Joe Rogan Says This Texas Democratic Whippersnapper Should Run For President
Meet James Talarico or fall in love with him some more.
Hello, Moral High Grounders!
If you love this newsletter and value the work I do and you’re able, PLEASE upgrade your subscription to PAYING and/or founding subscriber! I know there are tons of people asking for your support, but The Moral High Ground and everything I want it to be is 100% reader-supported, and I truly cannot do this work without the generosity of YOU ALL OUT THERE.
Oh yeah, and it’s 30% off! It’s like, the same price as buying me a coffee once a month. And oh boy, I do like coffee.
If you’re a new subscriber, click here to learn what this place is all about and why you belong here. Welcome to all the many new readers!
Why become a paying subscriber? Because independent media is more important than ever in these dark days we’re in, free speech is under attack, and Donald Trump’s Gestapo is attacking and literally even disappearing people for having opinions the regime doesn’t like. Supporting people who call the fucking tyrants out is more important every day, and I need your help remaining one of those voices.
It also helps support projects like these, where I’m keeping track of all the Christian pastors and youth group leaders accused of/arrested for/convicted of sexually abusing/grooming children.
Because it really never is drag queens or LGBTQ+ people, is it?
Thank you for reading, thank you for subscribing, thank you for supporting!
I don’t like the Jubilee debate format.
You know, the thing where oftentimes they put one decent, intelligent human being — most recently Mehdi Hasan — in a room surrounded by just the absolute vilest fascists, Nazis and otherwise deplorable people the producers could find. Let’s see how the decent person does! Can we foster understanding? LOL, fuck you, please. You can go viral. That’s what you want, right? (Sometimes it’s the opposite and the deplorable is the one in the middle, like Candace Owens or Jordan Peterson or Michael Knowles. You can browse Jubilee’s offerings on their YouTube.)
In this most recent one, some unfuckable white chud named Connor openly identified as a fascist while yelling at Mehdi, got fired from his job, and now he’s bitching and whining on GiveSendGo — the Christian extremist alternative to GoFundMe — that he’s being persecuted for “voicing fully legal traditional right wing political views.” OK, creeper. But I’m sure he’ll be fine. Prediction: if Riley Gaines can come from fifth place to make a career in wingnut welfare, if dumpy human zero Kyle Rittenhouse can do it just by killing people and then crying real big about it when he almost faced consequences, then this little piggy Connor will likely end up speaking at the next Turning Point USA conference. And nothing of value will be gained, but he’ll be financially fine.
I just don’t personally care about speaking to those people, or reaching out to them, or finding our common humanity. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying nobody should. There are those who — to use some common evangelical lingo — God really has put it on their heart to do that. There are those who have a real talent for it, like people who used to be Nazis, get deprogrammed, then devote the rest of their lives to helping pull others out. Sarah Silverman has a particular gift for it.
But it ain’t me.
Also, don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying everything Jubilee does is shit. The one they did with Pete Buttigieg and 25 undecided voters before the election, that was outstanding. But Pete Buttigieg also has a certain talent for talking to certain kinds of people.
All that said, I’ve been saying ever since the election — ever since Donald Trump apparently gambled on Elon Musk’s $250 million and the votes of low-electoral-participation dudebros who listen to bro podcasts like Rogan, and managed to eke out a win — that if there’s any prayer of saving this country, those of us who are not fascists have to find ways to enter certain spaces and speak directly to people who, quite frankly, are never ever going to turn on MSNBC.
But I don’t mean trying to peel off fascists and Nazis and other MAGA shithole humans, the types who look at Charlie Kirk and don’t even notice that his head is shaped like that. Those people are too far gone.
I wrote the Friday after the election:
If your media diet is Fox News and Joe Rogan and some weird shit on YouTube and TikTok and your friend Ed who says he knows a guy who knows a guy whose pastor says they’re chopping off penises at the middle school to rig the state volleyball championship, then you are less than a low-information voter. You know nothing. (Remember those media surveys that found that consumers of Fox News were less informed than voters who watched no news at all?)
That, I would suggest is one of the most important lessons of this election. That until Democrats actually decide to compete in the spaces where these voters actually are, then many folks aren’t going to know that Republican scaremongering about trans surgeries in the school nurse’s office and trans women invading sports and kids demanding to identify as “furries” and use litterboxes at school are lies.
Are they going to learn how tariffs actually work because they accidentally flipped on MSNBC and saw Lawrence O’Donnell, who incidentally does an excellent job of explaining that? They are not. Could we perhaps get a pro wrestler or that father-son duo that yells “Boom!” on TikTok to explain it?
In other words, GO TELL JOE ROGAN.
