Joe Rogan has begun attacking President Donald Trump from the same platform that helped lift him to power, calling ICE agents' tactics Nazi gestapo-like and accusing the administration of trying to gaslight the public over the Epstein files. The most popular podcaster in America has also said Trump has launched a war on Iran that left many supporters feeling betrayed.
Those remarks mark a sharp turn for Rogan, who endorsed Trump in 2024 before the Republican’s narrow victory over then-Vice President Kamala Harris. On The Joe Rogan Experience, he has described himself as politically homeless, but he still continues to spread Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.'s anti-vaccine gospel even as his patience with Trump has worn thin.
Rogan’s break with Trump comes after months of drift, not one sudden blowup. In August 2024, he called Kennedy a fan and praised him as much more reasonable and intelligent than the rest of the field, while also lauding The Real Anthony Fauci. He later clarified that the praise was not an endorsement, though Kennedy still appeared on the show in February and remains central to Rogan’s political universe.
The contradiction is now impossible to miss. Rogan has taken aim at Trump on immigration, secrecy and foreign policy, yet he has kept pushing claims that sit far outside medical consensus. Last month, he said he would not even speak to Sam Harris until Harris admitted he was wrong about Covid-19 vaccines being overwhelmingly safe and effective, and in May 2025 he estimated that Pfizer’s vaccine probably caused a conservative range of 470,000 to 600,000 deaths.
This week, he went further, trying to link a friend’s mRNA vaccine to the friend’s later death from aggressive cancer. That kind of speculation keeps him anchored to the anti-vaccine politics that first pulled him into Trump’s orbit through Kennedy, even as he now sounds increasingly disillusioned with the man he helped promote. The political split is real; the medical claims have not become any more cautious.
