During Joe Rogan Experience episode #2486 with Luis J. Gomez, Rogan addressed his recent White House visit and his conversation with President Donald Trump at UFC 327, pushing back against a narrative spreading online that the two had a tense exchange at the event.
Rogan brought up the White House appearance himself. “So, you saw that thing that I had to do at the White House the other day?” he asked Gomez, who confirmed he had seen it.
“People are pissed,” Gomez said. “I don’t know. People online.”
Rogan asked, “What? Because I was at the White House?”
Gomez replied, saying, “They’re like, ‘Yo, Joe, you can’t be at the White House. Joe, you said you were politically homeless.'”
Rather than defending himself at length, Rogan noted that Trump himself had undercut the criticism during the visit.
He said, “I am [politically homeless]. He [Trump] joked about it. He called me a liberal during the whole thing. He’s like, ‘Joe, he’s very liberal.'”
Gomez then raised what Rogan described as the bigger claim circulating at the time. “The big conspiracy theory is that Trump is mad at you and he came up to the UFC and he was talking s**t to you,” Gomez said.
Rogan was direct: “No, the opposite.”
He explained that the actual subject of their exchange was ibogaine, a plant-derived compound derived from the iboga tree that has shown results in treating a**iction and PTSD in veterans. Rogan had previously hosted episodes on the topic with guests including former Texas Governor Rick Perry and Bryan Hubbard, and had been advocating for its wider availability.
“I texted him on Friday about ibogaine and I was telling him how there’s… for a lot of these guys with PTSD, it was the only thing that helped them. And for the longest time, they’ve had to go to Mexico or to other countries and it’s really expensive.”
Rogan told Gomez that Trump responded immediately and positively. “He said, ‘What are you looking for? You looking for FDA approval?’ He goes, ‘It sounds good to me.'” Trump’s next words, according to Rogan, were even simpler: “Let’s do it.”
The follow-through came the very next day. “Literally sees me at the UFC the next day, shakes my hand, and says, ‘It’s done.'” Rogan said his response was brief. “I said, ‘Thank you, sir.’ It wasn’t like he was mad at me at all.”
The exchange was tied to an executive order focused on reclassifying psychedelic elements for therapeutic use.
“This executive order is all about psychedelic treatments for people with depression, mental health disorders, and it’s all to reclassify this stuff,” Rogan explained. A press conference followed the week after the UFC event.
