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    Trump’s White House is filling with alleged sexual abusers … led by him

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    Donald Trump was found civilly liable last year for the defamation and sexual abuse of the writer E Jean Carroll – just one of the more than 27 women who have accused him of sexual misconduct. In January 2025, he will again be president of the United States – the first to take office with a court-adjudicated history of sex crimes.And it seems he’s eager to pack the White House with people just like him.Four of president-elect Trump’s cabinet-level nominees have faced serious allegations of sexual misconduct, ranging from workplace sexual harassment to assault, and a fifth is embroiled in a sexual abuse-related lawsuit.As Americans brace themselves for Trump 2.0, it’s time to be clear-eyed about the Maga machine: a history of alleged sexual criminality isn’t a bug, it’s a central part of the hardware; an organizing principle that clarifies how Trump and those like him view their power and how they intend to wield it.Trump’s first choice for attorney general, the former representative Matt Gaetz, was concurrently under investigation by the Department of Justice and the House ethics committee for allegedly violating federal sex-trafficking laws and statutory rape. The disgraced representative also reportedly bragged about his sexual conquests and showed nude photos of women to his fellow lawmakers. On Thursday afternoon, Gaetz announced he would be withdrawing his name from consideration to avoid being a “distraction to the critical work of the Trump/Vance Transition”, just hours before CNN published a report about a second alleged sexual encounter between Gaetz and a 17-year-old. (The age of consent in Florida is 18.)Gaetz’s withdrawal provided a brief moment of relief. But, still, Trump’s would-be cabinet is filled with alleged criminals, all of whom the president-elect has vociferously defended, and all of whom deny wrongdoing.Elon Musk, whom Trump has tapped for the made-up position of “efficiency czar”, reportedly exposed his penis to a SpaceX flight attendant in 2016 and offered to buy her a horse in exchange for sex. Musk’s company SpaceX paid her $250,000 in 2018 to settle the sexual misconduct claim. He was also sued this year by eight former SpaceX employees, who alleged that the CEO treated “women as sexual objects to be evaluated on their bra size, bombarding the workplace with lewd sexual banter”.Then there’s the nominee for secretary of defense, the Fox News host Pete Hegseth, who was accused of sexually assaulting a staff member of the California Federation of Republican Women in 2017.In the police report that was filed at the time, and which was obtained by the New York Times, the unnamed woman told law enforcement that Hegseth had taken her phone and blocked her exit from his hotel room before assaulting her. Though Hegseth was never charged with a crime, he did enter into a nondisclosure agreement with the woman, which included a financial settlement.Robert F Kennedy Jr was accused of sexually assaulting Eliza Cooney, a former family babysitter, in the late 90s. Trump now wants him to run the Department of Health and Human Services.Finally, Trump’s pick for secretary of education, Linda McMahon, was recently named in a lawsuit alleging that she and her husband, Vince McMahon, failed to stop an employee from sexually abusing children in the 1980s and 90s, when the McMahons were running World Wrestling Entertainment. (An attorney for McMahon told CNN that the lawsuit is “filled with scurrilous lies.”)These picks feel comically brazen, like shots fired directly at the #MeToo movement, which erupted in the wake of Trump’s election in 2016. It’s not a stretch to imagine that Trump, a man who has threatened to sue every one of his accusers and has openly bragged about grabbing women “by the pussy” without their consent, is attempting to exact revenge on a movement designed to use the collective to force consequences for a handful of powerful predators.#MeToo was just one piece of a slate of shifting gender norms over the last decade. Now, we’re living in the middle of a backlash.Roe v Wade has fallen, a known sexual abuser is re-entering the Oval Office, and the very online far right has found a new slogan: “Your body, my choice.”In Susan Faludi’s 1991 book Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women,she writes that these moments of backlash are not random. They are “preemptive strikes”, which “have always been triggered by the perception – accurate or not – that women are making great strides”.The perception that women were gaining status at the expense of men’s, combined with the real ways in which many men in this country are struggling economically, socially and mentally, has seemingly helped fuel the Trump campaign.Trump sneered at “childless cat ladies”, courted Joe Rogan listeners and crypto-bros, and trotted out Hulk Hogan to perform hyper-macho drag at the Republican national convention. The campaign deployed far-right influencers to wax poetic on X – which Musk owns – about the dangers of “toxic femininity” and mock the peeing habits of men who supported Kamala Harris.On election day, Trump senior adviser and noted white nationalist Stephen Miller tweeted a very particular plea: “Get every man you know to the polls.” After Trump’s win, the far right were out in full force celebrating what they clearly perceived not just as a win for their preferred political leader, but for their gender as a whole; they flooded X and TikTok with the phrases “your body, my choice” and “get back in the kitchen” and crafted supercuts of liberal women crying.Perhaps what Trump is counting on is that people who oppose the draconian agenda of his administration will be so exhausted by the piling horrors that they’ll get overwhelmed and give up – that all of the allegations will blend together and the backlash will become the norm. And yet, we know where a backlash brews, so does a resistance to it. More

