Joe Rogan is speaking out about his popular podcast. He claims former US presidents tried to get him and him canceled.
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According to Rogan, former US presidents "threw a lot of money" at Spotify to remove the program. It all stemmed from COVID-19. Rogan spoke with behavior expert Chase Hughes about it on the latest episode.
"I'm not kissing your a-- here, but you're willing to say s-t that sounds preposterous at the beginning of something, and just make an observation that's real," Hughes told Rogan.
"Well, the position that I was in during the COVID thing was very unique," Rogan replied. "I had already — I'd gotten such a head start. I was so far ahead of them. They didn't realize my ability to say, 'Wait, this is — this doesn't make any sense.' Like, none of this makes any sense."
Critics accused Rogan of COVID-19 misinformation during the pandemic. Rogan described the criticism he faced. He said, "They tried to crush my sponsors. They organized campaigns. There was PACs (political action committees) involved."
Joe Rogan Talks Criticism
However, Rogan says that Spotify didn't budge.
"Thank God I was on Spotify. And thank God Spotify is not an American company," he added. "And also it helped that I was number one in, like, 90 countries and not number 90 in one country, you know? That helped. That helped a lot."
The podcast host then claimed that presidents tried to pressure the platform.
"I can't even talk about it. But there was presidents involved and former presidents involved that were contacting Spotify," Rogan said. "Oh yeah. Trying to get me removed for vaccine misinformation. Yeah. And it turned out to be right. All of it. Not a single [person] apologized. Not a not a single retraction, not a single, you know, mea culpa, not a single, 'we were wrong.'"
However, Rogan did say that he lost a lot of sponsorships.
"I lost a lot, a lot during those days," he said. "It was nuts, but it didn't work, right? But they tried. They spent a lot of money, a lot of money."
