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Podcaster Joe Rogan may just be moving past his feud with President Donald Trump over the Iran war, but he’s an outlier in the broader “manosphere” that’s voicing dissent as the conflict nears the two-month mark.
During the latest episode of his podcast, Rogan — fresh off a White House visit — dismissed online speculation that their rift runs deep. Rogan insisted a viral clip of Trump putting his hands on his shoulders at a recent Ultimate Fighting Championship wasn’t a tense exchange, but rather the president delivering good news about taking up the cause of psychedelic therapy research at Rogan’s urging. The podcaster’s reply? “Thank you, sir,” he said. Notably, he didn’t criticize the war in the episode.
But even if the White House’s efforts to court Rogan proved successful, Trump has more work to do. Of the 14 longform “bro” podcasts Trump appeared on during his 2024 presidential campaign, eight of the hosts have questioned or criticized the war, while just two have endorsed it.
One example is Theo Von, an actor and comedian who endorsed Trump in 2024 after having him on his show. Von initially reacted to the war by calling it “scary” and on Monday went further, describing Trump’s threat to wipe out Iranian civilization as “insane.”
“What regular person is this helping?” Von asked of the Iran war in his episode this week. “I just don’t know. I don’t understand.” Von called the war “f*cking baffling.”
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The broader “manosphere,” made up of hyper-masculine content creators that range from less explicitly political bro-casters to staunchly conservative figures like Tucker Carlson, has increasingly lashed out at Trump over a range of issues from the Jeffrey Epstein files to government spending.
The backlash to the Iran war represents a broader challenge for Republicans as the midterm election season heats up and Trump contends with sinking approval ratings.
Trump’s team saw outreach to the “bro-style” podcasts as critical during the 2024 campaign, given the programs’ sway over their mostly young and mostly male audiences — a notoriously difficult demographic to reach.
“Part of Trump’s coalition has always been isolationist and it’s no surprise that they’re not thrilled with the war,” Alex Conant, a Republican strategist and former aide to Marco Rubio’s 2016 campaign, told Semafor. “If I’m an America first voter who listens to Joe Rogan, I’m getting a lot of reasons to oppose the war every week.”
The White House did not directly address the criticism from prominent podcasters when reached for comment, but insisted that Trump campaigned on denying Iran the ability to produce a nuclear weapon. “What matters most to the American people is having a Commander-in-Chief who takes decisive action to eliminate threats and keep them safe, which is exactly what President Trump did with the successful Operation Epic Fury,” White House spokesman Davis Ingle said.
Notable
- The Trump administration is reclassifying marijuana to make it easier to study its medicinal uses, a move supported by Rogan and other podcasters, Axios reported.