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      Musk says Trump’s podcast appearances made ‘big difference’ in election

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      Donald Trump’s stunning election triumph was won partly thanks to his willingness to undergo freewheeling interviews with popular podcasters like Joe Rogan, the US president-elect’s most influential backer, Elon Musk, has claimed.Speaking to Tucker Carlson, Musk said Trump’s three-hour conversational encounter last month with Rogan – America’s most-listened-to podcaster – and other podcast appearances allowed listeners to decide whether he was a “good person” and was a major point of distinction from Kamala Harris.“I think it made a big difference that President Trump and soon to be vice-president Vance went on lengthy podcasts,” Musk told Carlson, who expressed agreement.“I think this really makes a difference because people like Joe Rogan’s podcast, which is great, and Lex Fridman’s and the All-In podcast. To a reasonable-minded, smart person who’s not like hardcore one way or the other, they just listen to someone talk for a few hours, and that’s how they decide whether you’re a good person, whether they like you.”Harris and her running mate, Tim Walz, each underwent several podcast interviews during the campaign, including on Call Her Daddy, in which the US vice-president talked about abortion.But she did not appear on The Joe Rogan Experience. The podcaster later said he declined her campaign’s insistence that it should last for just one hour, rather than three, and that Rogan travel to meet her, instead of his preference that it take place in his studio in Austin, Texas.Musk, who has frequently belittled Harris, claimed she had refused a three-hour sit-down because it would have exposed her supposed inability to talk in a relaxed and spontaneous manner.Read more of the Guardian’s 2024 US election coverage

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      “I actually posted on X [that] nothing would do more damage to Kamala’s campaign than going on Joe Rogan, because she’d run out of non sequiturs after about 45 minutes,” he said. “Hour two and three would be a complete melted puddle of nonsense. So, it would just be absolute game over. That’s why she didn’t go on.“But, on the other hand, Trump, he’s there, there’s no talking points. He’s just being a normal person, having a conversation and doing three hours of Rogan, no problem.”Rogan’s interview with Trump, conducted at the president-elect’s Mar-a-Lago resort, was noted for its friendly exchanges and words of praise from the podcaster, which included him lauding the then candidate’s speaking style and “comedic instincts”.“You said a lot of wild shit and then CNN, in all their brilliance by highlighting your wild shit, made you much more popular,” Rogan told Trump, explaining his ability to get more publicity than other politicians.“It’s funny. It’s stand-up. It’s funny stuff. You have, like, comedic instincts. Like when you said to Hillary: ‘You’d be in jail.’ Like, that’s great timing. But it’s like that kind of stuff was unheard of as a politician. Like, no one had done that.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe podcast host compared Trump’s behavior to the more “rehearsed” speech of other politicians – possibly implying Harris.“When you see certain people talk, certain people in the public eye, you don’t know who they are. You have no idea who they are. It’s very difficult to know,” Rogan said. “You see them in conversations. They have these pre-planned answers, they say everything. It’s very rehearsed. You never get to the meat of it.”Rogan ultimately endorsed Trump on the eve of the election after hosting another interview with Musk, who told him that X – the social media platform that the Space X and Tesla entrepreneur owns – would not be allowed to exist if Harris won the election.After being criticised early in her candidacy for avoiding challenging interviews, Harris sat for several television interrogations, including with CBS’s 60 Minutes and Bret Baier on Fox News, a pro-Trump network where she was subjected to multiple interruptions and hostile questions on rightwing talking points.Trump held more interviews but generally chose friendly settings, including Fox and Newsmax, where his views went largely unchallenged. He pulled out of an interview with 60 Minutes, which has been interviewing presidential candidates for more than half a century, after objecting to the programme’s plans to factcheck him.Shannon C McGregor, a journalism professor at the University of North Carolina, told the Hill that podcast appearances gave voters a better insight into the candidates as people than regular television interviews.“It gives listeners a better sense of what the candidates are like than the CNN interview with Kamala Harris and Tim Walz, especially for people who aren’t super interested in politics,” she said. More

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      Rogan, Musk and an emboldened manosphere salute Trump’s win: ‘Let that sink in’

