The Blue Check Quest to Censor Rogan Might Be Working

BUCK: Right now, we’ve got a serious fight over censorship underway, and here’s what we have on this show: An unsinkable aircraft carrier of free speech. But we are conservatives. Clay and I come from a conservative perspective on these issues, and so while the left wants to defame and destroy us, we’re across the other side of the ideology battlefield from them and there’s certain things that they can and can’t manage as a result of that.

But when someone from their own side starts to break with the consensus, they get even more upset — or even someone who is just, you could say, a centrist, a moderate, someone who may be able to speak from within the tent of the Democrat Party in some way or the socialist Democrat Party, however you want to frame it. Joe Rogan has one of the biggest podcast audiences, probably the biggest podcast audience of any show out there right now. I’ve listened before. Sometimes it’s a great show.

And he does something that is these days remarkably rare, which is have on different points of view and ask questions. By the way, Clay and I would love to have some Democrats. I say this. We say this. We’d have Fauci on in a heartbeat, and I would be respectful and ask him real questions. I know I’ve been very critical of him publicly, but he’s a public figure. He should be able to take the heat. We would love to have people on.

They usually won’t come on conservative shows. With very few exceptions, you will only get conservatives who will come on conservative shows. But people of all different ideological perspectives go on the Rogan show. And so what happens is he has been willing to break with the consensus on some aspects of covid policy just by virtue of having questions, putting questions out there to experts, including recently shows he did with, what, Dr. McCullough, Dr. Malone.

I listened to the Malone show. I didn’t listen to the McCullough show yet. But he says a lot of things also or brings up things that we talk to Alex Berenson on this show about. Bottom line, folks, he’s searching for answers, and that’s really appealing at a time when the left is just an all-out propaganda machine.

And it’s also really interesting to watch as some artists from the past who are supposedly counterculture or part of the rebellious culture of, I guess, the sixties and seventies — Joni Mitchell now and Neil Young — have said, “Take our music off of Spotify,” which is Joe Rogan’s home or his podcast’s “or else take Joe Rogan off.” Well, they haven’t taken Joe Rogan off. They took Neil Young’s music off ’cause who cares. But Joe Rogan had to say this to kind of clarify things, and Clay and I want to analyze it. Play it. 23.

ROGAN: The problem I have with the term “misinformation,” especially today, is that many of the things that we thought of as misinformation just a short while ago are now accepted as fact. I do not know if they’re right. I don’t know, because I’m not a doctor; I’m not a scientist. I’m just a person who sits down and talks to people and has conversations with them. Do I get things wrong?

Absolutely I get things wrong. But I try to correct it because I’m interested in telling the truth. I’m interested in finding out what the truth is and I’m interested in having interesting conversations with people that have differing opinions. I want to thank Spotify for being so supportive during this time, and I’m very sorry that this is happening to them and that they’re taking so much heat from it.

BUCK: Why are they taking heat, Clay? What the heck’s going on here? We know what’s going on here.

CLAY: This, to me, is a battle that is going to be become all too common, and we know it has happened over the past several years. If you get outside the line of acceptable discourse, then instead of engaging in debate, left-wing elements in this country try to cancel you. They decide that what you are saying is too contrary to what they believe, and so they believe that you should be deplatformed; they don’t believe that you should be able to speak to an audience.

Here is what I find fascinating — and I tweeted about this last night. If I were Joe Rogan, I would want to get fired at this point by Spotify, because let me just kind of tell you the truth here. I am never going to be someone who is going to grovel and beg to be… I’m not saying Joe Rogan’s doing that yet. But I’m not going to be someone who is ever going to grovel and beg and say, “Oh, please distribute my content. Oh, please allow me to talk to the audience that we have built and that exist for any shows that we do.”

I’ll never do it, and I wonder what advice Joe Rogan is getting here because if Spotify fired him, I think it would be the best thing that could possibly happen to his career. And let me explain, maybe in a counterintuitive way, what I mean by this. As soon as he gets fired by Spotify, they, first of all, probably have to pay him out on the existing contract that he has now. And that is because I would presume — I didn’t write that contract for him or negotiate it.

But I would presume that he has the ability to choose the topics and guests that he wants as a part of signing on with Spotify, just like Buck and I do, right? You probably wouldn’t sign a contract, Buck — I know I wouldn’t sign a contract — if they said, “Hey, you don’t have the right to pick the guests that come on your program and you don’t have the right to pick the topics that exist on your program.”

