He might not know it but Marshall Mae, the golden retriever beloved to the global podcast phenomenon Joe Rogan, has acquired almost 900,000 followers on Instagram. Loyal to the last and regally indifferent to his mass appeal, Marshall himself follows but one human on the ‘gram. He is one of the 19.5 million followers of Rogan’s account.
In many ways, Joe Rogan is the 21st century version of Willy Loman, the quintessential American everyman. He’s a definitive Gen-Xer (born 1967), the product of Italian-Irish households and the son of a Newark cop who grew up in the messy, flawed and fun Boston of the 1970s. He elected not to finish college, pursued his passions in the uncertain career paths of martial arts and stand-up comedy, and now enters deep middle age as a man who likes to pump steel, wear T-shirts that emphasise his guns and arm tatts, keep his bald head shaven and smoke legalised weed. On paper, he does not make for a very broad Venn diagram. And yet Rogan’s influence hovers over the wreckage of the 2024 US election campaign like a giant, mysterious blimp in the sky.
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The decision by Donald Trump to sit down with Rogan on the last Friday of October, just 11 days out from the election, will feature heavily when the hot-take book accounts of the campaign hit the shelves. Within three days, the interview had reached 29 million views/listens: it eventually exceeded 50 million. Trump was in a comfortable space: he shares Rogan’s love and knowledge of mixed martial arts and wrestling, and one of Rogan’s signature styles as an interviewer is that he is courteous to his guests during conversations that span three hours.
Rogan noted that while the Democrats state they need to find ‘their Joe Rogan’, he was there from the get-go: ‘I was on their side’
In the weeks before the event, a question hung over whether Kamala Harris might be invited by Rogan as a guest on his show. He was, after all, someone who had voted Democrat for years and had previously spoken harshly about Trump. Sitting with Rogan was the equivalent of getting to address the entire population of the state of Florida with the certainty that everyone would be listening intently – and that if you won the host over, you would go a long way to winning his audience over too.
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Except that Rogan’s listenership is largely composed of the voting group that perplexed Democratic and Republican strategists alike: the small army of disenchanted white men, boosted by an increasing number of equally disenchanted Hispanic men: broadly right-leaning but far from uniform in their views. They form a tribe seeking solace in the panoply of viewpoints and guests that Rogan, who has an eclectic range of interests, has on a podcast he started back in 2009 and steadily grew until Spotify snapped it up for $250 million.
His guests are a broad church: Rogan is an avowed Bernie Sanders supporter. He does frequent deep dives with obscure experts in science and astrology. He smoked a spliff with Elon Musk. And he was berated for his softly-softly approach with Alex Jones, the Sandy Hook school massacre conspiracist.
Since the election, Harris campaign staffers have said the Rogan interview failed to happen due to unfortunate timing, as much as anything. The Harris campaign had a starry reproductive rights event arranged in Texas, at which Beyoncé appeared. The hope was she could sit down with Rogan at his studio in Austin on that occasion. As fate – or perhaps canny Republican orchestration had it – Trump was booked to sit down with Rogan on that very day.
The Harris campaign wondered if Rogan would travel to DC for an hour-long interview. He would not: Rogan prefers that his guests travel to him. That was that. The merits of Harris dedicating an entire day to one podcast in her 100-day campaign are debatable. There is no guarantee that an interview with Rogan would have drawn anything like the Trump numbers. But the entire episode was another example of the sense that Trump was guided through this year by an unfailing instinct and timing. And just this week, Rogan noted that while the Democrats are publicly stating they need to find “their Joe Rogan”, he was there from the get-go.
“But they had me,” he pointed out. “I was on their side.”
James Carville, the Louisianan grandee of Democratic strategists didn’t hold back this week at the idea that Harris had baulked at Rogan because younger staff members “pitched a hissy fit”.
“If I were running a 2028 campaign and I had some snot-nosed 23-year-old saying I’m gonna resign if you don’t do this, not only would I fire that mother****er on the spot, I would find out who hired them and fire that person on the spot. I’m really not interested in your uniformed stupid jackass opinion as to whether you go on Joe Rogan or not.”
It’s all music to Rogan’s ears. And this week underlined the international appeal of his mellow, meandering chatshow. Among the listeners was former heavyweight boxing world champion Wladimir Klitschko, who jumped on social media himself to offer a comment to the American. Klitschko is a decade younger than Rogan but they grew up in the same world: the clean stark division of east and west. His English is heavily accented and he sent Rogan his “vee-dee-oh” to call him out on his view that US weapons sent to Ukraine will lead to the third world war.
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“So let me tell you that you are repeating Russian propaganda. Putin’s Russia is in trouble. So, they want to scare you and people like you. Putin’s Russia wants to destroy Ukraine quietly. They want America to stay quiet. Not great, but quiet,” he said, adding that if Rogan invited Klitschko on his podcast they could discuss their differences “like free men”.
It was a straight-talking invitation from a literal heavyweight figure of the world of combat, which has fascinated Joe Rogan from his teenage years. He is in the curious position now of finding himself as a figure of unparalleled influence, more by accident than design. Given his elevated role in the American conversation and the gravity of Klitschko’s remarks, Rogan is almost obliged to accept the invitation. If nothing else, his vast audience will expect him to man up.