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      Late on Tuesday night, when it became clear that Donald Trump would be re-elected as president of the United States, the so-called “heterodoxy” was elated.For years, these male podcasters, influencers and public figures had marketed themselves as free-thinking pundits who evaded the bounds of political classification. “Their political views could once have been described as libertarian,” Anna Merlan wrote for the Guardian in August; the word used to describe them pointed to the same, derived from the Greek heteros, meaning other, and doxa, meaning opinion.However, in 2024, the heterodoxy universally endorsed, supported and celebrated the hyper-masculine promise of Trump. This has created a moment in which the vast majority of online voices who appeal to young men are explicitly pro-Trump. In the wake of his win, those who at least feigned political ambivalence now feel no need to moderate themselves.Joe Rogan reacted to Trump’s win on Tuesday night by yelling a reverential “holy shit” in a video he posted to X that showed him watching Trump’s election party on Fox News. Rogan, whose chart-topping podcast has an estimated 81% male audience, considers himself more of a conversationalist than a pundit but nevertheless endorsed Trump hours before the election, after hosting Trump and JD Vance on The Joe Rogan Experience. (He invited Kamala Harris, but they could not agree on interview terms.)Rogan endorsed Bernie Sanders in the 2020 Democratic primary and then voted libertarian, and initially liked Robert F Kennedy Jr in 2024. He has supported left-leaning policies like drug and marijuana legalization, same-sex marriage and abortion rights, though he vehemently opposes gender-affirming care for transgender youth. Ultimately, he attributed his pivot to Trump to Elon Musk, the last guest to appear on his podcast before the election.“If it wasn’t for him we’d be fucked,” Rogan posted, referring to Musk. “He makes what I think is the most compelling case for Trump you’ll hear, and I agree with him every step of the way.”Musk, who is generally well-liked among heterodox figures and their supporters, was gleeful as it became clear that Trump had won. He posted a picture to X showing him holding a sink in the Oval Office – a reference to his 2022 takeover of Twitter HQ – captioned “let that sink in”, seemingly relishing the business success and policy influence he anticipates having under a second Trump administration, which he helped secure.Musk’s shift to the far right – after voting for Obama and opposing Trump in 2016 – became noticeable during the pandemic, when he became frustrated that lockdown requirements were slowing production at SpaceX and Tesla. Since taking over Twitter, now X, he has re-platformed Trump and conspiracy theorists like Alex Jones as well as racist and sexist provocateurs like the white nationalist Nick Fuentes. “Your body, my choice. Forever,” Fuentes posted on Tuesday night; the phrase has been making rounds on social media since. Musk personally shares an increasingly large volume of far-right content on his own page – especially transphobic content, seemingly in response to his estranged daughter coming out as transgender.While final election data has yet to be released, initial exit polling indicates that men, and particularly young men aged 18-29, were a crucial pillar of support for Trump. Now more than ever, young men are at odds with more liberal young women, supporting Trump over Harris 56% to 42%, while young women preferred Harris 58% to 40%, according to exit polls. These young men, especially those without a college degree, have expressed feeling unfulfilled, dissatisfied with their jobs and lives, and desirous of a society and home life with traditional gender roles. For years, media outlets have documented how more and more young men have been radicalized after consuming content from right-leaning entertainers and commentators, especially on platforms like YouTube and Twitch. Now, as more of those men have reached voting age, this phenomenon appears to be benefiting Trump and the far right.One 2021 study found that a leading predictor of support for Trump – over party affiliation, gender, race and education level – was belief in “hegemonic masculinity”, defined as believing that men should be in positions of power, be “mentally, physically, and emotionally tough”, and reject anything considered feminine or gay. Some heterodox influencers gained a following by embodying or promoting precisely this brand of masculinity, and giving their followers a script for blaming dissatisfaction on women.Jordan Peterson, who has built a career as a pop pseudo-psychologist promoting patriarchy and the revival of the “masculine spirit”, considers himself to be “devoid of ideology”, but has aligned himself with rightwing figures like Tucker Carlson, Andy Ngo and Matt Walsh and frequently decried the media’s coverage of Trump, calling it biased. He was quick to celebrate Trump’s victory – albeit in a backhanded way. “Thank Heaven for working class slobs,” he posted to X at 1.40am.Nico Kenn De Balinthazy, better known by his YouTube moniker Sneako, took to the streets of New York on Tuesday night in a Make America Great Again hat and an American flag draped around his shoulders. Sneako, who supported Bernie Sanders in 2016 before switching his allegiance to Trump, could be seen trying to provoke the people around him, gloating as the results came in. He loudly laughed at one woman who was crying. The day before the election, he had posted on X: “Kamala Harris is proof that women shouldn’t vote.”Not every heterodox figure has been explicitly pro-Trump this year. Dave Portnoy, the founder of Barstool Sports, which is overwhelmingly geared toward men (particularly college-age men), was also quick to react to the election results. In a video posted to his Instagram, Portnoy – who has been accused of consistently misogynistic behavior both at and outside work – didn’t celebrate Trump, who he has never endorsed, but he expressed indignation at liberal voters.“People like myself, independents, moderates – the Democrats gave us no choice,” Portnoy said, at times slurring his words. “That was the worst campaign. And their pure arrogance and their moral superiority have driven people away. If you say you’re voting for Trump, suddenly you’re a Nazi, you’re Hitler, you’re garbage. Enough. Enough.”Lex Fridman never endorsed Trump either. The science and politics podcast host is less brash than the bulk of the heterodoxy, but is still popular among young men and still friendly to rightwing figures like Carlson and the former Trump adviser Stephen Miller when they stop by for interviews. On election night, he replied to Musk’s enthusiasm for Trump with a rocket emoji and “LFG!”He also was sure to acknowledge a perceived win for himself as he celebrated Trump’s. “PS: Long-form podcasts FTW,” he posted. “I hope to see politicians from both sides doing 2-3+ hour genuine, human conversations moving forward.”During this election cycle, Trump’s embrace of the bro-centric podcast scene came as he sidelined (and in some cases, fumbled) traditional campaign tactics like door-knocking and canvassing. This choice appears to have had no negative effect on his election bid. In fact, it may have even helped him. Trump’s victory could very well be an emboldening choice among heterodoxy figures, who now see the possible fruits of openly embracing the right. They certainly aren’t going away. More