Now, we are very fortune, Julie Talbott is incredible, our boss at Premiere. She’s been our boss for a long time. That’s why we’re here, okay? Spotify is in an interesting spot to me because if they fire Joe Rogan, Joe Rogan goes out and creates his own platform, his own media. His audience is big enough now, Buck, that they will follow him wherever he goes. I work at Fox. I would say if I were running Fox and Joe Rogan got fired?

I would say, “Joe Rogan, you’re now the front man for Fox Nation, our digital streaming arm. We’re gonna stream every one of your shows. People will sign up to be subscribers to Fox Nation, they’ll get access to everything, including Joe Rogan.” If he wanted to start his own company, I think he could go direct to the masses.

BUCK: That’s all true, Clay, but don’t you worry that if they can…? If they’re willing to fire — which they are not, I don’t think, right? I don’t think either of us think that’s gonna happen. But the whole point here is left wants to break Rogan. They don’t want him to be able to reach the people he reaches, and so you’re right that professionally and in terms of his career.

CLAY: I think he’s uncancelable.

BUCK: They’re trying to cancel him, though, is the point.

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: They’re trying to show that they can even at that level get somebody to — and remember, it’s not always as clear as just canceled or uncanceled. You know what they’re doing now. They’re putting up these disclaimers —

CLAY: Right.

BUCK: These disclaimers that say, “For more covid information…” I’m sure you’ve had this on social media. I’ve had this on social media every day pretty much now.

CLAY: Yeah. (laughing)

BUCK: Has any person in the history of internet ever seen a Clay or Buck or anyone else who agrees with us on any of this stuff “Go to the CDC for more information,” and actually been like, “I’m gonna go to CDC!” (laughing) It doesn’t happen.

CLAY: They might accidentally click.

BUCK: Right.

CLAY: No one intentionally clicks.

BUCK: They’re doing this the way a Mafioso who’s running a protection racket walks into your business and says, “Nice business. Be a shame if something happened to it.” It’s a constant reminder that you’re being watched, and it’s meant to undermine your content. They’re now doing that to Rogan. So even though he hasn’t been crushed, they’re trying to restrain him, pull him in — and at that level, and they’re saying it’s “misinformation”? Clay, what is the misinformation? Notice they never establish what the misinformation is. They just use this term.

CLAY: And I think it’s so interesting. So I would analogize this a little bit to Dave Chappelle, right? Dave Chappelle who was the last guy who was really in the firing line in the same way for his comedy special, and Netflix stood behind Dave Chappelle over transgender jokes that transgender people didn’t like, and that kind of went away, right? So what I think is intriguing here is this kind of ties in with YouTube knocking down our interview with Rand Paul.

Why are you responsible, Buck, and me and anybody else out there who’s conducting an interview? Why are we responsible for what guests on our program say? I think that’s a really interesting question that almost no one is asking. If you ask a question of someone and they say an answer that people decide is unacceptable, why is the person who asked the question responsible? You can say, “Well, you should have never booked that guest.”

But the guest that he is booking or the guests that we are booking are… I mean, these are doctors. It’s not as if he’s just bringing in some random guy with his own, you know, vaccine he’s just in the garage. (laughing) I mean, these are guys who are very well-established experts. Now, they may have a difference of opinion, but that’s what science is about, Buck. Science is about conflicting opinions until the hard kernel of truth emerges. That’s what the entire scientific method is designed to do.

BUCK: And we’ve experienced this for roughly now the last two years. My friends, we are now a couple of weeks away — a few weeks away — from two years since Two Weeks to Stop Spread.

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: Just so we all understand exactly where we are. We’re very close here to Two Weeks to Stop Spread, two years in, and they’ve been wrong so many times, and what they always do is with the Fauciites and the rest say is, “Oh, the information, the data evolved,” and we have been sitting here the whole time saying, “Right. You don’t know where the data will be, so stop pretending like you do,” but they keep doing this.

They’re making judgment calls and they’re pretending it is fact, and that conflation is central to the left these days. They absolutely believe in not just deplatforming but government and private sector collusion and censorship, right? They want to actually make sure — the White House is openly saying, they want to shut down certain points of view. And this notion that they can enforce a consensus here and that that’s going to be healthy for America.

They always talk about the sanctity of our democracy and all this stuff. They really think that the government should determine what are acceptable points of view to have, on public policy matters. We’re not sitting around talking about whether the earth is flat or not, but it’s fascinating. Free speech advocates — true free speech advocates — will say, “No, we should hear from the flat-earther. Let them expose themselves.”

