Podcaster Joe Rogan recently addressed the corporate media-driven efforts to get his show canceled from Spotify.
“The answer is not to silence me, the answer is [for] you to do better,” Rogan said Thursday during his show, referring to media pundits. “The answer is for you to have better arguments. When you’re on television talking about how I’m taking horse paste, and you know that’s not true. ‘He’s taking horse dewormer.’”
Rogan was seemingly referring to when he contracted COVID-19 last year and told his social media followers that he took ivermectin. However, corporate news outlets at the time claimed Rogan and others who took the drug for COVID-19 are taking a “horse dewormer.”
Some who have taken ivermectin, a drug long used to treat parasites but is not approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for treatment of COVID-19, have said it helped alleviate their COVID-19 symptoms. Livestock versions of the drug are also used to treat parasites and worms in horses, cows, and other animals.
“What you should have said, ‘How did Joe Rogan get better so quick? How come he got COVID that’s killing everybody and he was better in five days, negative in five days, working out in six days?' How come that’s never discussed?” Rogan asked Thursday, adding that he believed the monoclonal antibodies he took last year were more effective at alleviating his symptoms.
“If you’re in business and your business is the news, and you want to get more people to pay attention, you should be honest,” Rogan told his listeners. “And my thoughts for CNN, my advice to them … I don’t hate CNN. I used to go to them every day for the news until they started [expletive] hating on me.”
Some have pointed out that certain CNN and other cable news pundits draw a smaller audience than Rogan, who reportedly averages 11 million listeners per episode. CNN was among the news outlets that alleged Rogan took “horse dewormer.”
“If you want to do better, just [expletive] change your model, change the way you do it. Stop this editorial perspective with guys like Brian Stelter and Don Lemon that nobody listens to. Nobody is like chiming in saying, ‘Oh, yeah, finally we get the voice of reason.’ Nobody thinks that,” said Rogan, who is also scheduled to commentate on UFC 271 on Saturday.
He added, “Have people that give out effective news, objective news, rather, and I‘ll support you. I would turn around 100 percent … and I’ll be one of the people that tells people, ‘I saw this on CNN, watch this on CNN.”
The FDA and other health authorities have warned against using the animal version of ivermectin. Some poison control centers have reported an escalation in calls concerning ivermectin after its promotion as a COVID-19 treatment.
