For many of us, the 2024 campaign got distilled into one seminal moment, one known at the time (If you were here), one that gave some of us Democrats great pause: it was when Donald Trump announced that he was going to go down to Austin and do the Joe Rogan Experience podcast, only to then hear that Kamala Harris would not follow suit, turning down an opportunity the next week. Not that one has to be a big Joe Rogan fan, one shouldn’t be, but it was just a flash moment in which it seemed that one campaign understood the drift of the electorate, and one fundamentally did not. Trump ended up winning Joe Rogan’s endorsement and even won the popular vote. But now Rogan, a dyed-in-the-wool conspiracy theorist, has had enough of Donald Trump, and yes, it does appear to have all crashed down around the Epstein matter. Just as it was during the election, losing Rogan’s confidence signifies something far greater. Rogan is the “MAGA-bro” electorate. If Joe is gone…
Today, according to Mediaite, Rogan had on ex-CIA operative Mike Baker, and the two talked about the Epstein matter. Rogan sees right through it and says it’s a dealbreaker.
“There’s a line in the sand. This one’s a line in the sand, because this is one where there’s a lot of stuff about, you know, when we thought Trump was gonna come in and a lot of things are gonna be resolved, gonna drain the swamp, gonna figure everything out, and when you have this one hardcore line in the sand that everybody had been talking about forever, and then they’re trying to gaslight you on that… Shakes Head
Shakes head indeed. Now, it’s entirely appropriate to point out that only a moron would’ve believed Trump wanted to get to the bottom of anything besides someone else’s bank account. Trump is the swamp, and that is why Washington is abuzz right now in talk about Obama, Beyonce, Oprah, and other black people (When was someone going to note that he was playing the race card?), all in order to get attention away from Epstein.
It is not working, as Rogan says, Johnson called Congress out of session in order to let time and the issue pass, but that’s not what’s happening. As Baker noted:
“Well, shit died a lot quicker, you’re right. So something would happen, and look, we still have ADHD, right, collectively as a nation, right, and things move on, and I think maybe that’s what they’re, you know, some people are saying, look, they’ve called the recess on Capitol Hill because they figured by the time they come back in September, everybody will have moved on from this. I think they are wrong. I don’t think this is, again, this feels like and just looks like that one of those handful of conspiracies, again, you go to JFK or whomever, that’s just gonna hang around.
And that is precisely why Donald Trump is so nervous right now. Because he does sense that this story isn’t going anywhere, and one of his favorite “bros” – Rogan, is not fooled, indeed, tired of getting gaslit. As CNN reports, Rogan is furious over the release of the Epstein cell video on the night of his death:
Referring to his own podcast conversation with FBI director Kash Patel last month, Rogan said Patel’s responses about Epstein didn’t make any sense.
“Then he’s like, ‘Well, we have a film, we’re gonna release that film,’ and the film has a f**king minute missing from it,” Rogan said, referring to a prison video that was meant to dispel theories about Epstein’s 2019 death, which a medical examiner ruled a suicide.
“Like, do you think we’re babies? Like, what is this?” Rogan asked aloud.
This is where Joe Rogan realizes that his bros in the White House have played him for a sucker and that is a major problem for Trump because – just as it was during the campaign, the Rogan show is like the parish bulletin for all things MAGA, and if Joe is furious, look out because he won’t be giving Trump any cover for any of this.
Joe Rogan says the Trump administration’s refusal to release more information about Jeffrey Epstein is a “line in the sand.”Epstein was mentioned more than 40 times on the most recent episode of “The Joe Rogan Experience,” which consistently ranks as the most popular podcast in the US. | Analysis
Yes, it is a line in the sand in many ways, and thank you, Joe, for not backing off from it and not being afraid to stand up and deny being a baby.
Trump is in trouble. Now more than ever, he needs his faithful, the bros who will do anything for him. Trump has been in the daily news cycle for 10 years now, much longer than most full-term presidents, and everyone gets sick of everyone after a while. It would appear that Trump is losing his luster even among the die-hards. President cankles certainly looks older – maybe his supporters are getting worn down. Something is different. Just as was the case during the campaign, the Rogan show is a harbinger. If he has lost Rogan…
And yes, Joe – Yes. He does think you’re babies. And always has. We tried to get a word with you during the campaign, but it was a difficult time.
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Lady Gaga sang the campaign sign off for Harris. Trump isn’t questioning her. He hasn’t gone after Springsteen who was on one of her campaign stop except in London, didn’t go after Neil Young nor James Taylor nor Bon Iver nor JLO….
It’s a while since Joe Rogan was the most popular podcast in the USA. He’s still in the top ten but those smart people on the non-Trump side, at Meidas Touch are comfortably ahead. Right now, there is a clear switch in popularity to the lefter, centrist, socialist, liberal side and away from maga fascism.
This is a little off to the side but it’s something I’ve been noticing lately and I think it’s important. The term “conspiracy theory” is being thrown around so much these days that it no longer registers on me as having any particular meaning. It’s just like a sound or a puff of air that conveys no actual idea. On the one hand, outifts like Trump HQ and Q-ANON churn out a steady firehose of conspiracy theory bullshit day after day, the purpose of which is to try to keep people in the dark about what is really going on and in a permanent state of confusion. That is the whole point, and we understand it’s getting ore and more crucial for them as the theroies get stupider and less believable as the days go by. On the other hand, we also become more and more aware that there are MANY conspiracies on the right — real ones. That’s how Trump and the far-right operate. Now if you put these two things together, one is real and the other is psyop. The psyop is designed to divert attention from the real. But in order to invetigate and try to get to the bottom of the real conspiracies, we have to have theories, because that is part of the process of investigation, to find the truth. We use the theories to test and find the evidence, and vice-versa. So when people are throwing around the term conspiracy theories, I no longer know what they are talking about. I know it takes a little longer, but it would be better to say what theories you are referring to. Probably no need to go into them in most cases, we’ve probably heard them already. But let’s not speak of “conspiracy theories” in general, because like any other theories,conspiracy theories range from ridiculous to almost certainly true, and some which we’re really not sure but damn well need to find out.
You are exactly right about the terms “conspiracy theory”. The right takes words and misuses them until they are meaningless. Remember “critical race theory” or any other descriptive term that goes against their grain? After they render them meaningless, they use them for their own purposes. I am truly exhausted with the misinformation but I don’t know when it will end.
I guess it’s the Right these days, wanting to dismiss very plausible theories as “conspiracy theories”, but for years it was the “Center Left” or “Respectable Left” (very concerned to stay “respectable”) that was so eager to dismiss anyhing known as a “conspiracy theory” (this goes back to 1963), and I’m not that some of them are that different even now. To repeat, the point is not to accept all conspiracy theories (most of them are bullshit) but not to reject them out of hand simply because they ARE conspiracy theories. Because guess what Sherlock? There really are conspiracies. Like the Justice Department (when it still was the Justice Department) understood that J6 was a conspiracy.
Frankenstein’s monster broke loose and wrecked havoc through the town and country,(golf course). Where’s my torch? I hear there’s a posse forming.
Dementia Don will most likely try to fleece you out of that torch of yours, so that he can attempt to illuminate his falsehood riddled escape path whilst the accusatorial smoke gets thicker and becomes more acrid, whilst it concurrently chokes him. All due to his traitorous self-lit fires: legal, moral, ethical, religious, political. Fires that will get more uncontrollably intense – eventually turning him into histories discard.