Joe Rogan just does not understand why anyone would ever think that “Chief Twit” Elon Musk, last seen hanging out with Fox News mogul Rupert Murdoch at the Super Bowl, is a “right-winger” now.
According to the mega-popular podcaster, any “narrative” about Musk’s current political ideology is just made up. “What examples do you have?” Rogan asked rhetorically this week.
Rogan, who convinced Musk to smoke weed on his podcast back in 2018, spoke with journalist Matt Taibbi on his Monday broadcast about the shifting public perception Musk has faced, especially since buying Twitter. Taibbi, of course, is one of the sympathetic reporters that the Tesla CEO hand-picked to disseminate the so-called “Twitter Files,” which Republicans seized upon to accuse Democrats and government officials of colluding with Twitter to censor and silence conservatives—while ignoring the GOP’s own attempted Twitter interference.
ADVERTISEMENT
“There’s an amazing amount of resistance against him, and just the publicity campaign against him has been fascinating to watch,” the self-described “moron” host grumbled to Taibbi. “People go from thinking that Elon Musk is this savior that’s bringing us these amazing electric cars and engineering new reusable rockets to he’s an alt-right piece of shit who wants Donald Trump back in the office. It’s very wild.”
Going on a bit of a tangent, Taibbi said he was amazed at the “speed with which they can sort of shuffle somebody into the ‘Hitler of the Month Club,’” before drawing an analogy between Musk and the way authoritarian figures have been treated in the past.
“We’ve always done this to foreigners, you know, whether it’s [Manuel] Noriega or Saddam Hussein or [Slobodan] Milosevic or [Bashar al] Assad or whatever it is, we have a playbook for cranking out negative information about foreigners who get in our way for whatever reason,” Taibbi declared.
After Taibbi seemingly suggested the press didn’t give a fair shake to genocidal tyrants and dictatorial strongmen, Rogan continued to complain about the left’s portrayal of Musk’s political leanings.
“The narrative has spread through progressive people where they'll just say it now,” the “Intellectual Dark Web” member proclaimed. “It’s like they've reached the memo—the memo’s got to them—I hear people in [Los Angeles], I hear people that I know like, ‘Oh, Elon's just so crazy. Something happened to him. He went nuts, and he’s a right-winger now.’”
He added: “How? What are you saying? What examples do you have? Like, they don’t have an example. They just have this narrative that reached them as a signal. Like, ‘Elon bad now.’”
Rogan then insisted the only actual example anyone had to claim that Musk is a conservative is that he reversed former President Donald Trump’s Twitter ban.
“OK, well the Taliban’s there,” he argued. “You don’t have a problem with the Taliban?!”
Despite Rogan’s assertions otherwise, there are dozens of tangible and recent examples of Musk’s conservative shift.
Just ahead of last year’s midterm elections, he told Twitter users that they should vote Republican (after sharing a Nazi meme). Musk later advocated for Kevin McCarthy to become Speaker of the House. And during a recent trip to Capitol Hill, he only scheduled meetings with Republicans—and wished McCarthy a happy birthday—while ignoring congressional Democrats.
Prior to his get-out-the-vote message, meanwhile, he spread a baseless conspiracy theory about Paul Pelosi’s attack that originated in far-right circles. The billionaire edge lord has also openly embraced MAGA tropes, such as whining about the “woke mind virus” and mockingly joking that his preferred pronouns are “Prosecute/Fauci.” (That is, when he’s not tweaking the Twitter algorithm to artificially juice his own engagement and flood users’ feeds with his tweets.)
Additionally, Republicans have expressed their ever-growing admiration for the tech giant, going so far as to openly “thank God” that he bought Twitter. Some GOP lawmakers, even as they investigate “government interference” and its “weaponization” of social media, have boasted about talking company strategy with Musk.