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      ‘A lot of fun’: will Trump’s rambling Joe Rogan interview rally young men?

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      In an interview in which Donald Trump said that he wants to be “a whale psychologist”, made the case for replacing income tax with tariffs and praised Confederate general Robert E Lee as a “genius”, the most striking thing about the former president’s encounter with podcaster Joe Rogan wasn’t the content as much as the length.Over three hours, perhaps the longest ever campaign interview with a presidential candidate, Trump said very little that was factual but revealed a surprising amount about his disposition and his thinking should he return to office.The Republican nominee’s appearance on Rogan makes smart political sense. Rogan, a commentator on Ultimate Fighting Championship broadcasts and comedian, began podcasting in 2009 and is now the most successful host in history. The Joe Rogan Experience is continually atop the global charts on both Apple and Spotify, earning almost half a billion dollars from deals with the latter.For months now, the Democrats and their nominee, Kamala Harris, have been polling surprisingly poorly with young men compared with previous election cycles, creating consternation among party insiders. Rogan reaches the kind of politically skeptical young men with low trust in Washington DC – and in the news media that both parties believe could help them reach the White House.That’s why at the start of the week, with polls tightening and Democrats concerned they may be “blowing” the election, the rumours were that it would be Harris who would appear on the podcast. It could have been one of the few media appearances that actually shifts the conversation and could have won over some undecideds. But her team eventually backed out of an appearance, perhaps concerned about the long freewheeling format. So it was announced that it would be Trump who would appear on the show.Rogan’s initial questioning of Trump was inquisitive and unexpected. He asked about what it felt like entering the White House with no political experience. Trump responded honestly, saying it was more surreal than later being shot in the tip of one of his ears. He said that he “had made his money largely on luxury” and that he was amazed by how beautiful it was inside. He talked about the difficulties of transition for a non-politician who had “no experience and no idea who to appoint”. He sympathised with Mary Todd Lincoln’s “melancholia”. It seemed like Rogan’s inquisitive style might get something new from the former president.But very quickly the interview descended into a long, rambling and often boring venture through Trump’s greatest hits. He demonised migrants, spoke warmly about Vladimir Putin and falsely claimed the 2020 election had been stolen from him. Rogan tried to push him on nuclear power and the environment. But Trump only wanted to discuss how ugly he finds windfarms – and how their vibrations upset the whales – and the ways in which environmental regulations would stop him getting permits for his buildings in New York.In May, pollsters for the New York Times/Siena College analysed their data to see what were the key predictors for why a voter who supported Joe Biden when he defeated Trump in 2020 might defect to the Republican against Harris.They found that the No 1 predictor was whether the voter was born in the Middle East, a reflection of the Democrats’ position on the war in Gaza. The No 2 predictor was whether they had a favorable view of Rogan. For some young male voters, he’s their main source of political information.Rogan himself is a political riddle. He’s a conspiracy theorist and an anti-vaxxer and so is often painted as rightwing or Trump-supporting – but he’s actually got a complex and often conflicting set of beliefs. He fiercely defends abortion rights, gay marriage and gun rights. He’s gravitated toward outsider candidates like Bernie Sanders and RFK Jr – he voted for the Libertarian candidate Jo Jorgensen in the previous election. In 2022, Rogan described Trump as an “existential threat to democracy”.Harris, who has been struggling to define herself with voters, may have found the relaxed atmosphere helpful – especially as Rogan tends to always agree with what his guests say.He allowed to Trump brazenly lie – about election fraud, the deficit, his tax policy and many other issues – without ever challenging him. He also appeared to agree with him on many positions that he’s previously taken the opposite stance and painted election deniers as an oppressed group, saying: “You get labelled, it’s like being labelled an anti-vaxxer.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe pair discussed Rogan’s previous support for RFK Jr, who Trump promised could do “whatever” when it came to health policy in his administration, which placated the podcast host but may concern the mainstream scientific and medical community against whom Kennedy has railed.Rogan had one good moment as an interviewer, asking Trump if he was ever going to “present” his supposed evidence of election tampering. But he let Trump ramble on to a different topic: Hunter Biden’s laptop.Because of this easy ride, Trump came off sounding old, doddering and unintelligent – but politically unscathed. He was allowed to blame all of America’s ills on Democrats and paint himself as a great leader. He attacked Harris, calling her “low IQ” and that she “couldn’t put two sentences together”. She was one of a number of women whom Trump and Rogan dismissed as “stupid”, perhaps with a nod to the young misogynist voters who could be persuaded to vote for the former president.For the most part, Rogan – not the smartest cookie himself – simply nodded along. He finished by saying having Trump on was “a lot of fun”.For anyone else who made it through all three hours, that might have been the biggest lie of all. More

