By the time Joe Rogan formally endorsed Donald Trump on the eve of the 2024 election, the nod felt like it had been a long time coming.

All summer, Rogan had used his platform — the world’s most popular podcast — to amplify the chosen themes of the Trump ticket, mocking political correctness and challenging government authority, while reveling in Trump’s survival of an assassination attempt that year on the campaign trail.

Days before the election, Rogan hosted Trump on his show, "The Joe Rogan Experience," giving the former president a crucial platform from which to reach the low-propensity male voters he was banking on to defeat Vice President Kamala Harris and return to the White House.

The Rogan-Trump relationship seems a lot more complicated this time around.

Through much of the run-up to the 2026 midterms, Rogan has been a more skeptical voice about some of Trump’s most controversial policies — particularly his decision to go to war with Iran.

“What Trump stood for, some of it turned out to not be real,” Rogan said this month in a chat with the actor Michael Douglas. “Like one of them was the no wars. Well, look, we're at war with Iran. So that wasn't real.”

He went on to say, “I do not like this Iran war in any way, shape or form,” calling the conflict “a giant quagmire.”

He’s also been more outspoken about his view that pro-Israel groups have too much influence over U.S. foreign policy and has recoiled at the appearance that Trump is using his office to enrich himself and his family. Earlier this year he vented about the ICE raids and subsequent deportations that were roiling cities and states across the country.

“Are we really going to be the Gestapo? ‘Where’s your papers?’ Is that what we’ve come to?” Rogan asked rhetorically in January, in an extended condemnation of Immigration and Customs Enforcement tactics that wouldn’t have been out of place in a Democratic stump speech.

And in the discursive style of the modern multihour podcast, Rogan has sometimes seemed to be working out political opinions from first principles, as in a recent conversation with the biblical scholar Dan McClellan, in which Rogan wound up talking about redlining and structural underinvestment in American cities and minority neighborhoods.

Starting Line

“A meritocracy would be great if everyone started at the same starting line,” Rogan said.

Spotify, which sells ads and licenses Rogan's podcast, didn't respond to a request for comment.

To be sure, Rogan’s politics have never been easy to define, beyond general support for outside-the-establishment characters like Trump and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, who appeared on the podcast in 2019 and 2025.

While more associated with Republican candidates, last year Rogan hosted James Talarico, in what was seen as a breakout moment for the Democratic state representative from Texas now locked in a tight race for a U.S. Senate seat. The interview ended with Rogan telling the lawmaker, “You need to run for president. We need someone who’s actually a good person.”

That doesn’t mean that Rogan, whose podcast has 18 million followers, is in outright conflict with Trump.

In April, days after criticizing the Iran war, Rogan was standing directly behind Trump in the Oval Office as the president signed an executive order to speed patient access to psychedelic drugs for use in treating mental illness and depression. The president credited Rogan with suggesting the policy, and Rogan stepped forward to credit Trump with immediately seizing on the idea.

The two men laughed off their differences, with Trump joking that Rogan’s politics were “a little bit liberal, but that’s OK.” The president also reminisced about how helpful his Rogan appearance had been down the homestretch in 2024.

“I said, ‘Oh man, I hope Kamala doesn’t do it,’” Trump said, “and she didn’t.”

He’s also hosted key Trump advisers and officials. Vice President JD Vance appeared on the show in July. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was on in January.

There’s still time before the election for Rogan to endorse Republicans, or host the president or a key GOP candidate. But the boost Rogan provided to Trump two years ago wouldn’t necessarily be the same this time around. Rogan’s popularity dipped in the months following Trump’s return to office, according to YouGov, though it has rebounded since the summer.

More importantly, Rogan’s benefit to Trump’s political campaign wasn’t just the size of his audience, but the chord he strikes with a cohort of younger, male voters. Those voters, who helped power Trump’s win, are now souring on the administration, if not disengaging altogether.

Bloomberg has reported that male likely voters between ages 18 and 30 prefer Democratic congressional candidates to Republicans by a margin of 57% to 40%, according to a recent poll from Cygnal. The number of respondents who said they were extremely determined to vote was just one-third.

Early Access

Those results suggest that the listeners who make up much of Rogan’s base — a cohort skeptical of conventional media, establishment institutions and some political norms — might have some misgivings about the way a second Trump term is turning out.

Rogan’s having his own second thoughts, sometimes in real time.

“What?!” he exclaimed on one episode in August, when the comedian Shane Gillis mentioned the proposal that Trump’s media company might begin selling early access to the president’s posts on his social media site, Truth Social. For $100,000 a month, the company said, users could subscribe to a Trump API, getting early access to posts that would allow them to trade off the president’s near-daily broadsides against companies and trading partners.

“That’s literally crazy,” Rogan said. As he and his guests did the math on what the gambit could net for the Trump company, in which the president holds a $1 billion stake, Rogan sounded put off.

“You imagine you charge $1.2 million a year?” he said. “He’s just on a grab.”

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