Either the Fox hosts are clueless about the Rogan disinformation they are defending or, much more likely, they outright lied when they turned him into a COVID martyr “just asking questions.” It just so happens this is the same spin Fox “journalist” Harris Faulkner also put on the issue.
Media Matters has an extensive list of Rogan’s lies, disinformation and conspiracy theories, including recommending young adults not get vaccinated, claiming that lockdowns make the pandemic worse, that horse dewormer ivermectin “essentially cured COVID” in Uttar Pradesh, India and that mRNA vaccines are a form of “gene therapy.” In other words, Rogan is not just asking questions, not just providing different perspectives.
But the network that promotes anti-vaxxism for others, while maintaining a vaccine mandate for its own, is turning Rogan into the same kind of COVID hero as anti-vaxxer State Trooper Robert LaMay – until he died of COVID and was disappeared from the network, that is.
Cohost Carley Shimkus got the disinformation about disinformation going:
SHIMKUS: The reason this is happening, of course, is because some of these celebrities feel like Joe Rogan shouldn't be on Spotify, because they're accusing him of COVID misinformation for highlighting people with different perspectives, and Spotify responded by saying okay, any podcast that talks about COVID, we’re gonna to put a disclaimer on it.
This is the same “open-minded” Shimkus who accused Vice President Kamala Harris of dissing America because she tweeted “Enjoy the long weekend” over Memorial Day weekend.
Cohost Brian Kilmeade was more effusively pro-Rogan. “So, what is misinformation?” Kilmeade asked. “As Joe Rogan brilliantly pointed out on Sunday, when he just grabbed his iPhone and talked in his garage or talked in his backyard. He said, is it that the genesis of the pandemic came from a lab? That used to get you banned from YouTube or Twitter. Now it's pretty much conventional wisdom.”
Kilmeade went on to falsely claim that a lot of Rogan’s claims have now been verified before painting him as a right-wing martyr:
KILMEADE: So, what Joe Rogan’s doing is asking questions. And the arrogance of the Biden administration is, how dare you contradict what our CDC changes and flip flops all the time, what we consider the law of the land when it comes to this pandemic?
When you consider science needs to be questioned, and all he's doing is asking questions. And he humbly said, yeah, if you want me to put somebody who disagrees with a - someone who feels a certain way when it comes to the pandemic, I'll start doing that.
This, from the same network that loves stifling questions about race in America.
Cohost Steve Doocy tried to play the voice of reason. He pointed out that Spotify is a private business that can do what it wants. But he didn’t pass up his own opportunity to make Rogan about the Biden administration, complaining that the White House didn’t call out Justice Sotomayor for misstating the number of children critically ill with COVID. But one misstatement in public is nothing like a guy earning nine figures for repeatedly promoting potentially fatal disinformation.
“Memorial Day” Shimkus now claimed this is the start of (liberal) authoritarianism. “It always starts off small, and it always starts off the same way, where you feel ostracized for saying something that the ruling class doesn't like.”
As if $100 million Rogan is part of the poor, oppressed proletariat.