I’ve been saying to anyone who will listen, when you decide to be a whistleblower and tell us about horrifying things happening in Donald Trump’s concentration camps, or in his Justice Department, or when you’re a bunch of military experts saying the continued reign of Secretary Shitfaced Pete Hegseth is a danger to all of humanity, yes, please, do your MSNBC hits and your interviews with lawyerly nerd websites, but also, GO TELL JOE ROGAN. Call him up! Ask to come on his show! He just might let you!
As Jonathan V. Last wrote the other day in a post about the current landscape of right-wing media and how different entities within that stand to benefit from the Epstein scandal, “If you’re from the Joe Rogan wing, you exist in a world that is adjacent to, but separate from, MAGA. Your audience voted from Trump, but they aren’t Trumpers.” An important distinction, I think.
These audiences are people who are maybe not stupid, but they’re definitely not paying attention to shit the way all of us here are. They’re not listening to political podcasts voluntarily, and they don’t think of Rogan or the other media they consume as political. And Republicans know that. Whole articles are being written about how MAGA fascists are stealing people’s souls by sneaking in under the guise of talking about fun! and pop culture! and celebrities! and sports! They’re appealing to women and they’re appealing to men, in a very sex-segregated way, which tracks, considering who these influencers are and how their worldview works.
But many in these audiences aren’t already full MAGA. if they were, these conniving Christian fascists sons of bitches wouldn’t be working overtime to trick them into fully converting.
Which brings us to Rogan and James Talarico, the Democrat he wants to run for president
We’ve talked here about how Joe Rogan, it turns out, has a moral compass, and it’s been spinning lately. He seems genuinely horrified by how Donald Trump and Stephen Miller have been directing their immigration Gestapo, and yeah, as we’ve discussed, I’m more than a little sick of all the “This isn’t what I voted for!” shit. Yes, you did. Grow up and take some fucking responsibility.
But it seems important that Rogan is so disturbed by it that he keeps talking about it.
And look, Rogan seems kind of dumb. Or at least highly influenceable and impressionable. And so when he has somebody on who has a gift for breaking through with some of these people in his audience, who is able to break through with him, I can see how it could move poll numbers and maybe even election results.
Which brings us to, have y’all seen the clips of Texas Democratic State Rep. James Talarico on Rogan last week? They’re everywhere, they’re going viral, they’re on Insta and TikTok and all the places where the voters you need to reach actually are. The clips getting the most traction, as far as I can see, are the ones where Talarico completely defangs the issues of abortion and LGBTQ+ rights for Rogan and his listeners, and where he blows Rogan’s fucking mind with his explanation for why he, a very Christian seminary student, doesn’t think Texas should be requiring all teachers to hang the Ten Commandments in their classrooms.
And yes, Joe Rogan told this 36-year-old Democrat he needs to run for president. “We need somebody that’s actually a good person,” Rogan said.
“The only thing worse than a tyrant is a tyrant who thinks they’re on a mission from God,” Talarico told Rogan. He decried charlatans and fascists who try to use their religious beliefs to control people. And Rogan, bless his heart, agreed with him.
If you’re not familiar with Talarico yet, Politico’s got an article right now with the headline “Joe Rogan’s Latest Guest Might Turn Texas Blue,” so they clearly see this interview for the big deal it is.
Politico explains:
The 36-year-old Talarico is not your average Democratic politician; he’s an aspiring preacher who studies at Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary and has gained nearly 1 million followers on TikTok by publishing videos that frequently center on the intersection of his Christian faith and politics.
And that’s how Rogan found him. Rogan invited Talarico on the podcast after seeing one of his viral videos explaining his opposition to posting the Ten Commandments in public schools.
Oh wow, Joe called him. This was the video that made him do it. All should watch it:
Tiktok failed to load.Enable 3rd party cookies or use another browser
In that video, Talarico quotes Matthew 6:5, the one where Jesus goes off on pompous asses who pray in public for all to see how pious they are, telling them instead, “But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen.” It’s a verse we quoted recently when White House Nazi Barbie Karoline Leavitt’s office posted a video of her own pompous ass piously praying before emptying her lie-hole to the White House Press Corps.
Talarico said in that video, “A religion that has to force people to put up a poster to prove its legitimacy is a dead religion, and it’s not one I want to be a part of, and it’s not one that I think I am a part of.” He shamed his fellow Texas lawmakers, explaining to them that “love your neighbor” includes Hindus and Muslims and atheist students. He said he’s deeply offended by the bill. (It’s now of course Texas law, because Texas is run by the worst Christian Nazis in the country.)