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      Call Her Daddy to Theo Von: how podcasts became a vital election tool

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      For much of this strange and unprecedented presidential campaign cycle, candidates have been making news for the press they aren’t doing, rather than what they say when they actually give interviews. Kamala Harris was criticized for a lack of real sit-downs following her sudden ascent to the nomination over the summer. Donald Trump, meanwhile, keeps pulling out of major-press interviews, including one with NBC News, as well as a 60 Minutes segment. (Harris did appear on the TV newsmagazine institution as scheduled.) But both candidates have firmed up their dedication to traveling into less traditional media territory: podcasts. Between the two of them, this may be the most podcast-favoring presidential campaign ever conducted.It might seem like an odd strategy. Even for hardcore podcast enthusiasts, it might feel like a medium that peaked in excitement a couple of election cycles ago, now lingering somewhere above Pokémon Go but below TikTok and Netflix. Format-wise, talk-based podcasts still hew closely to old-fashioned radio and – with video components now popular – talk shows, which don’t exactly feel like the most forward-thinking reference points. And though they can produce plenty of sound bites, podcasts aren’t exactly concise, either. Isn’t doing a big entertainment podcast akin to sitting for a lightweight Jimmy Fallon interview but at marathon length and, depending on the host, featuring even more self-satisfied cackling?Even if it is, though, it’s also considered a major avenue of access to certain broad audiences that might include undecided or undermotivated voters. Harris has initially gone both broader and more selective. Her biggest move was sitting for a 40-minute interview on Call Her Daddy, a relationships and advice podcast that’s a staple of the top five on Spotify’s charts. In other words, it’s the kind of broad-based show that sees itself as a relatively big-tent affair with a politically diverse audience. Host Alexandra Cooper began her episode practically apologizing for talking to a politician – the sitting vice-president of the United States! – because she generally tries to avoid politics.The first chunk of the interview did, indeed, largely avoid talking politics per se, given the show’s focus on mental and physical wellbeing, allowing Harris to get both personal and (in terms of her candidacy) pretty vague. But Harris did have the opportunity to talk about the major issue of abortion rights in the wake of Roe v Wade’s 2022 overturn, something Cooper obviously feels strongly about. And though the Call Her Daddy audience is too big to be completely homogenous, having Harris talk about this stuff with Cooper did feel like a tacit pitch to younger white women: here’s why this issue and this candidate should matter to you.View image in fullscreenIn that demographic sense, Call Her Daddy felt like an outlier in this recent season of podcast interviews. Harris’s other major podcast appearance so far was a longer (if often more personally focused) interview with All The Smoke, hosted by former basketball players Matt Barnes and Stephen Jackson. So maybe the correct analogy isn’t the diminished influence of late-night talk shows or general-interest radio after all, but the unstoppable, evergreen blather of sports talk radio. Even Call Her Daddy, which has nothing in particular to do with sports, was owned by Barstool Sports for several years before it went to Spotify.Trump also went on a Barstool-affiliated show, Bussin’ With The Boys, hosted by former NFL players. His podcast playbook seems to be more focused on energizing the younger end of his base, the strange intersection of sports fans and comedy bros, where attaining some mixture of being perceived as kinda athletic or vaguely funny trumps, so to speak, all other concerns. Like Call Her Daddy, these shows also affect a kind of independent-thinking, quasi-apolitical posture – while also flattering their audience with the practiced pandering of a classic politician. In other words, it’s Trump country for people who don’t think of themselves as Trump country. So Trump gets to yuk it up with cult-of-personality comedians like Andrew Schulz or Theo Von, giving off the impression that, if you don’t pay too much attention, he’s a fun anti-woke bro who talks common sense. Even the occasional pushback he receives doesn’t actually question his basic worldview. When he misidentified the Olympic boxer Imane Khelif twice (as transgender, which she’s not; and as a man, which she’s not) on Bussin’ With The Boys, the hosts argued that her opponent should have stayed in the ring, rather than actually correct him about her gender status.Of course, no one is listening to a Barstool Sports podcast looking for heavy interrogation of a presidential candidate, and none of this seems likely to move the needle for truly undecided voters. (At best, it might raise a candidate’s profile among dudes who are undecided about whether they’ll remember to vote at all.) Maybe there was a point during the pre-Trump era where appearing approachable, sincere, funny or game on TV would change some minds in that classic Kennedy-over-Nixon way; the majority of voters seem too entrenched for that kind of perceptible shift today.That doesn’t make these shows aggressively marketing themselves as harmless, down to earth and essentially bipartisan are actually either of those things, though. Much as cultural critics are losing favor compared to friendlier, more “fun” influencers who serve as an ideally eager-to-please audience surrogate rather those cranky experts, actual journalists are losing ground to personalities like Joe Rogan – people in media positions who aren’t any more qualified to interview presidential candidates than a TV personality is to run the country. To wit: Harris is said to be considering an appearance on Rogan’s show because of its pull with a young and male audience. In the short term, in an close race, it might even make sense. But in pursuit of friendly, casual access to a lot of voters, candidates might well wind up in a podcast quagmire of their own making, where anyone can be turned into a harmless morning-zoo personality. By imitating the low-stakes bluster of sports talk, this chosen corner of the podcast world is upholding a questionable old-media tradition: turning a serious political moment back into a horse race. More

