This Joe Rogan Clip Will Give You A F*cking Aneurysm
Sooooo close to getting it. Yet so aggravatingly far!
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I saw a Joe Rogan clip this week that I can’t get out of my mind. (Words I never thought I’d type.) Maybe you saw it too, it’s been going around. It’s Rogan and his guest talking about Andry Hernandez, the gay Venezuelan makeup artist Donald Trump’s ICE Nazis abducted and traded into slavery in El Salvador. We discussed him recently here.
Since then it seems like every other day we’re learning that among the alleged gang members included in that Trump human trafficking run, there were lots of completely innocent people, people who have nothing to do with gangs, people who came to the United States to escape from gangs, people who were legally supposed to be protected from deportation.
People kidnapped and trafficked because the Trump administration is full of fucking racists who can’t tell what’s a gang tattoo and what’s a tattoo in honor of their mom, or to commemorate the birth of their baby.
And we’ve learned that the Trump administration has zero desire to even try to get them back. Which brings us to this Rogan clip about Andry. Really, if you haven’t seen it, you need to. If you have, watch it again, because I’m about to go the fuck off.
At the beginning of the clip, setting up the story, Rogan says he heard about it from Glenn Greenwald. “Is that true????” Rogan asks about the story, with the innocence of somebody who couldn’t possibly know the difference between a truth and a lie, much less how to find out the answer.
Rogan’s co-host/guest/whoever references the story from the photojournalist Philip Holsinger in Time, which detailed the brutality of the scene when Trump’s kidnapping victims arrived in El Salvador. That’s the story that has the account of the new inmate at the Salvadoran CECOT slave prison who, while being physically abused by guards, cried, “I’m not a gang member. I’m gay. I’m a barber.” I’m not sure if it’s been conclusively proven that was Andry or another gay guy they picked up, as Andry has been elsewhere described as a makeup artist, not a “barber,” and if you look at Andry’s Instagram, I’m not sure “barber” is the word that comes to mind.
But let’s not digress.
Rogan’s co-host/guest/whoever exclaims, “I don’t know what to believe anymore,” and Rogan agrees, saying, “I feel the same way.” Just two guys with an enormous platform telling millions of impressionable listeners that there’s no way to discern what’s true and what’s not. (This, by the way, is one of the greatest aims of the authoritarian dictator, a population that throws its hands up in the air and decides there’s no way to know for sure what’s true.)
The co-host says, “When you do things quickly, when you do things aggressively, that’s how you get shit done, but that’s also when mistakes get made. And I think a human being getting plucked out of nowhere, and ending up in a country he’s never been in, in a maximum security prison with gang members, seems like a bad thing to happen.”
Rogan agrees: “It’s horrific.”
Moral clarity!
Co-host: “I don’t think that should be controversial.”
Rogan: “No, that’s not controversial at all. And this is the thing, you know, measure twice, cut once?”
Yes, Joe, that could be one way to describe due process, which none of these people are getting.
Rogan: “This is, like, this is kind of crazy! That that could be possible. That’s horrific and that’s, again, that’s bad for the cause. The cause is let’s get the gang members out, everybody agrees. But let’s not — innocent gay hairdressers get lumped up with the gangs, and then like how long before that guy can get out? Can we figure out how to get him out? Is there any plan in place to alert the authorities that they’ve made a horrible mistake and correct it?”
Oh dear, bless his heart. Who wants to tell him?
Oh wait, his co-host tells him: “If you think about it from a government perspective, and this is where I think it gets quite sinister is, once you’ve done that, the incentive structure is never going to be to admit that and deal with it. The incentive structure is going to be to say nothing, to cover it up, to pretend it didn’t happen …”
Rogan replies: “Ohhhhhh, but that is horrible!”
Yes, Joe Rogan, yes it is deeply terribly incredibly horrible!
Rogan continues: “I don’t know if it’s been brought to their attention. I would assume that someone has alerted them to the fact that they might’ve rounded up this random hairdresser and accused him of being a gang member?”
Um yeah, they know.
Rogan goes on to ask if maybe the prison could do something. Could they go talk to him?
Oh, Joe Rogan, you sweet summer child.
