A guest of MSNBC host Joy Reid, who has been called “the dumbest person on TV,” dismissed podcaster Joe Rogan as “a really dumb person who thinks he’s smart” on Monday night’s episode of “The ReidOut.”
Fellow podcaster Touré Neblett, who also writes at The Grio and is known mononymously as Touré, said “The Joe Rogan Experience” host holds conversations that “erode the brain.”
“Joe Rogan is a really dumb person who thinks that he’s smart, so he has these pseudo-scientific conversations that absolutely erode the brain,” said Touré. “In terms of COVID, here’s what he’s doing: We are in a crowded theater where there is a fire and he’s saying ‘No, guys, there is no fire. Everything is fine.’”
Rogan has faced calls to remove his show from online streaming platform, allegedly for spreading “disinformation” about COVID-19 by interviewing Dr. Peter McCullough and Dr. Robert Malone. Rogan noted that he also interviewed Dr. Peter Hotez, a regular guest on “The ReidOut” and other shows on both MSNBC and CNN.
Rogan has never classified himself as an intellectual, saying, “I’m just a person who sits down and talks to people and has conversations with them. Do I get things wrong? Absolutely. … Whenever I get something wrong. I try to correct it because I’m interested in telling the truth.”
Joy Reid has regularly had her mental prowess called into question. “Joy Reid has been the dumbest person on TV for a long time,” said The Daily Wire’s Candace Owens. ProgressiveSaagar Enjeti called Reid the “dumbest woman on television.” The most popular personality in cable news, Tucker Carlson, has questioned the intellect of who he calls “the race lady,” because she single-mindedly reduces every issue to a reflection of endemic U.S. racism.
Joy Reid has been the dumbest person on TV for a long time. So dumb, that she currently lives in New York, (where they have their own active state guard) yet she believes Florida creating one would be an example of fascism. https://t.co/65GDcdRMKK
— Candace Owens (@RealCandaceO) December 3, 2021
Touré — whose podcast does not appear in the Top 100 — shares Reid’s outlook. He once wrote a column asking, “Can we really be friends with white people?” When 2012 Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney described Barack Obama as “angry,” Touré explained Romney was “really trying to use racial coding and access some really deep stereotypes … This is n**gerization.” He later apologized for using the slur.
In 2019, he was also accused of sexually harassing a make-up artist named “Dani,” who told Essence magazine, “He couldn’t stop asking me to do anal, how I looked naked, if I had sex over the weekend, what it would be like to f**k me.” She said she spoke out when she heard Touré denouncing Harvey Weinstein. “You can’t be a sexual predator and go around shaming other predators,” she said. Touré apologized privately, then publicly, admitting that “engaged in edgy, crass banter, that at the time I did not think was offensive for our tight-knit group. … I have learned and grown from this experience.”
Touré seemed to demand Spotify remove the phenomenally popular podcast, telling Reid, “It is not appropriate for the country to have somebody on this level of platform who’s telling people, ‘You don’t need to get vaccinated.’”
He joins a chorus of prominent voices on the Left calling for Rogan to be deplatformed—calls Spotify has thus far rebuffed. U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy said Big Tech firms should “do the right thing” to “root out” rampant “misinformation.” This week, CBS “This Morning” host Tony Dokoupil said Rogan’s podcast is “in a special category,” because its content is “a life or death issue.”
The “surgeon general” @vivek_murthy: “Critical part of how we get through this pandemic” is “limiting the spread of misinformation” from shows like @joerogan pic.twitter.com/xexarsaNDN
— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) January 25, 2022
“I get the feeling some people are using @joerogan‘s COVID interview as a pretext to silence his voice because he’s not woke,” wrote former Democratic presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard. “Zealots of wokeism try to censor voices who don’t agree with theirs, because they fear the absurdity and weakness of their positions will be exposed.”