Joe Rogan Praises Sanjay Gupta After Tense Exchange Went Viral: ‘Very Small Part’ of an ‘Enjoyable’ 3 Hour Conversation

Joe Rogan praised CNN’s Dr. Sanjay Gupta on Friday, and rebuked those assuming a viral, short clip of a tense moment in their interview was representative of the entire conversation.

“The reality is that disagreement was a very small part of what was overall a very enjoyable conversation,” he said. “Sanjay is a really nice person and I like him a lot. After our time together I consider him a friend.”

The pair discussed Covid, vaccines and CNN’s coverage of Rogan’s experience with the virus — the latter of which caused several headlines.

Rogan commented that CNN has been “lying about me taking horse medication,” referring to his announcement that he had used ivermectin while fighting Covid-19.

Ivermectin does come in veterinary forms but also comes in human forms and can treat parasitic infections and head lice. The medicine is nonetheless not approved by the FDA to treat Covid, and the agency has underscored the dangers of humans consuming the animal form.

“Why would they lie and say that’s horse dewormer?” he told Gupta. “I can afford people medicine, motherfucker. This is ridiculous. It’s just a lie.”

Gupta noted that some people have used the veterinary ivermectin, but conceded that CNN “shouldn’t have called it a horse dewormer.”

After the exchange became widely circulated online, Rogan came to Gupta’s defense, writing in an Instagram post that “if you’ve only seen clips online you would think that [Gupta] and I had a tense and uncomfortable encounter when we sat down for 3 hours.”

Rogan later added: “For him to dive into my world and have an open form conversation with no restrictions took real courage, and I appreciate it very much.”

However, Gupta faced some backlash after he did not correct CNN’s Don Lemon for once again broadly labeling ivermectin as horse dewormer while discussing the Rogan interview.