If there’s one figure who epitomized President Donald Trump’s ability to cobble together a winning coalition in 2024, it might have been Joe Rogan — the influential podcaster who made big news byendorsing Trump on the eve of the election after interviewing him.
(On the flipside, much ink has been spilled about the Kamala Harris campaign not booking a date with Rogan’s podcast and the detrimental effect that might have had on her bid to become president.)
Sixteen months later, Rogan epitomizes Trump’s problems in holding that coalition together.
Rogan has broken with Trump on several major issues since mid-2025. And polling shows the issues he’s picked happen to be some of Trump’s biggest political liabilities – including the war with Iran, the Jeffrey Epstein files and immigration enforcement.
The big, new one is the war with Iran. Rogan said Tuesday that Trump’s ongoing assault on the country broke his promises to his voters.
“But it just seems so insane based on what he ran on,” Rogansaid. “I mean, this is why a lot of people feel betrayed, right? He ran on no more wars and these stupid senseless wars, and then we have one that we can’t even really clearly define why we did it.”
Rogan had also been skeptical of Trump’s plans to target Venezuela before the ouster of Nicolas Maduro back in January. But he said that operation was at least “clean.” The military engagement to bring in Maduro lasted only a few hours, as opposed to the war with Iran, which is nearly two weeks old with no clear end in sight.
“It just doesn’t make any sense to me – unless we’re acting on someone else’s interests, like particularly Israel’s interests,” Rogan added. “It just didn’t make any sense to me.”
Nearly every poll showsthe war with Iran is unpopular, with a majority opposing it and independents opposing it around 2-to-1. In fact, it might be themost unpopular new military conflict in a very long time.
Rogan has for months expressed incredulity about the Trump administration’s handling of the Epstein files.
Similar to Iran, he’s cast it as a betrayal of Trump’s supporters, even suggesting that their belief Trump would make Epstein materials public if he won the election was a part of why they backed him.
“There’s a lot of stuff about, you know, when we thought Trump was going to come in and a lot of things are going to be resolved. We’re going to drain the swamp. We’re going to figure everything out,” Rogansaid in July. “And when you have this one hardcore line in the sand that everybody’s been talking about forever, and then they’re trying to gaslight you on that?”
Last month, he called the FBI’s claim that there is no evidence Epstein had clients “the gaslightiest gaslighting sh*t I’ve ever heard in my life.”
Two days later, on February 12, he took aim at the Justice Department’s strange andinconsistent redactions practices.
“Like, what is this? This is not good. None of this is good for this administration,” Rogansaid. “It looks f**king terrible. It looks terrible.”