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      Joe Rogan calls RFK Jr the only candidate ‘that makes sense to me’

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      Robert F Kennedy Jr’s independent presidential campaign may be seeing poll numbers fall and funds dwindle, amid bizarre tales about brain worms and pranks with dead bears and accusations of dangerous conspiracy mongering, but he has nonetheless secured a sought-after supporter: Joe Rogan.The popular podcaster appeared to offer his endorsement on Thursday, saying Kennedy was “the only one that makes sense to me”.Rogan said: “He doesn’t attack people, he attacks actions and ideas, but he’s much more reasonable and intelligent. I mean, the guy was an environmental lawyer and he cleaned up the East River. He’s a legitimate guy.”Rogan was referring to Kennedy’s work in the years before he became widely known as a vaccine conspiracy theorist – views which last weekend led John Oliver, host of Last Week Tonight on HBO, to call Kennedy “a full-blown menace”.“You don’t get to say ‘I’m not anti-vaxx’ then wander around the woods telling people not to vaccinate their babies like you’re some red-pilled version of Smoky the Bear,” Oliver said, adding: “The idea of RFK is appealing but so many of the reasons to support him do not stand up to the slightest of scrutiny.”Rogan disagrees. Democrats and Republicans, he told listeners, “gaslight you, they manipulate you, they promote narratives – and the only one who is not doing that is Robert F Kennedy Jr”.Rogan has hosted Kennedy, including an appearance highlighted by Oliver in which Kennedy endorsed a book, Cause Unknown: The Epidemic of Sudden Deaths in 2021 & 2022, which claims Covid vaccines kill young people and for which Kennedy wrote an introduction.Rogan has also voiced vaccine conspiracy theories, causing controversy he references in a new Netflix comedy special, saying: “Before Covid, I would have told you that vaccines are the most important invention in human history. After Covid, I’m like, ‘I don’t think we went to the Moon. I think Michelle Obama’s got a dick. I think Pizzagate is real. I think there’s direct energy weapons in Antarctica.’“I’m just kidding – I don’t think Michelle Obama’s got a dick, but I believe all of that other shit.”Rogan has a huge audience, with more than 14.5 million listeners just on Spotify, which this year gave him a deal worth a reported $250m.Accepting Rogan’s earlier support, Kennedy said: “This election is not about left vs right. It’s about Americans of goodwill coming together to end the tyranny of corruption in our system – so that we once again have a government and economy that works for all people.”On Friday afternoon, Rogan clarified his stance on Kennedy, telling his followers on X: “For the record, this isn’t an endorsement. This is me saying that I like RFK Jr as a person, and I really appreciate the way he discusses things with civility and intelligence. I think we could use more of that in this world.”He also recalled the moment after the attempt on Trump’s life in July, pointing to the moment the former president raised his fist to the sky and exclaimed, “fight”, Rogan said it was “one of the most American fucking things of all time.”He added that he’s “not the guy to get political information from”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionKennedy is a member of a famous Democratic family: his father was Robert F Kennedy, the US attorney general and New York senator who was killed in Los Angeles in 1968, his uncle John F Kennedy, the 35th president who was killed in Dallas in 1963.Now 70, Kennedy first ran for the Democratic presidential nomination before switching to be an independent.He has struggled to gain ballot access and polling now gives him around 5% support: nowhere near enough to win the White House but enough to tip the result in battleground states that will decide a tight election between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump.Last week, Rogan said he thought Harris could win, adding: “I’m not saying it because I think she’s going to, and I’m not saying it because I want her to. I’m just being honest. I could see her winning.”Kennedy has flirted with backing Trump, the two men reportedly discussing a cabinet role for Kennedy – as secretary for health and human services.On Friday, Trump seemed displeased by Rogan’s decision to endorse Kennedy.“It will be interesting to see how loudly Joe Rogan gets BOOED the next time he enters the UFC Ring,” the former president wrote on his Truth Social platform, referring to a shared interest in professional mixed martial arts. More

