Joe Rogan had a secret dinner with the president at the White House just days before publicly slating his “insane” ICE sweeps, reports the Washington Post.
The mega-popular podcaster was invited for a private dinner with Trump, alongside Ultimate Fighting Championship CEO Dana White, on June 30.
Just three days later, Rogan laid into Trump’s immigration sweeps for, he says, “targeting migrant workers.”
He was speaking with the CEO of software company Replit, Amjad Masad, on his chart-topping podcast, The Joe Rogan Experience, and agreed with Masad’s assertion that the raids were “disappointing.”
White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson, in response to a request from the Post, said that “there will be no amnesty.”
“Only deportations of the violent, criminal illegal aliens that Joe Biden welcomed into the country,” she added.
But Rogan also unloaded on the perceived insanity of Trump’s logic, because his raids target innocent workers, and not gang-bangers. “There’s two things that are insane,” Rogan said. “One is the targeting of migrant workers. Not cartel members, not gang members, not drug dealers. Just construction workers. Showing up in construction sites, raiding them. Gardeners. Like, really?”
He then brought up the case of Turkish student Rumeysa Ozturk, who was in the U.S. on a student visa. The Tufts University student was detained in March by masked men, after writing an essay that was critical of Israel.
“And that’s enough to get you kicked out of the country,” Rogan said.
The Post reported that Rogan, who enjoys the ear of the president, also encouraged the commander-in-chief to lay off working migrants who don’t have criminal rap sheets during their private meal.
Rogan had railed against the move publically before the dinner. In a June 18 episode of the pod, he said that voters hadn’t “signed up” for the large-scale sweeps at stores, construction sites and on the streets.
“The Trump administration, if they’re running and they say, we’re going to go to Home Depot and we’re going to arrest all of the people at Home Depot, we’re going to construction sites and we’re just going to, like, tackle people at construction sites, I don’t think anybody would have signed up for that,” the host said in the show, which came before the sit down with Trump.
It is unclear if the comments from Rogan, a UFC commentator and close friend of White, the CEO, will affect plans for the company hosting a bout at the White House. Trump floated the idea during a rally-style speech at America’s 250th birthday celebrations in Iowa earlier this month.
It comes after Trump pledged to allow farmers to help some undocumented migrant workers avoid deportation. The H-2A visa program allows U.S. employers to give foreign nationals a temporary agricultural job by filing a petition on their behalf.
The move has caused consternation among MAGA hardliners who think that it represents Trump reneging on a promise to deport undocumented migrants en masse.
One MAGA source told the Post that Trump is finding out the hard way that you can’t keep everybody happy. “It’s a tug of war between the donor class and his base,” the person said.
“It’s an existential threat to the coalition. If you even float in any serious way amnesty, by that name or any other, the base will revolt.”
Representatives for Joe Rogan did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The post Joe Rogan Broke Bread With Trump Then Trashed His ICE Raids Days Later appeared first on The Daily Beast.
