Russell Brand Defends Joe Rogan

Russell Brand has spoken out in defense of Joe Rogan and against his detractors, even suggesting that the podcaster would be a better president than Joe Biden.

In a lengthy video clip shared on X (formerly Twitter) over the weekend, the British comedian analyzed how Rogan handled his conversation with Kid Rock when the musician appeared on The Joe Rogan Experience last month.

The two devoted much of their conversation to the Israel-Hamas war, which erupted on October 7 when Hamas launched a surprise attack on southern Israel that killed 1,200 people and took about 250 hostages back to Gaza. Israel’s subsequent airstrikes and invasion have killed nearly 30,000 Palestinians in the territory, many of them women and children, according to Reuters, citing Gaza’s Health ministry.

During their talk on the conflict, Rogan spoke about his lingering optimism that the heightened tensions in the Middle East will come to a resolution. However, Rock, whose given name is Robert James Ritchie, disagreed.

“Only wars we won were f****** ones where we were the most brutal motherf****** on the planet,” Rock said. “I don’t disagree with what Israel is doing.”

He continued: “It’s like they should just go in there and be like, You know what? We want our hostages back,” he went on. “If we don’t have them back, clock starts now. And f****** 24 hours, we’re going to start bombing motherf****** and killing f****** civilians, 30-, 40,000 a f****** time.

“So you civilians better f****** pack up and f****** get these f****** motherf******. And you go against Hamas. You f****** go against them. We’re not playing f****** games with you,” Rock said.

“Yeah, but the problem is the civilians are not armed,” Rogan pushed back.

“Bomb the f*** out of them. Someone’s going to learn,” Rock said later in the discussion, prompting Rogan to counter that “you can’t just nuclear bomb people.”

“I didn’t say nuke ’em,” Rock clarified, after bringing up Hiroshima and Nagasaki as examples of how Palestinians should be treated by Israel.

“Yeah, but even a conventional bombing campaign, if you want to do that somewhere, they can do that to your place,” Rogan told his guest. “And this is what we have to avoid.”

In his video shared on X, Brand looked over parts of the interview before telling his audience: “In this, you get more diplomacy than in the Democratic Party’s policy at the moment, and you certainly get more discourse, and you certainly get more open-mindedness. So how dare those institutions be critical, condemnatory and dismissive of Joe Rogan and what Joe Rogan represents, which is plainly a huge portion of the American population.”

Hitting back at what he characterized as a Democratic tendency to “sneer about and ridicule” Rogan on “mainstream television,” Brand said the clip showed the media personality to be “reasoned,” “reflective,” nonconfrontational” and “diplomatic.” In the past, Rogan has faced accusations of spreading misinformation surrounding COVID-19 and its vaccines.

“He’s sort of everything you’d want,” Brand said of Rogan. “Not just [Biden] licking a bloody ice cream or Lindsey Graham saying, ‘Bomb, bomb, bomb them.’ These are mainstream political figures.”

Brand said Kid Rock, in his moment on the show, served as a “conduit for views that are available to you on mainstream media through members of Congress, and Joe Rogan is demonstrating more diplomacy, sensitivity and understanding than the most sensitive members of the Democratic Party and advocating for peace in ways that are more articulate than you’re likely to hear [in] your own nation’s Congress. Isn’t that cause for concern?”

“It’s not for no reason that Joe Rogan has become the phenomenon that he has become. We could see it play out live there,” he continued. “Sensitive, diplomatic and considered at a point where those in positions of power—making decisions with your tax dollars and [on] the lives of real people around the world—don’t have an iota of the sensitivity that we’ve just seen displayed for a massive audience that the mainstream media are happy to dismiss as a basket of deplorables, as MAGA extremists.”

Speaking about Rogan’s podcast, Brand went on: “What ought to happen in any sensible culture is that you should see that as a forum where ideas are exchanged in an interesting and meaningful way. And astonishing though it is to say, we would be better off if Congress took a leaf out of Joe Rogan’s book than the reverse. They’re the ones pretending they’re the adults.”

Brand said that “whether you think Kid Rock is an eccentric and Joe Rohan’s a conspiracy theorist, of course, is entirely up to you. But the fact is that Kid Rock’s views are popular in Congress and indeed are currently literally informing policy. That’s what’s happening…. And Joe Rogan is reasoned, seasoned, a good communicator, a good thinker and a diplomatic envoy. The truth is, we’d probably be better off in the hands of Joe Rogan than we would in the hands of Joe Biden.”

Newsweek has contacted a representative of Rogan via email for comment.

The Palestinian civilian death toll and images of children dead in the rubble of bombed buildings have resulted in mounting international calls for a ceasefire and increased pressure on Biden to take a tougher line on Israel.

Despite the increasing condemnation over civilian deaths and demands for a ceasefire, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has repeatedly said the army will continue its offensive to destroy Hamas, bring home the remaining hostages and stop Gaza from posing a threat to his country.