Bernie Sanders Under Pressure To Disavow Joe Rogan’s Endorsement After He Said He’d Vote Trump Over Biden
Bernie Sanders’s campaign touted the endorsement of Joe Rogan earlier this year, but now critics are calling on the Sanders campaign to disavow the endorsement after Rogan said he would plan on voting for Donald Trump over Joe Biden.
The popular podcast host said on Friday that he will vote for Trump in the upcoming presidential election if the former vice president were to win the Democratic Party’s nomination. Rogan said he did not believe that Biden was up to the job of president, appearing to pick up on conspiracy theories claiming that Biden has been in a cognitive decline.
“I’d rather vote for Trump than [Biden],” Rogan said on The Joe Rogan Experience.
“I don’t think [Biden] can handle anything. You’re relying entirely on his cabinet. If you want to talk about an individual leader who can communicate, he can’t do that. And we don’t know what the f**k he’ll be like after a year in office.”
“The pressure of being president of the United States is something that no one has ever prepared for. The only one who seems to be fine with it is Trump, oddly enough.”
Rogan went on to add that Trump “doesn’t seem to be aging at all or in any sort of decline,” despite the presidency taking a toll on Barack Obama and George W. Bush. Many critics have said the same of Trump, claiming that he shows signs of cognitive decline.
The Sanders campaign stirred controversy earlier this year when it touted Rogan’s endorsement after he said he would likely vote for the Vermont senator. As the Guardian noted, the Human Rights Campaign called on Sanders to reconsider accepting the endorsement, noting what it called Rogan’s attacks on transgender people, gay men, women, people of color, and other marginalized groups.
But the Sanders campaign stood by its decision to accept and promote Rogan’s endorsement, saying that sharing a “big tent” in the party means including people even if they do not share all of the same beliefs.
But there were others who took Rogan’s assessment more seriously and saw it as an indictment of Biden. The Gravel Institute, founded last year to carry on the work of former U.S Senator Mike Gravel, noted on Twitter that Rogan’s endorsement does not reflect badly on Sanders, but rather on Biden.
“The fact that Joe Rogan would rather vote for Donald Trump than Joe Biden is not an indictment of Bernie Sanders. It’s an indictment of Joe Biden,” wrote the organization, which has backed Sanders.