Reading from articles in Time and Forbes, Rogan continues to assert that it’s “hard to know what’s real.” (!!!) Maybe there’s some incel in a basement on YouTube who has a compelling opposing view, who the fuck knows.
But he concludes: “If you want compassionate people to be on board with you, you can’t deport gay hairdressers seeking asylum, that’s fucking crazy, and then throw them in an El Salvador prison.”
Joe Rogan is correct. Never thought I’d type that but here we are.
Let’s Unpack This!
OK, so first of all, a couple places of agreement:
I’m glad Joe Rogan is talking about this. I’m glad this has broken through, that enough people are horrified by it that Joe Rogan is talking about it. And I’m glad Joe Rogan is horrified by it! He should be!
Notably, Rogan also mentions SignalGate in the clip, and seems appalled the Trump administration can’t just admit how bad it fucked up there. Again, if these things are breaking through to Joe Rogan and his audience, Donald Trump’s presidency is in some fucked territory. Can’t wait to see what Joe Rogan has to say about the tariffs!
But here is where we must diverge and stop agreeing with Joe Rogan on things, and suggest that if Rogan is going to spend time talking about such serious subjects, there are a couple of things he needs to understand, chiefly among them:
Donald Trump Wants To Hurt You
You, me, us, Joe Rogan, Joe Rogan’s co-host, Joe Rogan’s audience, everyone. He wants to hurt all of us.
Donald Trump’s tiny-handed need for retribution extends to the entire planet, because in his narcissistic dumbfuck mind, it’s the whole planet that’s wronged him, going all the way back to his disgusting father who never loved him, a cycle of emotional abuse he’s continued with his own sons. It extends through all the New York elites who rejected him, the political types who consider him a buffoon, the law enforcement and justice systems that have tried to hold him accountable for his two-bit crimes his entire life. It’s everyone who’s ever laughed at him, which multiplies his enemies list by hundreds of millions.
This is the part where I say the Rogan clip might give you an aneurysm, because he’s soooooo close to getting it. He identifies the problem. He’s horrified by the problem, even if he tries to use “Who can say what’s true!” as a security blanket. You can hear in his voice, see it on his face that he’s horrified.
Yet his brain will not make the connection, will not confront the fact that nobody in the Trump administration cares that they’ve kidnapped and human trafficked innocent people into slavery in El Salvador. That kind of vicious cruelty is what those fucking Nazis live for, what makes sick fucks like Stephen Miller — who seems to be running this White House, really — cream their pants.
Joe Rogan cannot confront the reality that these people are unhinged, evil fascists, and that in their minds, they have made no mistakes. Watch people like J.D. Vance and White House Nazi Barbie Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, doubling down on the story of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the man from Venezuela they “accidentally” kidnapped and trafficked to El Salvador, who came here to flee persecution and violence, as they lie and continue to say he’s a “convicted” member of MS-13, or maybe he’s a “ringleader,” when exactly none of those things is true.
Watch how shamelessly they do it, while that guy, and Andry, and so many more likely entirely innocent people are disappeared in that Salvadoran prison, being tortured and God knows what else.
The Trump administration is evil. They are the bad guys, Joe Rogan. They do not want what’s best for Andry Hernandez or Kilmar Abrego Garcia, but they also do not want what’s best for Joe Rogan or his co-hosts or for you or me or anyone else. They want to hurt us. They want to scare us. They want us all to believe — citizen or non-citizen, American born or foreign-born, here legally or not — that if we get sideways of them, if we anger them, that they could “accidentally” disappear us just like they disappeared Andry and Kilmar Abrego Garcia and Mahmoud Khalil and Rümeysa Öztürk and whoever else is on their list today.
This morning, the world continues to reel from Donald Trump’s tariffs, and the media continues to look with confusion at why Trump is doing this crazy economic thing that makes no sense. Well, it’s because, as Democratic Senator Chris Murphy explained the other night, it isn’t about economics. This is a fascist means of consolidating power for Trump, so that (he hopes) captains of industry and all the world’s nations will get on their knees and start sucking his cock with tears in their eyes while they call him “Sir.”
