F**king Mondays: Sam Harris Skewers Rogan, RFK Jr. Down with Vaccines, and Tariffs for Dummies!

Sam Harris's takedown of Joe Rogan is painfully accurate, and necessary.

Welcome to another edition of F**king Mondays! In the round up today:

Sam Harris skewers Joe Rogan

Sam Harris is one of the few “Intellectual Dark Web” alumni who still has any real credibility as a public intellectual. Unlike Jordan Peterson, Dave Rubin, Ben Shapiro, and Joe Rogan, Harris has consistently refused to chase clicks by inflaming the culture war. Instead, he's taken a principled and methodical approach — even calling out his former friends and allies for their role in the unraveling of our political culture.

On the latest episode of his podcast, Harris called out longtime friend Joe Rogan for spreading toxic misinformation:

“Joe is a genuinely good guy who wants good things for people, but he is honestly in over his head on so many topics of great consequence. When he brings someone on to just shoot the shit about how, you know, ‘the Holocaust is not what you think it was,’ right, or maybe ‘Churchill is the bad guy in World War II’…

When Joe talks to someone like Trump or Tucker Carlson, or any of these other guys who lie as easy as they breathe, and doesn’t push back against any of their lies—in fact, in Trump’s case, really helps energetically put his lies into the most plausible possible shape—it is irresponsible. It is directly harmful. Our society is politically shattered as it is, in part because of how Joe has interacted with information.”

This has long been my issue with Rogan. Like Harris, I do believe Rogan’s intentions are generally good—but his intellectual blind spots are glaring. He doesn’t know what he doesn’t know, and with an audience as massive as his, that kind of ignorance isn’t just harmless, it’s highly dangerous.

Worse, Rogan seems increasingly disinterested in voices like Harris, preferring the company of right-wing disinformation peddlers and contrarian cranks. I suspect part of the problem is that his audience has become so radicalized, they simply wouldn’t tolerate a guest who challenges their non-conspiratorial worldview, so Rogan just doesn’t bother.

Rogan has called himself a “moron” on many occasions, so he does have some level of self-awareness. Harris even suggested he hire real journalists to help prep for major interviews, instead of relying on his friend Jamie to do live Google searches. It’s not as if Rogan lacks the resources—so one wonders why he’s so reluctant to level up.

Maybe it’s laziness. Maybe it’s fear of alienating his audience. Or maybe, deep down, he knows that if he started asking real questions, his whole brand might fall apart.

RFK Jr.: Vaccines are good again?

Well that didn’t take long. From Politico:

Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who spent years promoting debunked theories and sowing doubts about the safety of vaccines, on Sunday promoted the measles shot.

“The most effective way to prevent the spread of measles is the MMR vaccine,” Kennedy wrote on the social media website X.

The “Make America Healthy Again” (MAHA) crowd that pushed so hard for Kennedy’s nomination are now furious their man sold out so quickly. Kennedy’s tweet has been utterly eviscerated by his followers:

What inspired the dramatic about face? :

His [Kennedy Jr.’s] post comes amid a resurgence of measles cases and reports that a second child with measles died from the virus. She was not vaccinated and had no underlying health conditions, according to the Texas Department of State Health. The health department reported the first child death of the year on Feb. 26, also in Texas.

The U.S., before this year, had not recorded a measles-related death in a decade.

“As of today, there are 642 confirmed cases of measles across 22 states, 499 of those in Texas,” Kennedy said on social media platform X.

As recently as last month, on television and in an op-Ed, Kennedy was warning people of the alleged dangers of the measles vaccine.

Apparently, vaccines really are necessary when you're managing a public health crisis instead of farming engagement on Twitter.

Explaining tariffs to Republicans

An amazing thing is happening in conservative politics: the same party that once idolized Milton Friedman and championed free markets is now loudly cheering for tariffs, shrugging off stock market collapses, and declaring Donald Trump — who bankrupted six companies — an economic genius. The ideological whiplash is astonishing to watch. For decades, Republicans warned against government interference in markets, citing the gospel of competition, free trade, and consumer choice. Now? More tariffs please!

Take Marco Rubio, for example. He once supported free trade deals like the Trans-Pacific Partnership, warning that the U.S. would be left behind without a seat at the global table. But now, he's defending Trump's bonkers tariff policies saying: “The president rightly has concluded that the current status of global trade is bad for America... and he's absolutely right to reset it.”

So now, the party that once swore by Milton Friedman’s free market gospel is pushing protectionism—not because the economics changed, but because Donald Trump likes tariffs. As a reminder, here’s what Friedman said about tariffs:

“A tariff is a tax on consumers. It protects a few at the expense of the many.”

Regardless of your stance on tariffs (I actually think they can be useful if applied strategically), it’s hard to take a party seriously when it abandons decades of ideology overnight because Donald Trump commands it.

Surprisingly, Elon Musk has been pushing back against Trump’s tariff policy and has been embroiled in an increasingly nasty spat with Trump’s trade advisor Pete Navarro. Reported Reuters:

Peter Navarro, President Donald Trump's top trade adviser, on Monday dismissed tech-b`illionaire Elon Musk's push for "zero tariffs" between the United States and Europe, calling the Tesla CEO a "car assembler" reliant on parts from other countries.

Navarro, widely seen as the architect of Trump's tariff plans, told CNBC Musk had done a good job with his work to streamline government, but his comments on tariffs were not surprising given his role as "car person," the latest salvo in a growing feud between the Trump advisers.

Here’s how Musk responded:

Credit where it’s due: Musk may be all over the place ideologically, but at least he’s consistent on this one, and willing to air MAGA’s dirty laundry in public so the rest of us can see how chaotic and childish these people really are.

I’ll be writing more on Trump’s economic agenda this week with a pretty controversial take, so stay tuned.

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