‘F***ing creeps’: Joe Rogan takes another shot at Aussie authorities

Controversial podcast host Joe Rogan has come under fire after a series of claims about Australia were proved to be completely wrong.

Podcast megastar Joe Rogan has been called out live on-air for pushing false claims about Australian food laws.

During an episode of his popular podcast The Joe Rogan Experience, the 54-year-old claimed that politicians in NSW were trying to “pass a law that won’t allow you to grow your own food”.

“I want to know what their justification was, but I’m pretty sure it had to do with agricultural contamination,” Rogan said on Thursday’s episode, which featured media personality and regular guest Bryan ‘Hotep Jesus’ Sharpe.

“You could justify it if you’re a real piece of sh*t,” he continued, adding that he believed certain Australian authorities were “f***ing creeps”.

“We gonna stop these motherf***ers from growing their own food … because that’s how you smoke out an anti-vaxxer, because you can’t go to a grocery store anymore, and you can’t grow your own food,” he said.

However, his rant was cut short when producer Jamie Vernon, who regularly googles topics in live-time, interjected to tell his boss that he was wrong.

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Joe Rogan was then told by his producer that he was wrong. Picture: Supplied

“The closest thing I could find is something like this, but that’s not what you were saying,” Vernon said, referring to an article relating to New Zealand laws, which he quickly clarified was itself “false”.

“It’s got to be a real thing … it seems too good to not be,” Rogan replied, before declaring after a pause that he too couldn’t find the law he was referring to.

“Damn it, it better not be fake … it might be fake,” he said.

Twitter users were quick to jump on to Rogan’s mistake, with many expressing disappointment that the host hadn’t taken the time to fact-check his ideas before airing them live.

“If only @joerogan had taken the time to read my very useful @ReutersFacts fact-check on this,” wrote journalist Nick Hardinges.

“Neither Australia nor any part of Australia is passing a bill that will prevent people from growing their own food.”

“What would be better is if he did the research BEFORE speaking about it on his podcast,” wrote another commenter.

I live in Australia. Do you know how absolutely batshit ridiculous it would be for the government to even try to pull of something like that. Most of the country is rural. We have free elections. This is insane.

— Rovie Wade (@roviewadest) May 17, 2022

There is nothing worse than people non-Australians an opinion about anything here. Between this and the conspiracies about the dictatorship we were apparently in they’ve been consistently wrong, yet continue to give commentary on a country that they couldn’t point to on a map.

— Brendan Foster (@BrendanFosterrr) May 17, 2022

Maybe Joe Rogan will use this moment to think about other times where he stated something was happening and acted like it was a major issue, even if he was really off (if it there even was a basis).

Oh, who am I kidding here?

— Ryan Holman 🇺🇦 (@realRyanHolman) May 17, 2022

The slip-up is the latest in an increasingly long rap sheet of false claims aired by Rogan on his show.

The podcaster was “cancelled” earlier this year for allegedly spreading Covid-19 misinformation, after he spouted a number of claims regarding the safety and efficacy of vaccines.

A particularly contentious episode with controversial physician and biochemist Robert Malone prompted a visceral outcry from critics and even some fans.

Dr Malone, who worked on early mRNA vaccine development in the late ’80s and ’90s, has drawn widespread condemnation from the medical community over the past year for claiming that spike proteins triggered by some Covid-19 vaccines contain dangerous toxicity levels.

He has regularly encouraged people to avoid vaccines, and claimed the shots developed to counter the virus are “not working”.

That particular episode saw a number of musicians – including renowned artists Neil Young and Joni Mitchell – ask to have their music removed from Spotify, which had paid Rogan in excess of $150 million for exclusive hosting rights in 2020.

The fallout saw Spotify pull over 100 episodes of the podcast and add “content advisories” to ones discussing the virus, with Rogan himself admitting afterwards that he would “try harder to get people with differing opinions on”, promising to “do my best to make sure I’ve researched these topics”.

The Joe Rogan Experience podcast has caused increasing controversy since becoming Spotify exclusive. Picture: Mandel Ngan/AFP

Rogan has also come under fire for entertaining a number of fringe conspiracy theories, as well as advocating against transgender athletes competing in elite sports and exploring various social taboos, with regular guests including controversial media figures Alex Jones, Tim Pool and Jordan Peterson, among others.

However, despite the hot-water topics regularly courted on the program, Rogan’s streaming numbers remain incredibly high with an estimated 11 million listens per episode, making his show the highest streamed podcast on Spotify.