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      Why are Black rappers aligning themselves with the right? | Tayo Bero

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      Scrolling through Twitter a couple of weeks ago, I came across a clip of rightwing commentator Tucker Carlson interviewing a face I never thought I’d see on his platform: Ice Cube.As in Fuck Tha Police Ice Cube.“What planet am I on right now?” I found myself thinking.In a two-part segment, Ice Cube and Carlson commiserated about cancel culture and cast doubt on the safety of the Covid vaccine. “It was six months, kind of a rush job and I didn’t feel safe,” Ice Cube said about his widely-publicized resistance to the Covid shot. He also claimed that he’s been banned from appearing on the talkshows The View and Oprah because he is too much of an “independent thinker”.It seems Ice Cube has become quite the conservative media darling lately, sitting down with not just Carlson, but Joe Rogan and Piers Morgan as well. He’s joining a long list of rappers – Kanye West, Da Baby, Kodak Black, Lil Pump – who have all put themselves in dangerous proximity to conservative politicians even as rightwing populism threatens to destroy their communities.Kanye campaigned for Trump, and both Lil Wayne and Kodak Black publicly supported the former president after being pardoned by him on his last day in office. In 2020, Trump even brought a supportive Lil Pump out to a Michigan rally (where Trump introduced him as “Lil Pimp”), while Da Baby was also very vocal about supporting Trump’s second bid last year.We can try to excuse this behavior or dress it up as “opening a dialogue” or “crossing the aisle” as much as we like, but that is not what this is about. So what do these rappers have in common with rightwingers who wouldn’t otherwise touch them with a 10ft pole?Shared values.In discussions about money, gender identity, public health and a variety of social issues, rappers and rightwingers have a lot more in common than you’d immediately think. Many people from both groups share hypermasculinity, conservative Christian values, and a distrust of social institutions (justified or not); and on this common ground sits a messy and dangerous alliance full of people who ordinarily would hate each other, but have come together to make vulnerable people their enemy.Ice Cube, for example, is a well-documented anti-vaxxer, and has expressed bigoted views on gender identity, as have many of his colleagues like Da Baby, Boosie and others.And when it comes down to the raw cents and dollars, modern-day wealth solidarity between mainly Black rappers and powerful conservatives isn’t entirely surprising. Ownership in hip-hop is whiter than ever and the nature of the music itself has become increasingly capitalistic. Rap is no longer the embodiment of African American resistance it once was. Now, it’s a hyper-commercialized cultural assembly line that’s somehow been re-designed to glorify the very issues it once pushed so hard against.That’s why society’s current obsession with Black billionaires and one-percenters as “success stories” constantly falls so flat. The notion of building individual wealth as a means of collective liberation is as sinister as it is stupid. We know that Black wealth hoarding can’t save us and that recreating the violent architecture of capitalism – but with Black people in the positions of power, of course – does nothing for the plight of everyday African Americans. Still, hip-hop legends like Jay-Z continue to peddle this demented lie because that is the very function of capitalism: keep the poorest in society busy providing cheap labor while they chase an impossible dream.Then there’s the pseudo-intellectual bunch, who mask their self-serving motivations as elevated political awareness. Say what you want about Democrats and what they have or haven’t done for Black people in America, but Kanye West campaigning for Trump wasn’t some stroke of genius – it was one of the most self-hating and objectively stupid moves that a person in his position could have made back in 2016. But Kanye’s thirst for relevance, combined with a pathological desire to be contrarian and his new hyper-religious bent, made him the perfect kind of Trump-loving troll.As many rappers gain inordinate wealth and power, they’re increasingly exposed to the ways that all of that can also be a gateway to political influence and social dominance. These men don’t want a better America for Black people, they want one where their worldviews are advanced, regardless of which enemies they have to sleep with in order to make that happen.And while Black voters obviously don’t owe loyalty to any one political party, some rappers do function as community leaders in many ways, and they always have: that’s why their allegiance to the right needs to be called out now. The custodians of rap as an art form have a duty to be responsible with their platforms. And when I say responsible, I’m not talking about respectability politics and pearl-clutching about raunchy lyrics. I’m talking about the stuff that materially affects Black people’s lived experience, like what kind of politics to adopt, and why.What’s perhaps most fascinating about all this is the fact that many rappers are willing to align themselves with white supremacists not in spite of their marginalization, but because of it. I don’t blame Black people – burned by decades of generational disenfranchisement and then walloped over the head with the illusion of meritocracy – for trying to keep their place at the top no matter who they have to play nice with.But romancing fearmongering xenophobes isn’t keeping us at the top, it’s digging a pitiful hole to the bottom, a new low from which Black people as a community will not recover if we don’t put a stop to it now.
      Tayo Bero is a Guardian US columnist More

