During a conversation on The Joe Rogan Experience with podcast host Chris Williamson, Joe Rogan pushed back hard on the idea that progressive politicians and commentators have genuinely abandoned “woke” politics, arguing that simply declaring the movement “crazy” in hindsight isn’t the same as reckoning with it.
The discussion turned to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, whom Williamson noted has undergone a public shift, freezing her eggs, ending her engagement, and recently saying that “woke one was crazy.”
Rogan wasn’t buying it as a real change of heart.
“Which makes me think that you’re willing to change your opinions based on public reaction,” Rogan said. “I don’t like that because if you really thought defund the police, and then you just described it to woke one was crazy. Well, how did it get you? Because it didn’t get me. How did it get you? Tell me, give me your thoughts. How far out did you track the consequences of defunding the police?”
Rogan argued the “defund the police” slogan was always going to backfire.
“I immediately went to you’re going to have more cr*me because no one’s going to be able to stop the cr*me. It’s going to get scary. And then you’re going to have want more police. And saying defund the police is just going to make more police and more control and more totalitarian government.”
Williamson suggested the rhetoric was tied to a moment when people were unusually “pliable” and progressives saw a chance to expand the Overton window, only to oversh0ot.
“We realized, oh, like we oversh0t on here a little bit,” Williamson said. “But there are conversations being had now that wouldn’t have been able to be had had we have not expanded it during that time.”
However, he rejected that framing outright: “The ends justifying the means with stuff like that doesn’t [work] to me.”
For Rogan, the only acceptable path forward is total honesty about the mistake, not a quiet rebrand.
“If you want us to take you seriously, you have to say how you screwed up,” he said. “You have to say what you really think about how you screwed up. You have to be honest, and you have to be authentic. We have to know that you are embarrassed by your choices and that you kind of went with the hive. Admittedly, you have to say that. If you don’t say that, then you’re full of s*it. And if you’re full of s*it now, you’re going to get more and more full of s*it over time.”
