Sam Harris Drops Brutal Takedown of Joe Rogan: His Platforming Lies Has Helped ‘Politically Shatter’ America

Podcast host and political commentator Sam Harris dropped a scorched earth takedown of fellow podcasters Joe Rogan and Dave Smith on Sunday, accusing them of regularly flubbing facts, helping to fracture the U.S. politically, and recently platforming World War II revisionists.

“Joe is a genuinely good guy who wants good things for people, but he is honestly in over his head on so many topics of great consequence, right?” Harris began, adding:

When he brings someone on to just shoot the shit about how the Holocaust is not what you think it was, right, and maybe Churchill’s the bad guy in World War II, or he’s got Dave Smith being treated as an expert on Israel and Palestine and the history of that conflict and the, and the moral emergency that, that came to the world’s attention on October 7th, um, and what is appropriate to think in the aftermath of all of that, right?

Dave Smith, the only reason why anyone knows what Dave Smith thinks about any of this is very likely because Joe had him on multiple times to talk about it. Right. You know, he’s a pure misinformation artist and, you know, on top of many others, um, and when Joe talks to someone like Trump or Tucker Carlson, or, uh you know any of these other guys who, who lie as freely as they breathe and doesn’t push back against any of their lies.

In fact, in Trump’s case really fairly energetically helped put his lies into the most plausible possible shape. It is irresponsible. I mean, it is directly harmful. Our society is as politically shattered as it is in part because of how Joe has interacted with information. Again, I don’t think this is, I think a lot of this is inadvertent or maybe all of it’s inadvertent, but it’s also avoidable, right?

He could actually take the responsibility that really is his to take at this point to get his facts straight and have someone other than Jamie there riding shotgun with him. I mean, he could have two brilliant journalists whose full-time job, he can pay each of them a million dollars a year just to sit there and do, and make sure he doesn’t put his foot in his mouth in a colossally irresponsible way, right? I mean it’s like, it would be very simple to do a better job.

During his lengthy monologue, Harris also took swipes at Lex Fridman and the All-In podcast, which, along with Rogan, are part of the so-called “manosphere” of new media that helped President Donald Trump win reelection.

“This is something I’ve complained about with Lex Friedman, right? I mean, Lex, Lex is another very nice guy. Um, I don’t think he’s ill-intentioned at all, but I mean he’s going to sit, sit down with Putin, really, and conduct an interview that’s, that’s going be useful for the world?” Harris said, adding:

I mean that seems extraordinarily unlikely to go well. Uh, I would love Lex to prove me wrong there, but I saw how it goes when he talks to people like Tucker Carlson or Kanye West or any other controversial figure. You know, some of those conversations have been just disastrous fountains of misinformation. So it is with the all in podcast guys, right? Like, you know, I don’t know, I only know Jason, I’ve met David Sacks once, but I can’t say I know him. But you know, I was. I was a big fan of their podcast in the beginning, when they were talking about just business stuff and entrepreneurship, and that was fun and useful, and I think they were giving a lot of valid information there to people.

But once they got political, once they get deep into, once David Sacks began spouting Kremlin talking points, quite literally Kremlin, talking points. Though, he would, he would roll his eyes at that description. And they were completely unencumbered by any valid journalistic or academic correction of this.

Harris ended by again taking a swipe at Rogan, “I mean, it’s like, again, Joe’s got effectively Holocaust deniers on his podcast at a moment where anti-Semitism has become more consequential than, globally speaking, than it has been since the Holocaust, right? I mean, that’s his contribution to this moment.”

Smith reacted to Harris’s takedown on X:

Watch the clip above and the full video here.

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