Ben Meiselas flamed rival podcaster Joe Rogan during a discussion about whether Kamala Harris should have appeared on Rogan’s show during the 2024 campaign.
“To me, Rogan’s a jerk and he spreads lies,” Meiselas said on a new episode The People’s Cabinet podcast, slamming the pro-MAGA podcaster.
Meiselas co-hosts the left-leaning MeidasTouch podcast with his brothers Brett and Jordan. The show dethroned The Joe Rogan Experience in February to become the top podcast in the country—and has hovered near the top of the charts ever since.
“I don’t think [Harris] should have went on Rogan or any of those right-wing shows,” Meiselas stated. “The moment you go on a Rogan or a Charlie Kirk they are already going to be framing things in terms of issues that really aren’t the issues that need to be discussed.”
Meiselas, who also co-owns Los Angeles Magazine, pushed back on efforts to create a liberal counterpart to Rogan. “We shouldn’t be chasing ‘Who could be the next left version of Joe Rogan,” he said, adding, “Someone on the left shouldn’t be like, ‘Well I need to be a jerk and punch down.’”
Instead, Meiselas—whose podcast racked up 125 million downloads and views in March, nearly double Rogan’s 64 million downloads—called for building a “healthy, vibrant, pro-democracy, pro-truth ecosystem.”
Rogan has faced criticism for spreading COVID-19 and vaccine misinformation and hosting conspiracy theorists. On a recent episode of his podcast, British conservative columnist Douglas Murray confronted him for hosting Ian Carroll, a YouTuber known for pushing antisemitic conspiracy theories.
“If you throw a lot of s–t out there, there’s some point at which [saying] ‘I’m just raising questions’ is not a valid thing,” Murray said. “You’re not raising questions. You’re not asking questions. You’re telling people something … I feel you’ve opened the door to quite a lot of people. You’ve now got a big platform and have been throwing out counter-historical stuff but a very dangerous kind.”
Rogan invited both Donald Trump and Harris onto his show during the 2024 campaign. Only Trump made an appearance, after Rogan declined an invitation from the Harris team to travel to her for an hour-long interview, rather than sit for a three-hour interview in his Austin, Texas studio. He endorsed Trump on the eve of the election.
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