Joe Rogan

Joe Rogan Rating Confirmed as Center in April 2025 Small Group Editorial Review

A group of three AllSides reviewers on the left, center, and right rated Joe Rogan as Center on average in an April 2025 Small Group Editorial Review. The panelist on the left said they believe Rogan is Lean Right.

Rogan is sometimes labeled as right-wing due to the guests he features, but his personal views tell a more complex story. Rogan:

• Is pro-choice
• Supports gay marriage
• Advocated for marijuana legalization, but spoke against its use for young people because it's "terrible for brain development"
• Has spoken about psychedelic use as potentially having therapeutic benefits
• Says he has a "dedication" to social welfare programs, saying they are "not all bad...people think it enables people to be lazy. That's not always the case. I think sometimes people get into a bad situation, and as a community, it's good to have a safety net."
• Endorsed Bernie Sanders and later, Donald Trump.

In 2022, Rogan pushed back against those who claim he is right-wing, describing himself as “a bleeding heart liberal” on several topics and stating:

“It’s not just abortion rights, but now they’re going after gay marriage too, which is so strange to me,” Rogan said. “Gay marriage is not silly. It’s marriage — it’s marriage from people that are homosexual and it’s for them. It’s important. They want it. They want to affirm their love and their relationship. And the fact that they’re going after that now almost makes me feel like they want us to fight. They wanna divide us in the best way they can. And this is the best way for them to keep pulling off all the bullshit they’re doing behind the scenes is to get us to fight over things like gay marriage or get us to fight over things like abortion or it’s just like, why are you removing freedoms?”

In April 2025, 57% of our audience agreed with our rating of Center. 

Joe Rogan's Rating is Center: April 2022 Editorial Review

In April 2022, AllSides staffers conducted a small group Editorial Review of Rogan and his podcast, The Joe Rogan Experience. Rogan seems to be strongly critical of most powerful authorities, and that sometimes puts him on the left (such as in his support for Bernie Sanders), and sometimes on the right (critical of COVID-19 vaccine mandates). Rogan doesn't display a strong political leaning in favor of Democrats or Republicans.

One AllSides staffer with a bias rating of Lean Left noted how a lot of Democrats would probably rate Rogan as Lean Right on the AllSides scale because of controversies involving Rogan's podcast and debates over purported misinformation, but that he's probably more deserving of a Center rating relative to the rest of the country. Another AllSides staffer with a bias of Lean Right argued that Rogan is a classical liberal which probably makes him deserving of a Center rating due to his pro-marijuana and other socially liberal positions alongside his criticism of Big Pharma, Big Tech, censorship, etc.

Third-Party Claims of Bias

Left-rated media outlets and voices often frame Rogan as having a bias against COVID-19 public health rules and vaccines.

In February 2022, musician Neil Young pulled his content from streaming platform Spotify in objection to purported COVID-19 misinformation on The Joe Rogan Experience. In response, Spotify added a COVID-19 info hub to its platform. Rogan said he was "very happy" with the addition and expressed an intention to host more guests with different opinions, while also saying some people hold a "distorted" view of his political opinions. Soon after, a compilation of Rogan using the N-word in previous podcasts went viral. Spotify CEO Daniel Ek told employees he was "deeply sorry" if anyone was offended but cautioned against "canceling voices." Rogan apologized for using the slur but said "he never used it to be racist because I'm not racist."

In January 2022, Rogan's interview of physician and biochemist Dr. Robert Malone was taken down by Twitter and YouTube due to concerns about purported COVID-19 misinformation. Malone compared the U.S. attitude toward COVID-19 vaccines to "mass formation psychosis" seen in Germany during the rise of the Nazis. Malone had recently been suspended by Twitter for violating the platform's COVID-19 misinformation policy. After Twitter and YouTube removed the interview, Rogan announced that he was joining social media platform GETTR "in case sh*t over at Twitter gets even dumber." 

Related: Media Bias Alert: AP and Reuters’ Fact Checks on “Mass Formation Psychosis” 

In September 2021, Rogan made waves in the media world when he said he'd been taking the drug ivermectin to help treat his case of COVID-19. This led to some media outlets falsely reporting that Rogan was using horse dewormer and that some hospitals were seeing influxes of pateints who'd overdosed on the drug while using it to treat COVID-19.