Podcaster Joe Rogan said this weekend he would rather vote for President Donald Trump if it were a race between him and former Vice President Joe Biden in the 2020 election.
Rogan said that the Democratic party “made us all morons” by pushing Biden. His guest, Eric Weinstein of Thiel Capital, agreed.
“I can’t vote for that guy,” Rogan said. He added, “I don’t think he can handle anything,” and criticized Biden as an individual leader unable to communicate.
Earlier in the primary, Rogan sparked a kerfuffle when he said he would vote for Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) for the Democratic nomination.
Rogan has one of the most influential platforms online, especially with young men, and after he praised Sanders, the candidate shared the clip and touted the endorsement.
Mainstream Democrats were furious Sanders would plug the Rogan endorsement. In his time in the public eye, Rogan has been repeatedly accused of harboring misogynistic and transphobic views. That the Sanders campaign would adopt Rogan as a quasi-surrogate confirmed for many what they saw as toxicity in Sanders’ effort.
The same critics flagged Rogan’s remark that he’d take Trump over Biden.
“Given Bernie (mistakenly, imho) elevated Joe Rogan’s endorsement of him, and given Rogan is now saying he’d rather vote for Trump than Biden… is it not time for Bernie to also now disown/distance himself from Rogan, too?” wrote the Intercept columnist Medhi Hasan.
Still, Rogan announcing he would vote for Trump over Biden isn’t the kind of damning stance anti-Sanders tweeters want it to be. It’s really a point that many of Sanders’ base was pushing: that the candidate can appeal to white working-class voters who may have an affinity for Trump in a way that no other mainstream Democrat could.
That argument took a hit in the primary, as Sanders was unable to overtake the establishment coalescing around Biden before Super Tuesday.
Will enough average voters who picked Trump over Hillary Clinton flock to Biden in November?
Rogan is warning that they might not.
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