had Sanjay Gupta on — Dr. Sanjay Gupta — who I respect very much and I really enjoyed our conversation together. He has a different opinion than those men do,” Rogan explained.
“I had Dr. Michael Osterholm on at the very beginning of the pandemic. He is on President Biden’s COVID-19 advisory board. I had Dr. Peter Hotez on, who is a vaccine expert. I am interested in finding out what is correct and fine. I’m also finding out how people come to these conclusions and what the facts are,” he added.
On Artists Pulling Out Their Music From Spotify
The controversial episodes where Rogan has suggested healthy young people don’t need the COVID-19 vaccine were deleted by Spotify. In protest, many artists removed their music from the site. Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, and Nils Lofgren were among the musicians. Fellow podcaster Brené Brown also said she’ll take a break from adding new episodes to her Spotify-exclusive shows. However, she didn’t specify whether it was because of Rogan’s controversy.
“Neil Young has removed his music from the platform is Spotify. And Joni Mitchell and apparently some other people want to as well. I’m very sorry that they feel that way. I most certainly don’t want that,” he said.
Thanking Haters
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Rogan promised fans by saying, “I will do my best to try to balance out these more controversial viewpoints with other people’s perspectives. So we can maybe find a better point of view. I don’t want to just show the contrary opinion to what the narrative is. I want to show all kinds of opinions so that we can all figure out what’s going on.”
He thanks fans once again, including the haters.
“Thank you, Spotify. Thank you to all the supporters, and even thank you to the haters. It’s good to have some haters, it makes you reassess what you’re doing and put things into perspective. And, and I think I think that’s good too,” he said.
