F**king Mondays: Joe Rogan is a Moron, Tulsi's Fantasies, and Elon's Small Weapon

It's that time of the week again!

Welcome to another edition of “F**king Mondays”!

In the roundup today:

Joe Rogan, useful moron

Years ago, Joe Rogan and I messaged back and forth about setting up an interview on The Banter. He followed me on Twitter, quoted us on his podcast, and shared some of the articles I wrote, so I thought our readers might appreciate it. Rogan was open minded, smart, and very funny, and I wanted to get his insight on psychedelics, UFOs, and Martial Arts. We couldn’t settle on a time, and despite a few attempts to make it work, I eventually gave up. I suspect Rogan had become so big that I wasn’t particularly high on his “to-do” list, so while a little disappointed, I moved on and continued following him as a fan.

That was until the pandemic hit and I began to realize that Rogan was a dangerously gullible quack . While I appreciate his openminded attitude and willingness to talk to anyone, Rogan is also extraordinarily prone to conspiracy theories, has zero academic background, and almost no understanding of science. This makes him an endlessly entertaining podcaster, but the absolute worst person to listen to during a global pandemic.

Rogan hosted all sorts of conspiratorial weirdos on his show when the pandemic hit and became a major source of Covid misinformation. It became so bad that 270 doctors and nurses wrote an open letter to Spotify begging them to crack down on this misinformation he was spreading.

This to me was fairly unforgivable, and I have regarded Rogan ever since as a serious threat to not only public health, but democracy. With his recent endorsement of Donald Trump and embrace of Elon Musk’s conspiratorial worldview, it is now pretty clear that Rogan serves as useful idiot for the far right. Which brings me his latest foray into geopolitical issues he knows absolutely nothing about.

In a recent episode of his show featuring a record producer named Scott Storch, Rogan went on a rant against President Biden’s decision to allow Ukraine to fire long range US missiles into Russia. Rogan called the conflict a “proxy war” and accused Biden and Volodymyr Zelensky or trying to start “World War Three”.

“Right now they’re launching missiles into Russia. How are you allowed to do that when you’re on the way out?” Rogan said. “The whole thing is nuts.”

“Zelensky says ‘Putin is terrified’. Fuck you, man. Fuck you, people. You people are about to start World War Three.”

Rogan is of course parroting far-right propaganda spoon fed to him by Elon Musk, Tucker Carlson, Tulsi Gabbard and a slew of other Russia-friendly “thinkers” in his network of friends. Because in far-right weirdo-world, Ukraine is responsible for Russia invading it, and any attempts to fight back are by definition “acts of aggression”. The US isn’t supporting Ukraine, it is actually attempting to invade Russia.

Rogan has no background in geopolitics, international relations, or Russian/Ukrainian history. But because Rogan swallows whatever idiotic conspiracy theory his latest guest believes in, he spreads ludicrous falsities to hundreds of millions of people without any caveats or acknowledgment that he has no idea what he is talking about.

For the record, this doesn’t mean I think Joe Rogan should be taken off the air/canceled etc. But it does mean he should be called out forcefully and held accountable for the nonsense he spreads on his show.

Ukraine was attacked by Russia, is being subjected to a brutal occupation, and has every right under international law to fight back. Biden and Zelensky aren’t trying to start World War Three, they are trying to prevent it by pushing back against a psychopathic dictator with huge territorial ambitions in Eastern Europe.

Rogan could learn this by talking to actual experts on the region, but that would require effort and research. Chatting with ketamine-snorting billionaires who have vested interests in Russia doesn’t, with the added bonus that it is guaranteed to go viral.

Tulsi Gabbard’s Deep State fantasies

Tulsi Gabbard told Matt Taibbi back in August that she had discovered that the Biden-Harris “regime” had labeled her a domestic terror threat and put her on the TSA’s Quiet Skies watchlist. The program, according to Taibbi, was designed to monitor “domestic terrorist” threats and was in Gabbards words, a dangerous form of “political retaliation and abuse of power”.

Taibbi insinuated that the Biden-Harris administration took revenge on Gabbard because she had humiliated Harris in a debate in 2020, and spoke out against the US arming Ukraine in 2022.

Unsurprisingly, it turns out almost everything Taibbi and Gabbard claimed is utter nonsense. Reported CNN last week:

TSA would not confirm Gabbard was on the list when asked by CNN but noted the program “is not a terrorist watchlist.”

“TSA uses multi-layered security processes to protect the nation’s transportation systems and ensure freedom of movement for people and commerce,” the agency said in a statement. “TSA’s Quiet Skies program is a risk-based, automated approach to transportation security, to include identifying potential risks and applying enhanced security measures.”

The statement continued: “TSA’s Quiet Skies program is not a terrorist watchlist. It leverages USG intelligence information and databases to apply screening measures.

“It’s a screening mechanism,” CNN national security analyst Carrie Cordero said of the program, which is “based on different indicators that are assembled and flags an individual for further security screening before they get on a domestic flight.”

So Gabbard was never on a “terrorist watchlist”, and an automated system that picked up on her travel habits (like going to Syria in secret to visit Bashar al-Assad) was responsible for her being flagged, not the “Biden-Harris regime”.

Thankfully Gabbard is a fringe political personality with no real power in America. Oh wait…

Listen to this podcast!

I interviewed Democratic strategist Julie Roginsky on the latest episode of The Banter Roundtable podcast, so if you haven’t had time to listen to it, please do! If Democrats want to win going forward, they are going to have to listen to people like Roginsky who don’t sugarcoat their analysis of what went wrong. Here’s what we covered in the episode:

• Why Democrats struggles with authenticity in messaging.

• Why data-driven models can create inauthentic political communication.

• Why engaging with Trump voters is difficult, but necessary.

• The problems with identity politics and alienating potential supporters.

• How Democrats failed to address economic concerns.

• Why Democrats must adapt to regain the trust of working-class voters.

You might not agree with everything Roginsky says, but her case is very compelling and worth listening to. To listen or read the transcript, go here:

Democratic Strategist Julie Roginsky: "We Pleased Nobody"

Viral social media post of the day:

Have a great week!

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