And, by the way, let everybody who hears it learn and understand why they’re wrong instead of just saying, “Shut up! Go in the corner! You’re not allowed to speak.” Why is the sky blue? People should actually know this. They should actually have an understanding of what the argument is or what the reasoning behind it is and not just shut up, this is reality.

And let’s remember, the people who are telling you to shut up right now, folks, they’re not “the sky is blue people.” They’re the “men can get pregnant” people. They’re actually the… That makes it even more pernicious what’s going on. They’re actually pushing falsehood under the guise of absolute truth, and this is how you get closer and closer to a totalitarian society. I’m sorry, but that’s where we are.

CLAY: We need to keep talking about this, I think, because censorship is not a sign of strength. I want to build on that idea. Just think about this for a minute: Censorship is not a sign of strength. Think about it for a minute.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

CLAY: Here’s why I’m still a little bit optimistic. So as we went to break, I said, “Censorship is ultimately a sign of weakness,” and what I mean by that is, when you are — unless you become a totalitarian state, which I understand the fear of that. But when you are censoring someone or something, you are creating to me a sign of weakness as opposed to strength.

So I believe that we’re in an interesting spot now where, if Joe Rogan were, quote-unquote, “canceled” by Spotify and they fired him and they had to pay out whatever they have to pay out and he started his own media company, I think his audience would grow and become even more loyal than it is today, and he would then create his own direct competitor with Spotify, probably make more money and create — and that’s assuming he wanted to create his own business.

If he didn’t, I would say Fox should say, “Hey, Fox Nation is about speaking truth,” even though the audience might not be a direct overlap. Put him on a streaming service there, put his entire show behind a pay wall, sign up everybody who wants to see or listen to it. And the reason why I bring all this up is, I think these gatekeepers, these Blue Checkmark Brigade members who are trying to determine what is and is not permissible to be said on a day-to-day basis, are going to lose in the long run — and maybe even in the short run quickly — here, because authenticity is more important than anything.

And a lot of these Blue Check Brigade members, Buck — you know this — they don’t have any actual audience. Nobody watches CNN. Nobody really watches MSNBC. The people who are policing others are oftentimes the least influential in terms of their own audience in the entirety of the media culture, and so I think they’re not as strong as they think. I wish, honestly, Rogan would fight back against them more.

BUCK: Let me ask you, Clay: Do you feel like in the Rogan…? Do you feel like he was walking back and trying to calm things down a little bit? Because it was not defiant.

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: Right? I think that he first.

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: So I think that if we’re seeing what kind of influence the left can bring to bear, a guy who’s got a $100 million contract and the biggest contract in the country feels the need to make a video where he’s like, “Look, I’m not crazy. We’re just trying to…” He didn’t say, “Blank all of you out there!” He’s not ride or die with the free speech thing. He’s saying, look — and, by the way, I’m not even… I’m not criticizing him.

I’m trying to just sigh that the pressure that they’re able to bring is such that he feels the need to clarify, because I don’t think he is like a free speech absolutist or somebody who… I think he just wants to have open conversations. But for him to be able to continue doing that he has to say, “Look, I’m not putting many of you information intentionally on air. I’m not, you know…” Why does he have to say any of that?

CLAY: Here’s what I would want him to say — and you’re right, I do think — and that’s the fear of cancel culture in general, not just that it might cancel you but that it makes you afraid to say what you actually believe. And so what I wish he had said — frankly, what I would have said if I was in that position — is, “I’m not changing my show. If you don’t like my show…” I’m speaking at Joe Rogan, by the way, also would say it for our show.

“If you don’t like our show, if you don’t like my show,” if I’m Joe Rogan, “don’t listen. I’m not gonna change anything. I think what we’re doing is important. I think the conversations that we’re having are important, and obviously the marketplace agrees — and if you don’t like it, that’s fine.” I don’t… The thing that’s so frustrating to me about cancel culture is it’s mostly made up of people who don’t consume a product insisting that no one else should be able to.

BUCK: But you also have to remember, Clay, they don’t have to burn down all the villages to send a message to everybody else, if you know what I mean. If Spotify is willing to fire — which I don’t think they are, to be clear. I think you’re right in that he’s too big for Spotify to cancel. But they’re putting a lot of pressure on him. But you look at other podcasters. You look at people that aren’t worth a $100 million because of their podcasts. Does anyone think that they’re gonna want to join the revolution of truth and honesty and justice in their podcast, or they gonna toe the Fauci line?

CLAY: What I would hope, Buck, is that Rogan would start his own company and hire a ton of those people, and then they would start to kick Spotify’s ass ’cause the marketplace ultimately decides.

BUCK: That sounds like a good plan to me.