Luke Thomas appeared on a recent video where he took apart Joe Rogan’s recent claim that he has “been leftwing his whole life,” arguing the podcast host is trying to rewrite his own record rather than reckon with the consequences of his political influence.
Thomas addressed a viewer question directly: “Did you catch Rogan recently say Trump fans are nuts and he’s been leftwing his whole life?” Asked whether Rogan could do anything to redeem himself, Thomas said grace is possible in general but drew a hard line on what Rogan has actually done.
“All of us will make mistakes. I’ve made mistakes. All of us will change opinions. I’ve changed opinions… And so, for that reason, all of us deserve grace. I’m actually not one of these people that thinks there’s no way that various people can’t get grace.”
That grace, he argued, doesn’t extend to “just kind of going out there and pantomiming vague left-wing ideas and then asserting that you’re leftwing.”
Thomas said Rogan’s platform was used to elevate a movement he considers dangerous.
He said, “You endorsed the most incompetent right-wing freak movement possible, Joe. You laundered the reputation of the inner circle of all of those people. You have done extraordinary harm as an influence campaigner, so to speak, to make those ideas palatable, those ideas that are ruining the lives of ordinary people in this country and well beyond.”
He compared Rogan’s framing to UFC CEO Dana White’s habit of claiming a mixed political identity while backing one side in practice.
“This is the same thing Dana does where Dana’s like, ‘You know, I got a few things that are left. I got a few things that are right.’ I don’t [care] if in your free time you wrote a sequel to the Communist Manifesto and you call all of your friends comrade and you believe in Antifa. I don’t [care] if what you do in the real world is materially push the most extr[]me political project in American life. It doesn’t matter.”
Thomas said he doesn’t believe Rogan holds hostility toward gay people or social positions, but that personal tolerance doesn’t offset the political outcome he helped produce.
“You used considerable media and personal resources to help put back into power a guy who tried to steal a presidential election, this is a fact, who was grossly incompetent in every possible way, and you said, ‘Let’s do that again, but only worse.'”
