Joe Rogan revealed that all of the recent controversies that he has been involved in and the attempts to cancel him have resulted in his Spotify subscriptions to go “up massively.”
On Friday’s episode of “The Joe Rogan Experience,” the prolific podcaster proudly proclaimed that his already-immense audience had grown significantly since a string of controversies plagued him.
British author and political commentator Douglas Murray talked about how Rogan was attacked by the legacy media.
“You have been put through the wringer since we last met,” Murray told Rogan. “They did a number on you. Wow.”
Rogan replied, “It’s interesting, my subscriptions went up massively — that’s what’s crazy. During the height of it all, I gained 2 million subscribers.”
A report from January 2022 estimated that “The Joe Rogan Experience” has an average of 11 million viewers per episode.
“It’s fortunate that the people that went for it were CNN, and they’re just so untrustworthy,” Rogan slammed the cable news network.
Rogan then bashed CNN’s personalities, including CNN’s chief media correspondent Brian Stelter.
“People know how biased they are, and they know how socially weird their f***ng anchors are – just these awkward, non-relatable people,” Rogan said. “Like if there’s someone on TV… like Jon Stewart is a great relatable person who I find to be a brilliant guy, who’s a kind person. If Jon Stewart thinks you’re a piece of s**t, I’m gonna listen. But if Brian Stelter doesn’t like you, that doesn’t mean anything to me.”
Murray added that everything about Brian Stelter “is strange.”
Rogan and Murray then tore apart Stelter’s cadence and “pattern of communication.”
Rogan brought up the time when former New York Times Opinion editor Bari Weiss demolished Stelter on his own “Reliable Sources” TV show.
Murray recalled watching CNN early last year, and he said, “Everything in the coverage was horrible and inflammatory. And everything in the advert breaks were for like adverts about the KKK’s history in America. So like all you saw all the time was like burning crosses, and then there was the relief from the interview stuff. It was just horrible to watch.”
Later in the podcast, Rogan discussed the cancellation attempts on his career that have all failed.
Rogan admitted that the negative press he received “probably worked on people who didn’t like me already, or people who would be more inclined to form a stereotype of something based on their appearance.”
“I mean, I’m problematic. I host cage fights, you know, and that’s one of my side jobs,” the podcast host acknowledged. “I commentate and explain how people are beating the f*** out of each other. Yeah, it’s part of my job. It’s a weird gig.”
Murray said well-known celebrities like Rogan and Jordan Peterson can survive cancelation attempts because they’re established, but he’s worried that “somebody starting off… who had not got a body of work behind them” is susceptible to cancel culture.
Rogan noted that if someone has a typical job at a company, it’s “frightfully easy to fire someone.”
“And one thing that people will do when they encounter a level of frustration is they lash out,” Rogan explained. “And if they can lash out inside the rulebook, like what’s the rule – ‘I was offended, f*** him, get him fired.'”
Rogan has experienced several controversies in the past several months, including the corporate media claiming that the stand-up comedian took “horse dewormer” to treat COVID-19 – when he took the human version of ivermectin.
There was a boycott of Spotify by musicians over alleged COVID-19 misinformation disseminated by Rogan on his podcasts.
Rogan apologized for using the N-word in old podcast clips that he claims were taken out of context and a political hit job.