Earlier this year podcast host Joe Rogan called Joe Biden too old to be president and said he’d vote for Donald Trump.
Now he’s requesting both candidates debate on his Spotify show, and Trump immediately jumped at the chance.
“First of all, I want no one else in the room, just the three of us,” Rogan described how his debate would be handled to his guest, retired UFC fighter Tim Kennedy. “And you’d have to stream it live so no one can edit it, and I would want them in there for hours. If they wanted to do that — they both wanted to come here in Austin, sit down and have a debate — I would 100 percent do it.”
But why would Biden do it when Rogan already backs Trump?
“The View” co-host Sunny Hostin said today Rogan was “misogynistic, racist, homophobic” and would be an “inappropriate” choice to moderate a presidential debate.
“I think it would be inappropriate for Joe Rogan to host a presidential debate. I mean, I think given his use of the n-word, I think given his, comparing a Black neighborhood to ‘Planet of the Apes,’ given the fact that he has called a transgender woman a man, I think all of that disqualifies him to be the host of a presidential debate,” Hostin said.
Rogan, a comedian who first became famous as a UFC commentator, has made his distaste for Biden well known.
“I’d rather vote for Trump than Biden,” said Rogan on his show earlier this year. “I don’t think Biden can handle anything. You’re relying entirely on his cabinet. If you want to talk about an individual leader who can communicate, he can’t do that. And we don’t know what the fuck he’ll be like after a year in office.”
Rogan was reflecting the debunked view circulated by Trump and his supporters that Biden is mentally incapable of holding office.
“The pressure of being president of the United States is something that no one has ever prepared for,” Rogan continued. “The only one who seems to be fine with it is Trump, oddly enough. He doesn’t seem to be aging at all or in any sort of decline.”
Biden will be 78 in November, while Trump is 74.
Describing Biden as “very old”, Rogan said the former vice presidents famous verbal slip-ups were “not a normal way to communicate unless he’s high”.
Rogan has made other controversial statements that have been widely condemned as racist and transphobic.
In 2013, for example, Rogan told a bizarre story about watching “Planet of the Apes” in a black neighborhood and describing it as walking “into Africa.”
That same year, he also insulted MMA fighter Fallon Fox, a transgender woman, saying she was “a f—ing man. … I don’t care if you don’t have a d— anymore.”
In the past, Rogan has also used misogynistic and homophobic slurs.
He faced a backlash in April after a resurfaced video showed him laughing as fellow comedian Joey ‘Coco’ Diaz as he spoke about coercing women into performing oral sex to get stage time.
The disturbing footage was shared to Twitter as part of a larger thread on sexual harassment in the Los Angeles comedy community after actor D’elia was accused of sexual misconduct with underage girls.
Rogan has also questioned the use of masks during the coronavirus pandemic.