In the Politico interview, Talarico says he thinks the defining political characteristic of people like Rogan and his listeners isn’t necessarily loyalty to one side or another, but rather skepticism toward all of it. You’ve met these people, the ones who say they’re all full of shit, they’re all corrupt, throw ‘em all out, blah blah blah. As it happens, people who believe that are prime targets for political movements like MAGA, because if everybody is corrupt, then nobody is. (MAGA learned that from Putin.)
But back to the Rogan show. Watch these clips if you haven’t:
Here’s 15 full minutes of Talarico blowing Rogan’s mind on why conflating Christianity with opposition to LGBTQ+ people and abortion is bullshit, that “using religion to control other people is a tale as old as time,” what the Bible actually does and does not say about homosexuality, how Jesus didn’t say a fucking word about it, and oh yeah, how there are biblical justifications for abortion. (The way he frames the story of Mary being visited by the angel of God as a story about consent? Oh hello.)
They actually talked Bible! Quite frankly, they talked far more Bible than you’re ever going to see from Christian fascist Republican garbage like Mike Johnson or Pete Hegseth. (And Joe Rogan asked questions!) We’ve discussed how there’s absolutely nothing those scumbag MAGAts hate more than Jesus, so they can’t exactly get into a New Testament discussion. They certainly can’t put 1 John 4:8 in their social media bios, as Talarico does. (“Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.”)
We’ve also talked recently about how those scumbags literally HATE your moral compass, because the fact that you have one is their literal negation. When you actually talk about real morality, real compassion and empathy, it doesn’t matter whether it’s from a religious or a non-religious perspective, because MAGA and Trump are literally on par with Hitler’s movement when it comes to morality. You saw how they reacted to that Episcopal Bishop Mariann Budde when she gently asked Donald Trump and JD Vance to have mercy and compassion? They acted like vampires confronted with garlic, or a cross.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not about to become a Joe Rogan fan or anything. God no. And I don’t think James Talarico fixed Rogan in one afternoon. Lordy, that’d take a long time.
But I am saying that it’s hella fucking powerful that this conversation happened on the Joe Rogan show, and that things like this should happen more. It’s kind of like that thing where Pete Buttigieg goes on Fox News and stuffs them in lockers over and over again, calmly and methodically.
There are people who should do it, and there are places they should go.
To be clear, it’s not the only way I think we should be talking to Trump voters, and it’s definitely not how I think we should be addressing the die-hard MAGA Nazis. Fuck them. We should be mean and nasty and call them trash and make them feel even more rejected and shunned by the world than they did before they met us.
James Talarico might disagree. But that’s fine, because I’m pretty sure God put it on his heart to disagree with that.
Anyway, here’s the whole interview if you have seven million hours to listen to an episode of Rogan.
Hello, lovely readers and subscribers! If you like this post and want more like it, please share, recommend this newsletter on your Substack, subscribe and most importantly become a paying subscriber if you can! (Or upgrade to Founding Member!)
Paying subscribers get access to a growing number of benefits, like audio versions of the weekly newsletter, plus the exclusive members’ live-chat, where you can ask me brilliant questions and we can just generally yap at each other.
Plus you’ll be supporting new projects like this one, where I track all the Christian pastors and youth leaders who abuse kids. Surprise, it’s still not drag queens!
More features and benefits will come as the place grows. A more professional podcast is coming, but realistically I’ll need to be in the neighborhood of 20,000 total subscribers for that to happen. (We are over 13,000!) Book club? Recipe exchange? Bible study for complete heathens? COULD BE. One step at a time, though! So upgrade that subscription and SHARE, SHARE, SHARE this post everywhere you share things.
Bluesky? I’m there! Insta! I’m there too! Facebook! Reddit! ALL THE PLACES!
If you’re feeling limited by the subscription options and want to donate more like some kind of high roller big bucks luxury patron, use these Luxury Buttons! (PayPal and Venmo, respectively.)
Suggested donation: ONE MILLION DOLLARS.
Again, the Luxury Button is a PayPal link, and the Other Luxury Button is Venmo, so they won’t AUTOMATICALLY confer the benefits of subscriptions like above. Go ahead and put your email in the subscription box regardless, and if you ever don’t have access to something after you’ve subscribed/donated that way, gently nudge me to let me know, because I have to do those manually.
Thank you, love you all!
-Evan
James Talarico is living proof that there is hope for a new generation of Christian progressives. We'll be hearing from him in the future, I'm sure -- not in the next presidential race, but in US House and Senate elections to come. Fundamentalist "Christian nationalists" are deeply un-Christian; it's time to return to the fine old tradition of the Social Gospel. I anticipate that Talarico is the first of many more progressive Christians to come.
He sounds great, I just watched a few of those clips and yeah, he's right. But if I had a dime for every time someone said this is what is going to turn Texas blue, I'd have a shitload of dimes. It's starting to feel like Lucy and the football, this dream of a blue Texas.