Joe Rogan has hit out at the BBC after director general Tim Davie and CEO of BBC News Deborah Turness resigned over the editing of a Donald Trump speech in a Panorama documentary.
Trump: A Second Chance? was shown on TV a week before the US general election and included a clip of Trump giving a speech to a crowd on 6 January, 2021, the day on which a mob of his supporters attacked the US Capitol building while the 2020 election victory of Joe Biden was being formalised.
In the documentary Trump's speech was edited to make it seem as though he said: "We're going to walk down to the Capitol... and I'll be there with you. And we fight. We fight like hell."
While he did say all those words in his speech he didn't say them together, what he actually said was: "We're going to walk down to the Capitol, and we're going to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women."
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The 'fight like hell' bit came from a much later part in the speech where he told the crowd: "And we fight. We fight like hell. And if you don't fight like hell, you're not going to have a country anymore."
Davie and Turness resigned over criticism of the Panorama show, while Trump has threatened the BBC with a $1 billion lawsuit unless it meets his three demands to retract Trump: A Second Chance?, apologise and 'appropriately compensate' him.
Wading into the matter now is podcaster Joe Rogan, who said the whole thing was emblematic of the 'deep rot' in mainstream media.
Speaking on The Joe Rogan Experience, he said: "It's kinda f**king dangerous. It seems like these people, this is just my opinion, felt justified for completely lying, because it would lead to an ultimate good."
You can watch his response below (it contains some strong language):
He also claimed it was a sign that 'woke s**t' was 'rotting people's brains' as it had happened to 'the president of the greatest country the world's ever known'.
He continued: "You guys, you're supposed to be the news. You're not supposed to be the propaganda arm of whichever party you support. This is nuts!"
Having previously called Trump a 'man baby', Rogan later had him on the podcast in the run-up to the 2024 election and endorsing him for that vote.
He was also invited to Trump's inauguration and said being there was 'bizarre', and has insisted that despite his endorsement of Trump he's not aligned with any particular party.
Rogan's own podcast has been accused of spreading misinformation on certain topics, including on the subject of climate change and the Covid-19 pandemic.
Yale Climate Connections claimed that 'like nearly all of today's most popular online shows, Rogan's spreads climate misinformation', while in 2022 the BBC fact checked a number of claims his podcast had hosted about the pandemic and vaccines.
A number of artists left Spotify in 2022 over The Joe Rogan Experience, with Rogan saying: "I’m not trying to promote misinformation, I’m not trying to be controversial. I’ve never tried to do anything with this podcast other than just talk to people and have interesting conversations."
Topics: Joe Rogan, Donald Trump, BBC, Podcast
Joe Harker