Podcaster Joe Rogan has spoken out against ICE raids in a recent episode of The Joe Rogan Experience, where he described them as “crazy” and said: “I don’t think anybody would have signed up for that.”
Newsweek has reached out to a representative for Rogan via email outside of regular working hours for comment.
Why It Matters
Rogan endorsed Donald Trump in the 2024 presidential election and interviewed him on his podcast. He also attended Trump’s inauguration.
Trump campaigned on a hardline immigration stance, pledging to carry out the largest mass deportation in American history. Trump’s administration has said it deported around 100,000 illegal immigrants in the initial months of the presidency. Many individuals have been deported following Trump invoking the rarely used Alien Enemies Act of 1798, something which has been criticized and blocked by judges.
ICE has been conducting raids around the country. Some arrests have been viewed as heavy handed while others have wrongly targeted people suspected of having no legal status in the U.S. The raids have led to nationwide protests.
What To Know
In an episode that aired on June 18, Rogan was joined by comic and writer Luis J. Gomez and Big Jay Oakerson, a stand-up comedian and podcaster.
Rogan raised the topic of ICE raids, and said: “These ICE raids are f****** nuts man.” Rogan then says he was watching a protest on television, and is asked by Oakerson if he thinks the raids are nuts, or the protests are.
“All of it’s nuts,” Rogan responds.
Gomez then says that he thinks both sides are “taking it a little too hard.”
“I don’t think if the Trump administration, if they’re running and they said, ‘We’re gonna go to Home Depot and we’re gonna arrest all the people at Home Depot. We’re gonna go to construction sites and we’re going to just like tackle people at construction sites, I don’t think anybody would have signed up for that,” Rogan said.
It’s not the first time that Rogan has spoken about ICE raids. In an April episode of the podcast, he praised Trump’s crackdown on illegal immigration but shared his upset at the news that the administration had deported a gay Venezuelan asylum-seeker along with a supposed member of the Tren de Aragua gang.
“It’s horrific,” he said at the time, adding that it was “crazy,” that this could have happened.
A poll from Reuters/Ipsos conducted between June 11-12, which surveyed 1,136 Americans nationwide found that 52 percent of respondents (including one in five Democrats and nine in 10 Republicans) supported deportations of people in the country illegally.
However, 49 percent of people in the poll said that Trump had gone too far with his arrests of immigrants, while 40 percent said he had not.
The clip of Rogan speaking about the ICE raids has been met with a mixed response online.
What People Are Saying
Joe Rogan, speaking on his podcast: “They said, ‘We’re gonna get rid of the criminals and the gang members first’. And now we’re seeing like Home Depots get raided. Like that’s crazy.”
The Tennessee Holler, a media and news company wrote on X: “You were warned Joe. Yet you signed up for it.”
@bullriders1 on X: “Why does Joe Rogan have to start making sense?”
@thatchthoughts on X: “That’s exactly what I voted for. Mass deportations.”
What’s Next
Another round of anti-Trump protests is being planned across the U.S. for July 17. Among their goals are an end to “attacks on Black and brown Americans, immigrants, trans people, and other communities,” according to protest organizers.
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