Joe Rogan Ambushes Gavin Newsom Interview With Pointed Covid Question: ‘Motherf*cker!’

California Governor Gavin Newsom defended his pandemic record after podcaster Joe Rogan texted in to ask if he felt “any remorse” for “draconian” COVID vaccine mandates and doing the bidding of “Big Pharma” while he was on another podcast, jibing that Rogan wouldn’t interview him.

Newsom appeared on the Shawn Ryan Show podcast on Monday for a wide-ranging interview with host Shawn Ryan — but found himself ambushed at the outset by Rogan, who texted in a pointed challenge to the governor.

Ryan explained that his Patreon subscribers were given opportunities to ask the guests questions and that Rogan had jumped at the chance, messaging in his question just “2 minutes” after the host had put out his request ahead of Newsom’s interview.

“Motherfucker!” Newsom exclaimed immediately. “By the way, I’m a Joe Rogan fan. He ain’t a fan of mine, but I’m a Joe Rogan fan. No bullshit. And I’ve lived it for decades … I feel like it’s a decade back in the day before Joe was Joe Rogan. He was just a podcaster, man. Now he’s a phenom.”

“Good friend of mine. Well, this is from Joe Rogan,” Ryan said.

“Oh, God,” Newsom laughed.

“This is a tough one,” the host insisted.

“He won’t have me on the show, by the way,” the governor said before Ryan could start.

Ryan read Rogan’s text aloud: “Who will be held accountable for mandating COVID-19 vaccines for children, which were unnecessary and ineffective, and who will take responsibility for the unprecedented increases in myocarditis and cancer cases among them?”

He continued: “Second to that, do you feel any remorse for that draconian decision that was obviously heavily influenced by the pharmaceutical companies’ desire for maximum profit?”

Newsom immediately took to responding to Rogan’s charge that he’d helped Big Pharma push profits with the vaccine mandate: “Yeah, I’ve been — I’ve signed some of the most progressive laws against Big Pharma in the country. So I have receipts on that. So, no one should suggest that it was about doing the bidding of Big Pharma — quite the contrary.”

Pivoting to his pandemic record, Newsom offered a detailed and unapologetic defense, pointing to an independent review currently underway.

“California, like many states, red states included, Florida included, moved forward early in the pandemic, working with the Trump administration and the advisors from the Trump administration,” Newsom said, noting that decisions were made amid unprecedented uncertainty.

He continued: “I’ve asked our team to put together an objective review of everything we did right, everything we did wrong. We’re interviewing people who vehemently disagree with us… international experts. We’re stress testing our entire process, coulda, shoulda, woulda, comparing and contrasting to what other states did.”

Newsom also sought to challenge criticism of his party’s pandemic actions, noting that Republican lawmakers in Florida shut down their bars and restaurants before California.”

On vaccines, he remained firm: “Vaccines save lives.” But he acknowledged Rogan’s question specifically about children, adding, “I respect that. And that was where there was a lot of feedback with a lot of experts that I had as advisers.”

Those advisers, he said, weren’t limited to California.

Addressing critics more broadly, Newsom added pointedly: “I know everyone’s a goddamn genius now in hindsight. But at the time, none of us knew what we were up against, including the president of the United States, who I worked very closely with… and I say that with the kind of humility he deserves as well… grace that he deserves in terms of the decisions he made early on.”

Watch above via YouTube.