The Trump administration is evil. They are the bad guys, Joe Rogan. They do not want what’s best for the American economy, or for American middle class consumers. They do not want fair and equitable trade. They want to hurt us.
They’re hollowing out all the cancer research and firing people and slashing funding, just as — to cite on example — breakthroughs are starting to happen with a possible mRNA vaccine for pancreatic cancer, for God’s sake.
Because they don’t care if people die. In fact, people dying probably helps their bottom line in some way or another.
They’re getting rid of USAID and all the miraculous work the United States has historically done around the world because — let’s be real and confront hard truths here, Joe Rogan — they want non-white people to die.
The destruction is the point, Joe Rogan. The cruelty is the point, Joe Rogan. The cruelty is what they masturbate to at night and probably during stolen moments in every single lavatory in the West Wing.
These! Are! The! Bad! People!
Preaching To The Choir
We all know all of this. MAGA idiots like to do armpit farts and say we have Trump Derangement Syndrome, but reality has Trump Derangement Syndrome, so they can fuck off.
But this brings me back to what I wrote just after the election, about how the answer to saving this country — and specifically for Democrats winning elections — was not to compromise our values with these Nazis and Christian fascists.
I argued that our issues boiled down mostly to one word: communication. That our messages weren’t breaking through to entire audiences, like, for instance, Joe Rogan’s audience.
Allow me to quote myself:
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?
Well, update on that! Because Joe Rogan — in all his Joe Rogan-ness — is absolutely horrified by what Donald Trump is doing to at least one innocent gay hairdresser, trading him into slavery in El Salvador with no due process. He’s having a hard time verbalizing and processing it — because again, Joe Rogan — but it’s happening.
So on top of giving us aneurysms, could this clip also give us, perhaps, hope?
Because it tells me that, if Rogan is horrified, then people in his audience are horrified, which tells me there’s a latent moral compass out there that needs to be awakened, and we need to continue amplifying voices that can break through to people who possess it.
(No, Gavin Newsom! It is not by sitting down with Charlie Kirk and agreeing with him that little trans kids are destroying women’s sports! SIT THE FUCK DOWN, COLLABORATOR.)
To be clear, I don’t mean we need to mollycoddle these people. Honestly I think a lot of them need to be talked to just as rudely as they talk to other people. To have the tables turned on them completely. (And likely overturned, as Jesus was wont to do.)
Maybe we’re starting to see some of the ways we can do that. (I’ve been finding and collecting people I think are doing it well. Look for a post soon about that.)
That’s kiiiiiinda what The Moral High Ground is all about, after all: reasserting boldly who actually has the moral high ground in this country, thank you very much, and it’s not Donald Trump and his band of right-wing white Christian nationalist bastard MAGA motherfuckers.
Fuck those Nazis.
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-Evan
Oh, Evan. You glorious, furious lighthouse in this godforsaken fog of fascism. This essay is the righteous screed I needed injected directly into my veins and, just maybe, into the algorithmically compromised cortex of Joe Rogan himself.
Yes, the Rogan clip is aneurysm-inducing, but it’s also a signal flare. He’s horrified. Genuinely. And that tells us the rot of this regime has metastasized beyond the right-wing terrarium. But holy hell, Joe, how are you still out here pretending epistemological nihilism is neutral ground? You have a platform, not a bong circle. Pick a side.
Evan gets to the soul of it: Trumpism is a system of cruelty as governance. It’s not a bug; it’s the blueprint. And until people like Rogan—and his audience—snap out of their trauma-bonded libertarian haze and see that cruelty is the point, they will keep normalizing the machine.
So yes, celebrate that Rogan is flinching. But don’t mistake flinching for fighting.
We have the moral high ground. Time to start acting like we mean to hold it.
There are so many cracks in the wall of the Republicon Fascist party. That a person has to wonder out loud if an innocent person might have been hauled off when NO DUE PROCESS happened, tells me how disconnected people like Rogan are. He’s not familiar with the reason behind due process? Does he not think to apply this to himself or possibly a family member of his? I think the election of the Supreme Court judge in WI is another very bad sign for republicans and some in the cult, maybe quite a few know this. April 5th (tomorrow) Hands Off protests will be another way to turn the tables. I will be in mine!