Joe Rogan, host of the popular “Joe Rogan Experience” podcast, slammed President Joe Biden late last week, saying that the U.S. has no leader as it becomes more and more obvious to many that Biden is struggling.
Rogan said that he believes that people will look back at this point in U.S. history and will recognize it as “one of the most tumultuous periods, I think, in the history of the country.”
“We’re unhinged in a lot of ways and we’re not anchored down by a real leader,” Rogan continued. “You know, we don’t really have a real leader in the country, anymore. I mean, you can say Joe Biden is the president, he’s our leader, and you’d be correct on paper. But I mean, everybody knows he’s out of his mind. He’s just, he’s barely hanging in there.”
WATCH:
Joe Rogan on the current state of American politics: "We're unhinged … We don't really have a leader in this country anymore." pic.twitter.com/0JvfzoVsFD
— The Post Millennial (@TPostMillennial) June 25, 2021
TRANSCRIPT:
JOE ROGAN, PODCAST HOST: If you could go back in time to any era, and just visit for a little bit, where would you go?
ILIZA SHLESINGER, COMEDIAN: Probably like five years ago and just make some different choices.
ROGAN: You wouldn’t want to go to like, watch Ben Franklin get electrocuted?
SHLESINGER: Am I just seeing like a specific moment? Or is it just like–
ROGAN: Like, if I give you a week, you could spend a week and you knew you’d be safe.
SHLESINGER: Okay, I just think the 60s were a really formative time for this country. And I think getting like, hopping around just to the vibe, and just all the unrest and the change and really coming out of losing our innocence as a nation and sort of catapulting us into what would become the country. I think the 60s were really fascinating.
ROGAN: I bet a lot of people in the future gonna say that about the 20s, what’s happening right now.
SHLESINGER: 20s would be cool. Oh, [2020s]?
ROGAN: No, these 20s. 2020s.
SHLESINGER: Oh, man.
ROGAN: I think people are gonna be talking about all the changes happening right here. Right now–
SHLESINGER: Yeah
ROGAN: –in the future, they’re gonna be saying it’s one of the most tumultuous periods I think in the history of the country.
SHLESINGER: We’ll look back and it’ll be scary and be like, yeah, I don’t know. Everybody was afraid of getting canceled, people eating each other. Nobody was listening to science. Like it’s a really, even as it’s happening. I’m like, we are coming across like f***ng idiots, like animals.
ROGAN: Well, we’re unhinged in a lot of ways–
SHLESINGER: Yeah.
ROGAN: –and we’re not anchored down by a real leader. You know, we don’t really have a real leader in the country, anymore. I mean, you can say Joe Biden is the president, he’s our leader, and you’d be correct on paper. But I mean, everybody knows he’s out of his mind. He’s just, he’s barely hanging in there.
SHLESINGER: I just think we’ve dealt with, you know, you have political unrest coming out of Donald Trump, you have this pandemic. There’s just so, you have so much fake news, opinions, there’s so many outlets, like it’s, it is maddening, regardless of how you believe and you can’t get a straight answer. You can’t even substantiate your own facts with the right facts because you it’s hard to drill down those facts. Everybody that agrees with you sort of does in theory, but is it always in practice? And it is hard to find solid ground. And so it’s scary, just how angry the mob is and how, you know, if you look at like cancel culture, I don’t even think people want an apology in many cases, they just want to see someone burn.
ROGAN: They definitely do.
SHLESINGER: It’s like the middle, it’s like the medieval, the medieval times, it’s like medieval times, like the Middle Ages, it’s a dark period.
ROGAN: Well there’s a disconnect between other people, right, that’s happening when you’re attacking someone online, they’re not near you, you’re not talking to them. They’re not a human, they are the other and you can attack them in that way. And if they get taken down, they lose their job. People like it. They like it. It’s like your score to point you’re playing a video game, you kill the bad guy.
SHLESINGER: You feel, because people feel so helpless, you know, I was thinking about that short story that we all had to read, ‘The Lottery,’ where this town just like randomly would draw straws to see who would get stoned to death.
ROGAN: Really?
SHLESINGER: And the woman is, this is a famous short story, the woman was like the biggest proponent of this in the end is the one that gets stoned. And of course, you know, it’s like, and then they were upon her, but I think about that a lot. How–
ROGAN: When did this happen?
SHLESINGER: The lottery?
ROGAN: Yeah.
SHLESINGER: I don’t know what year it was written.
ROGAN: But it’s real? Is it a real story, a true story? Was it a fiction story?
SHLESINGER: I think it’s fiction, which is even better, because somebody at the time was like, you know, we want this justice, not even justice when the punishment outweighs the crime, but we so just want to see someone get devoured. If somebody genuinely offends me, there are apologies where you’re like, okay, they meant that, they f***ed up. But for the most part, you’re like, f*** that person. Even if they apologize, you’re like, yeah, I still see–, I know that they still secretly are anti-Semitic or racist, or whatever, you know. And we do look at that snippet of a person, they did a thing and you’re like, burn it all to the ground. There’s no room for nuance. We do love like a public hanging. We have not come that far.
ROGAN: Yeah, it’s definitely still a part of what it means to be a person. You know, especially if you don’t know the person, you know.
SHLESINGER: Especially if they’re famous, or good looking or rich. It’s even more delicious. Or someone who’s like wronged you or you feel there’s no accounting for substance or character. It’s just they upset me. So they gotta go.
ROGAN: Yeah, there’s very few people in this day and age that are interested in empathy.
SHLESINGER: 100%.
ROGAN: And that’s a that’s a real problem, or at least publicly interested in empathy, where they’re promoting it. You know, it’s not, it’s not something that we value as much as, you know, we value it in our personal lives. It’s very important in your personal lives to be empathetic about family members and friends. But when it comes to like public figures, nobody gives a s*** about empathy.