Jordan Peterson Calls Joe Rogan ‘Most Powerful Journalist Who’s Ever Lived’

Jordan Peterson called Joe Rogan “the most powerful journalist who’s ever lived” as he defended the popular podcaster from criticism.

The Canadian psychologist and conservative commentator made the comments during a remote appearance on Piers Morgan Uncensored on Tuesday. During the interview, Morgan asked Peterson about California Governor Gavin Newsom’s recent remarks about Peterson and The Joe Rogan Experience host.

During an interview with Bloomberg last month, Democrat Newsom expressed his concern over Artificial Intelligence and its role in spreading misinformation online. He also said that it helps fuel “micro cults” of people who follow the likes of Peterson, Rogan and social media influencer Andrew Tate, who has been accused of sexual assault (Tate denies the allegations).

“My son is asking me about Andrew Tate, Jordan Peterson. And then immediately he’s talking about Joe Rogan,” Newsom said. “And I’m like; here it is, the pathway.”

Calling Newsom’s statement “unconsciously comical,” Peterson told Morgan on Tuesday that “anybody who talks about misinformation and disinformation that other people are spreading, they immediately invalidate themselves as a serious observer in my viewpoint because they’re basically arbitrary censors.”

“The micro cult comment, that’s just ridiculously funny because if you are daft enough to think that Joe Rogan is a micro cult, you live in 1995,” Peterson said. “Joe Rogan is the most powerful journalist who’s ever lived by an order of magnitude. And if you don’t know that, you’re just not in the modern world.

“Young people are in the modern world, and they know that Joe Rogan isn’t a micro cult. Gavin Newsom might not know that, but that just means that he’s anachronistic enough to be deluded.

“Maybe if Newsom had a clue he’d be curious about why his own children are interested in these micro cults and exactly what it is about Tate and Rogan and I that are grouped together, even though it’s a strange grouping,” he said.

Rogan started his podcast on YouTube in 2009. By 2015, The Joe Rogan Experience had grown to become one of the world’s most popular podcasts, regularly pulling in millions of views.

In December 2020, Rogan signed a licensing deal with Spotify for the platform’s exclusive rights to broadcast the show. The deal was widely reported at the time to be worth $100 million, although The New York Times reported in February 2022 that the true number for the three-and-a-half-year deal was “at least” $200 million.

While Peterson had high praise for Rogan, he had less-than-flattering words for Tate, whom he has criticized in the past.

“I’m not particularly happy to be grouped with Andrew Tate because I think there’s some elements about what he does that are quite reprehensible,” Peterson told Morgan on Tuesday.

Tate is facing charges of rape and forming a criminal gang to sexually exploit women in Romania. Four women in the United Kingdom are also pursuing legal action against him over accusations of violence, sexual assault and coercive control. Tate has denied all allegations.

“The allegations are malicious and disputed,” Tate said in response to the women’s lawyers read, adding that “allegations are brought as part of an opportunistic press campaign to exploit my present difficulties in Romania, and to mirror some of the allegations made against me in Romania in an effort to extract money from me.”

Earlier this year, media personality Peterson, who has been a guest on Rogan’s podcast on a number of occasions, sought to explain the recipe for the broadcaster’s success in a video that went viral on social media.

“So one of the reasons Joe Rogan is so successful, by the way, is that that’s what Joe does—he just asks questions,” Peterson said in the clip. “He isn’t trying to get something from his guests. He’s not trying to become more famous. He doesn’t need any more money.

“There’s no instrumental utilization of language in his discourse. He’s just a humble lunkhead, in the most profound sense, who would like to know more than he knows, and who asks all the stupid questions he can think up.

“And it turns out that he’s actually very, very smart and very well educated now after talking to hundreds and hundreds of people and listening,” Peterson said.

“And so the stupid questions he asks aren’t stupid, and they’re questions that are shared by virtually everyone who’s listening. And he takes his listeners along on this process of exploratory endeavor, and it’s the pathway to success.”