Joe Rogan Claims Multiple US Presidents Tried to Get His Podcast Taken Off the Air

Joe Rogan is making a bold claim: multiple former U.S. presidents personally reached out to Spotify in an effort to silence him.

The revelation came on the Wednesday, June 17 episode of The Joe Rogan Experience, in which Rogan was joined by author Chase Hughes. During a wide-ranging conversation about his podcast and its critics, Rogan discussed the pressure campaign waged against him during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic — and the powerful figures he says were behind it.

“I can’t even talk about it but there was presidents involved and former presidents involved that were contacting Spotify,” Rogan said on the podcast. “Oh yeah. Trying to get me removed for vaccine misinformation. Yeah. And it turned out to be right. All of it. Not a single [expletive] apologized.”

Rogan, 58, said the effort involved significant financial resources and a coordinated push by PACs and other groups to contact both sponsors and Spotify directly. “It was nuts, but it didn’t work. But they tried. They spent a lot of money, a loooot of money. It wasn’t a small amount of money. It was a lot of people and a lot of money. That part is spooky,” he said.

Despite the pressure, Rogan credited Spotify’s international footprint with helping protect his show. “Thank God I was on Spotify and thank God Spotify is not an American company. And also it helped that I was number one in, like, 90 countries and not number 90 in one country, you know? That helped. That helped a lot,” he said on the episode.

Rogan acknowledged the topic is a sensitive one for him personally, saying he typically avoids it because it goes “deep.” He also confirmed the campaign had a financial toll, adding simply, “I lost a lot of sponsors.”

The comments come years after Rogan found himself at the center of a fierce public debate over Covid vaccine information. His criticism of lockdowns and health experts drew significant blowback, and he also accused CNN of manipulating a video to make him appear more sickly in an Instagram video he shared during a 2021 bout with the virus. CNN denied any alterations, and an analysis by the Associated Press found no evidence of manipulation.

Rogan has not named the specific presidents he claims were involved.