Joe Rogan Reveals ‘Two Former Presidents’ Complained to Spotify Over His Covid Commentary
Joe Rogan revealed Tuesday that “two former presidents” complained to Spotify after his now-infamous 2021 Instagram post in which he told fans that he was using ivermectin, among other drugs, to treat himself after testing positive for Covid-19.
In Rogan’s Instagram post in September 2021 the comedian alerted fans that he’d need to postpone his Nashville stand-up show after he had tested positive for the virus. During the video he told followers that he was treating the virus with a cocktail of drugs that included ivermectin, an anti-parasitic widely discouraged by public health officials at the time as it had not been approved for treatment of the virus.
CNN drew backlash for its reporting on the video amid claims online that the network had changed the color of the video to make Rogan look more ill. Rogan later confronted the network’s chief medical correspondent Dr Sanjay Gupta and blasted the network as “dangerous” for telling “lies” about him.
At the time, in reporting, CNN also noted that Spotify, which signed Rogan to an exclusive licensing deal in 2020, had remained silent on the matter.
On a Tuesday episode of the Joe Rogan Experience podcast with guest Dr. Mary Talley Bowden, however, Rogan revisited the incident and revealed that Spotify received calls from two former presidents complaining about him having shared his ivermectin treatment publicly.
Without naming who, Rogan said: “I thought it was going to be like a normal tweet that I put out or a normal Instagram post that I put out and then all of a sudden I hear that [rock musician] Neil Young wants me removed from Spotify. I was like ‘What the fuck is going on this is crazy!’”
“Spotify got calls from two former presidents,” he added.
“Really?” Bowden asked.
“Oh yeah!” Rogan replied, eyebrows raised.
“Did they deplatform? Did you get censored or deplatformed?” the guest asked.
Rogan responded: “No I grew by two million subscribers in a month. I did, because people started listening, because they made it sound like I was this maniac and they started listening like ‘oh he’s really reasonable and pretty humble about all this stuff and is just asking questions.”
Prior to the revelation, Rogan hit out at the media as the reason he will not “move on” about the incident.
“It’s such a dirty business. God, I used to have massive respect for journalists before I had ever done this podcast,” he said.
He continued, laughing: “I didn’t think the world was filled with demons – moneyhungry demons – that are willing to sacrifice human lives in the pursuit of of revenue. It’s crazy!”
Watch above via YouTube.
