Why the Joe Rogan endorsement is a good thing for Bernie Sanders

On an episode of the Joe Rogan Experience this week, Rogan told New York Times columnist Bari Weiss that he was going to vote for Bernie Sanders. Rogan has always had nice things to say about Sanders, and in the summer he had him on his show to talk about his campaign, the evils of the health insurance industry and the need for a political revolution against the power of big money. That interview has over 11 million views on YouTube.

Though he used to be best known for his acting roles on TV shows like NewsRadio and as the host of the popular early 2000s reality show Fear Factor, Joe Rogan has reinvented himself as an Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) commentator and podcast host. His podcast, Joe Rogan Experience, has built a massive audience over the past decade.

Rogan is known for inviting a wide-array of influential and famous guests from across the American political and cultural spectrum, including Edward Snowden, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Andrew Yang, Elon Musk, Jay Leno, Lance Armstrong and Anthony Bourdain. Rogan likes to interview controversial personalities and they frequently say controversial things on his show, with little pushback from the host.

Vice Media co-founder turned far-right goon Gavin McInnes, for instance, was allowed to share his inane views on Islam and “inbreeding” one episode. He has also invited people like the conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, who runs InfoWars, on his show. But Rogan also invites his share of leftist firebrands: the journalist Abby Martin went on a few times to rally support for the Palestinian cause, and the progressive activist Kyle Kulinski has been on several times to talk about things like the plight of Chelsea Manning, drone strikes and the shadow wars in Africa.

Because he is so widely influential, Rogan claims that every major Democratic presidential candidate has tried to be invited on his show. That’s why it was a big win when Sanders was a guest back in August. He got to speak to a massive, new audience he might not otherwise have reached. By the end of the interview, it was even clear that Rogan had joined the tens of millions of Americans who dig Bernie Sanders.

Not everyone agrees. After the Sanders campaign shared clips of Rogan’s Bernie endorsement on social media, thousands of people on Twitter voiced their dismay and anger at Sanders. Some, like Jodi Jacobson, a progressive and the former editor of Rewire News, demanded that Sanders “not accept” the endorsement. And on Friday, the Human Rights Campaign, an LGBTQ group, echoed that call. (Though numerous LGBTQ activists called the HRC hypocritical, given their checkered history).

But though I know many of those incidents, I can’t recognize the Joe Rogan show that’s being described on Twitter: as nothing other than a den of hate and reaction. Not only do I think the show is pretty good, I think Rogan’s is the best endorsement Bernie Sanders could hope for — his fans are a group of people we can’t afford to cede to Trump.

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I’m a Joe Rogan Experience listener myself, and I have been for a few years. But like most of the show’s seven million YouTube subscribers, I skip most episodes and only watch a few clips here and there. Rogan has a strange range of interests — and he’s had on thousands of guests that have aired millions of views, some inspiring, some cringeworthy or odious.

I normally end up watching the ones with comedians or pop-thinkers, and I morbidly can’t turn away from the ones with right-wing charlatans like Jordan Peterson, but avoid all the mixed martial arts stuff and Rogan’s updates on his diet, exercise regime, or bowel movements (this stuff constitutes much of JRE’s output). And, of course, I’ve never bought any of the medically dubious “nutritional supplement” hawked on the show.

Rogan’s strength is that he’s a generous and curious interviewer. His appeal for me, and I imagine the same goes for much of his mostly male and mostly young viewership, is that he seems more immediately familiar to us than most custodians of culture in 21st century America. Some of this familiarity is a good thing — he’s warm and displays a real humanity at times. At other points, his insecurities with a changing world and a credulity towards the worst of his guests can turn some people off. But this mix explains a lot of his appeal: despite his background hosting and acting on network TV, Rogan just seems like a regular person, warts and all. He’s not an expert in a world increasingly run by experts.

When I heard about Rogan’s endorsement, I immediately replayed his August 6, 2019 episode with Senator Sanders. And then I took another look at the New York Times editorial board interview with the senator from Vermont. The contrast couldn’t be more striking.

One the one side, was a host in tune with the concerns of millions of Americans, who completely understood what Bernie was talking about when he said that corporate interests have too much power and how we needed to organize working people to take them on. On the other side, was an out-of-touch elite, wincing as Sanders described the ills that plague our country and how his movement could help solve them.

Perhaps they didn’t know what he was talking about because they — with their advocacy of disastrous trade deals, their defense of corporate giants, their support of US-led wars — helped bring about this state of affairs. We’ve been failed by our powerful custodians of culture and politics, not by a random comedian who lifts a lot of weights and has a podcast.

If Bernie Sanders has to run away from Joe Rogan’s endorsement, then Amy Klobuchar and Elizabeth Warren should have to distance themselves from the New York Times.

• Bhaskar Sunkara is the founding editor of Jacobin magazine and a Guardian US columnist. He is the author of The Socialist Manifesto: The Case for Radical Politics in an Era of Extreme Inequality