Joe Rogan, the popular podcaster who helped propel Donald Trumpto the White House, has grown increasingly critical of the embattled president. That’s bad news for Republicans heading into the midterms.
According to a Bloomberg report, Rogan has peppered his shows with anger and dismay over Trump’s second term, ranting about broken promises.
It’s a sharp turn from 2024, with Bloomberg reporting, “By the time Joe Rogan formally endorsed Donald Trump on the eve of the 2024 election, the nod felt like it had been a long time coming, adding, all summer, Rogan had used the world’s most popular podcast “to amplify the chosen themes of the Trump ticket, mocking political correctness and challenging government authority, while reveling in Trump’s survival of an assassination attempt that year on the campaign trail.”
This time, Rogan has been far more skeptical, particularly about Trump’s decision to go to war with Iran.
“What Trump stood for, some of it turned out to not be real,” Rogan told actor Michael Douglas this month. “Like one of them was the no wars. Well, look, we’re at war with Iran. So that wasn’t real.”
“I do not like this Iran war in any way, shape or form,” he added, calling the conflict “a giant quagmire.”
According to the report, Rogan has also been more outspoken about what he sees as pro-Israel groups’ outsized influence on U.S. foreign policy, and he has recoiled at signs that Trump is using his office to enrich himself and his family.
In January, he condemned Immigration and Customs Enforcement tactics in terms that wouldn’t have been out of place in a Democratic stump speech.
“Are we really going to be the Gestapo? ‘Where’s your papers?’ Is that what we’ve come to?” Rogan asked.
Rogan’s politics have never been “easy to pin down” beyond his support for anti-establishment figures like Trump and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who appeared on the podcast in 2019 and 2025, the report states before noting that last year Rogan hosted James Talarico, a Democratic state representative from Texas who is now in a tight U.S. Senate race. The interview was seen as Talarico’s breakout moment and ended with Rogan telling him, “You need to run for president. We need someone who’s actually a good person.”
There’s “still time before the election” for Rogan to endorse Republicans or host Trump or a key GOP candidate, but Bloomberg noted that his boost might not be the same this time. According to YouGov, Rogan’s popularity dipped in the months after Trump returned to office, though it has rebounded since the summer.
His real value to Trump was never just audience size. It was his connection with younger men, a group that helped power Trump’s win and is now souring on the administration or tuning out altogether.
A recent Cygnal poll cited by Bloomberg found that male likely voters ages 18 to 30 prefer Democratic congressional candidates over Republicans, 57% to 40%. Only a third said they were extremely determined to vote, Bloomberg reported.
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