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Joe Rogan’s comparison of US immigration raids to Gestapo operations, made during a podcast episode earlier this week, has sparked speculation about whether the wildly popular podcaster, who endorsed Donald Trump in 2024, has fully soured on Trump’s presidency – and what that might say of the millions of mainly young men who listen to Rogan’s show.
Rogan’s views, as expressed in the podcast discussion, were more complicated than the Gestapo remark taken alone might make them seem. Yet even his more measured skepticism about ICE immigration raids feels somewhat significant, given Rogan’s cultural status and the evidence that Americans in general are turning against Trump’s hardline anti-immigration efforts.
The Joe Rogan Experience is the biggest podcast in the United States, by most metrics, and political observers track it with keen interest. Rogan’s enormous listenership makes him a powerbroker for the digital age; his publicly-stated decisions to vote for Bernie Sanders in 2020 and Donald Trump in 2024, are considered at least as significant as traditional political endorsements.
But it is also because of a perception that the everyman Rogan, whose views do not map neatly onto either major party, is an avatar for millions of politically fluid, vaguely centrist Americans – a weathervane whose shifts might, like a groundhog emerging from his burrow, predict looming changes in the ideological weather.
As Ben Burgis, a leftwing writer and academic, recently put it: Rogan is “America’s most famous swing voter”.
Many heads in the political and media worlds turned when Rogan asked during an episode of his show released on Tuesday: “Are we really going to be the Gestapo? ‘Where’s your papers?’ Is that what we’ve come to?”
The remark happened during a nearly three-hour conversation with Rand Paul, the Republican senator from Kentucky, in which he and Rogan had been discussing the death of Renee Nicole Good, a 37-year-old woman who was fatally shot by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent during an altercation earlier this month in Minneapolis.
Good was a volunteer “legal observer” who had been tracking ICE operations from her car when agents approached her. During a brief verbal confrontation, Good started driving her car; an agent responded by shooting her through the car’s windows.
The tragedy, which was widely caught on video, has become a political football. Progressives argue that Good was merely confused, while the Trump administration and some rightwing commentators insist that the agent acted in self-defense. Last year, that same agent was dragged 300ft by a car while trying to detain a motorist, according to the Minnesota Star Tribune.
CNN and the Hill have described Rogan’s remarks on Tuesday as evidence that he is breaking with Trump. What Rogan actually said was slightly more ambivalent. During the segment, he described himself as frustrated by the political debate over immigration because he could “see both perspectives”.
Conservatives believe that people in the country illegally must be deported “because if we don’t … it’s going to accelerate”, he said, whereas progressives say: “Yeah, but you don’t want militarized people in the streets just roaming around, snatching people up, many of [whom] turn out to actually be US citizens that just don’t have their papers on them. Are we really going to be the Gestapo? ‘Where’s your papers?’ Is that what we’ve come to? So it’s … more complicated than I think people want to admit.”
While explaining the conservative point of view, Rogan also appeared to agree with an unproven belief, held by some on the right, that the Biden administration deliberately indulged illegal immigration to rig Democratic electoral prospects. Recent reporting by the New York Times has suggested that the Biden administration grossly mismanaged the border crisis, but that it did so more out of incompetence and fear of alienating progressive constituencies than any deliberate political conspiracy.
When Paul argued that ICE raids were partly the left’s fault because “sanctuary cities”, such as Minneapolis, have not cooperated with federal immigration authorities seeking to deport serious criminals, Rogan pushed back slightly.
“I think most liberals are in favor of getting rid of gang members, criminals, murderers, rapists,” Rogan said. “Most people are in favor, right?”
“But the thing is, is that the leftwing cities that are sanctuary cities are not reporting [these suspects],” Paul said. “That’s part of the reason why ICE is in Minnesota.”
Rogan then seemed to agree. “A good example of that … is Aurora, Colorado,” he said, “where Tren de Aragua was taking over apartment buildings.”
Since last year, a number of prominent male comedy and talk-show podcasters who had previously endorsed Trump have walked back their support, including Rogan, Theo Von and Andrew Schulz. Trump’s immigration policies have been a particular source of alienation.
In March, responding to the news that a gay stylist and makeup artist seeking asylum had been deported, Rogan said: “If you want compassionate people to be on board with you, you can’t deport gay hairdressers seeking asylum – that’s fucking crazy – and then throw them in an El Salvador prison.”
Von learned that his image had been used in US Department of Homeland Security messaging without his knowledge in September. In a later deleted post, he wrote on Twitter/X: “Yooo DHS i didnt approve to be used in this. I know you know my address so send a check. And please take this down and please keep me out of your ‘banger’ deportation videos. When it comes to immigration my thoughts and heart are alot more nuanced than this video allows. Bye!”
Tucker Carlson, the rightwing commentator, podcaster, and former Fox News anchor, has also criticized the Trump administration, though mainly in relation to what he views as the US’s illegitimate support for Israel. In a recent newsletter, however, he also criticized the killing of Good and the conservative response to her death.
“Did we disagree with her views on immigration? Probably,” he wrote. “But that shouldn’t matter. Her death is a tragedy, regardless of her partisan affiliations, ideological beliefs, or who pulled the trigger. A woman got shot in the face. How come so few conservatives are viewing this story through a human lens?”
