Joe Rogan’s Elon Musk Love Affair

Joe Rogan helped Donald Trump make historic gains with young, often politically disengaged men in November, showing how a largely non-political podcaster with a broad following can nevertheless influence politics.

But since the election, “The Joe Rogan Experience” has taken a different tack, focusing less on his usual fare of comedy or weird science. Instead, Rogan has become dedicated to defending one increasingly important political actor in Trump’s administration: Elon Musk.

A vocal contingent of Rogan’s fans is none too pleased.

The sudden turn toward Musk, who’s emerged as a force behind many of the broadest changes in the early weeks of the new administration, is roiling the online spaces where his many fans, who are used to a more varied and less nakedly pro-administration podcast, gather.

A 1.5 million subscriber subreddit message board dedicated to Rogan — where fans of his podcast congregate to discuss the show and any other Rogan-related drama — has in recent days been overrun with memes and other posts complaining about Musk, the Trump administration and Rogan’s recent regular, full-throated defenses of the work of DOGE, the Musk-led initiative to slash federal spending.

A quick scroll through the comments reveals messages like “Joe and his anti-elite billionaire friends are becoming the swamp they’ve always hated,” and “Joe is state run propagandist media. Very nice.” Another adds, “I seriously can’t even listen to him anymore. It sucks so much man. I really loved this show.”

Prominent podcasters are used to getting hate on social media, even from their most regular listeners. And redditors, in particular, are not necessarily representative of the feelings of the larger audience — the subreddit dedicated to Rogan is certainly more politically liberal than his average fan is likely to be and has complained about him for years. But this recent onslaught is notable for its scale, its intensity and its type. The mostly good-natured ribbing is gone, replaced by a very specific kind of frustration — the idea that he’s sold out his base. Rogan’s genuflections before the leader of DOGE are straining the limits of his credibility and appeal.

As Musk works directly with the Trump administration, Rogan now runs the risk of sounding like a standard political podcaster defending his team. What he taught his listeners over the years — don’t trust the people in charge — is redounding onto him. There are few overt signs it’s hurting his listenership (at time of publication he was sitting at third in the Apple Podcast Charts; he’s regularly occupied the top slot in the past), but Rogan’s enthusiasm for Musk has the potential to change the nature of his show and ironically make him a much less influential political commentator.

“There’s an essential appeal to independence, and fair-mindedness, and anti-system, anti-establishment politics,” says Max Read, a journalist who covers internet culture and the tech industry and writes a newsletter called Read Max. “Then that gets scrambled, and all of a sudden [Rogan] finds himself defending the establishment.”

On his show recently, Rogan argued that “[Musk] is a super genius that’s been fucked with. And when you’ve been fucked with by these nitwits that hide behind three letter agencies and you’re dealing with one of the smartest people alive … well, you fucked up. You fucked up and you picked the wrong psychopath on the spectrum, because he’s going to hunt you down. He’s going to find out what’s going on. And that’s good. That’s good for everybody.”

Rogan caveats his position by placing both himself and Musk outside the political establishment, just two essentially apolitical guys who are interested in rooting out corruption. But he’s also running much more basic political cover for Musk. After Musk’s gestures at the inauguration drew comparisons to a Nazi salute, Rogan asked a guest — comedian Bridget Phetasy — whether she’d “seen the Kamala one, doing the Heil Hitler,” referring to a video of Harris with her arm raised that Trump and Musk defenders circulated online. Phetasy also suggested Musk’s “autism” may have been involved.

The seemingly Musk-pilled podcast has mentioned the Tesla CEO and co-founder by name multiple times on all but two of the 14 podcasts released since the inauguration, and in those two podcasts Rogan still mentioned Trump and the new administration. Musk himself is a five-time guest on “The Joe Rogan Experience,” and Rogan has repeatedly expressed his admiration for the tech founder over the years. Still, Rogan’s insistence on Musk’s righteousness — and the politics now attached to him — has become more frequent and louder.

In the leadup to the election, Trump’s appearance on Rogan and other mostly lifestyle or comedy podcasts was effective precisely because it enabled him to reach an audience insistent that it’s not interested in politics. Listening to Rogan — whose numbers dwarfed those of any other podcast on Spotify, according to information released by the service in 2024 — was a way to avoid the news. And he built up a trust with his audience as a commentator without strong ties to either party or movement who nevertheless decided to endorse Trump.

His political ideology didn’t align perfectly with either major party — it was always about a deep distrust of government systems, institutions and overreach. He endorsed Bernie Sanders in the 2020 Democratic primary.

Now, however, Rogan’s interest in Musk and Trump seems to pervade every podcast segment he has.

“It’s no coincidence that Musk himself is trying as hard as he can to continue to cast himself as not part of the government, working against the government somehow, because he knows there’s a huge amount of power in that kind of anti-system, anti-establishment politics,” Read says. “But it’s increasingly difficult for him to make those claims. And I think Rogan, to the extent that he wants to keep defending Musk, faces the same dilemma … I wonder if the politics are becoming too much, and this is alienating a number of listeners for whom that is not, and has never really been, the attraction.”

Social media discourse of Rogan reflects that alienation. Other top comments on Rogan’s recent episodes on Reddit include “I really miss the old Joe, he’s a cuck now,” and “Old Rogan fans know that this podcast has essentially become a right wing talk show now.”

Kyle Kulinski, a six-time Rogan guest who’s a progressive populist commentator, spoofed Rogan on X and on YouTube on Thursday, pretending to be him in a sing-songy voice saying, “Oh, my puny brain could never live up to the amazing big brain of Elon Musk, oh, he’s such a mega-genius, I don’t even feel human when I’m near him because he’s just so smart.”

Some of Rogan’s podcasts remain non-political. And certainly, many of Rogan’s listeners are fully behind his pivot towards defending Trump and Musk. Top YouTube comments on his shows regularly praise Rogan for helping to “expose corruption” and describe him as a “hero.” Others insist that DOGE’s actions have further proved taxation is theft. But even those comments are distinct from the ones he used to get about an interesting piece of content or funny back and forth — they’re largely fellow Trump and Musk fans expressing their thanks.

Some fans are simply nostalgic for the pre-Musk-obsessed Rogan. “I miss laughing in my car or actually learning something interesting with JRE,” a former fan insisted. “Everything is right-wing politics now. This pod sucks.”

Jamie Cohen, a professor at CUNY Queens College who teaches and writes about digital culture, believes Rogan is enamored with Elon, while his median listener doesn’t think about Musk much at all.

“That’s where the problem comes from,” Cohen says. “[Musk] is a provocateur. The average person doesn’t have much time for that, except for the viral clips that come out of it. And being overloaded with that is exhausting.”