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      Joe Rogan admits schools don’t have litter boxes for kids who ‘identify’ as furries

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      Joe Rogan admits schools don’t have litter boxes for kids who ‘identify’ as furriesPodcast host had amplified debunked claim about furries spread by Republican politicians Joe Rogan has acknowledged spreading misinformation after he suggested that elementary schools were installing litter boxes for students who “identify” as furries.The sensationalist urban legend was rooted in the right’s continued attacks on trans and gender non-conforming youth.Rogan, the Colorado congresswoman Lauren Boebert, and the Minnesota Republican gubernatorial candidate Scott Jensen all swore they had heard stories of schools across the US changing their bathroom policies to accommodate wannabe felines. But an NBC News investigation determined this was untrue. The furries-in-kindergarten myth was repeated by at least 20 candidates and officials this year, the report found, but none of the school districts mentioned actually offered litter boxes for student use. (Though officials in Colorado’s Jefferson county school district said in 2017 they did keep litter in closets as an “emergency go bucket”, in the event that a student needed to relieve themselves while in emergency lockdown.)But the story still spread. Ericka Menchen-Trevino, a professor at American University’s School of Communication, explained to the Guardian why she believed these rumors were catnip to some parents. “This story put together a few things that some people already believe are true: that people’s assertions of identity, especially [for] children, are out of control, and that our schools are out of control for allowing it,” she said. “It fits very well with some people’s prior beliefs, and they don’t need to fact-check [because] it’s right in line with what they believe.”Can Joe Rogan change?Read moreJoan Donovan, research director for Harvard Kennedy’s Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy, added that the fake story gained traction “because it allows [politicians] to dog-whistle their transphobia without having to say the quiet part out loud.“What was once a transphobic joke about ‘what’s next, kids identifying as cats?’ became a soft target for hoaxers who knew audiences were already primed to believe outrageous things,” she added.Rogan originally referenced the story on-air to the former Hawaii representative Tulsi Gabbard as a blind item revealed to him by a “friend’s wife”. This woman was supposedly a teacher at a school that offered litter boxes in the girls’ restroom alongside toilets.Then came the backtrack: “The kitty litter boxes is a weird one,” the ex-Fear Factor host admitted on his wildly popular podcast, The Joe Rogan Experience. “I fed into that and let me – I should probably clarify that a bit.” Rogan explained that the “friend’s wife” now taught at a “another school” and he could not verify that her previous job now had litter boxes. “I don’t think they actually did it,” he said.Michelle A Amazeen, an associate professor who studies misinformation and director of Boston University’s Communication Research Center, said that these types of bogus rumors typically trickled up from fringe sites that lack credibility. “This story exemplifies the intertwined nature of digital, social and mainstream news media,” she said. “The fact that mainstream news outlets are covering this preposterous story – even if only to debunk wacko political candidates who are stating it as fact – gives the story reinforcement and seeming credibility.”And Amazeen is not optimistic that Rogan’s disavowal of his words – plus factcheckers who reveal it’s totally false – will do much to stop its spread. “Fake news spreads farther and faster than retractions,” she said. “The story advances [conservative] fears about gender non-conformity and lack of control over what’s happening in our schools.”Even as Rogan walked his statements back, the Senate candidate Don Bolduc of New Hampshire continued to peddle the trope this week, describing the “furries and fuzzies’’ peeing in litter boxes at the state’s private Pinkerton Academy.Pinkerton Academy denied his claims that they use litter boxes in school or allow children to lick themselves and each other. “We want to assure our community that Mr Bolduc’s statements are entirely untrue,” representatives for the school, which costs $14,238 a year, said on social media.While the hysteria over litter boxes in grade school may seem comical at first, it deeply disturbed Yotam Ophir, an assistant professor of communication at the University at Buffalo.“My concern here is that throughout history when dangerous political leaders wanted to promote propaganda at the expense of vulnerable populations, a key strategy was to compare populations to animals,” he said. “Even if Joe Rogan doesn’t say it explicitly, what I hear as someone who studies propaganda is that he’s suggesting that [members of] the LGBTQ+ community are unnatural, almost non-human. We know from the past that people feel much more comfortable attacking humans when they don’t see them as humans any more.”Dr Sharon Roberts is the co-founder of FurScience.com, a group of academics who study the furry community. She had not heard that Joe Rogan had retracted his statement until reached by the Guardian but said: “That’s great news. I hope this positive action – his correcting the record – gets as much attention as the misinformation and leads to more public interest in the examination of evidence-based research on the furry fandom.”This misinformation, Roberts says, stems from a misunderstanding of what furries are. “Furries identify with animals, not as animals; most don’t have fursuits, they’re into artwork, cosplaying, going to conventions and interacting online with like-minded people,” she said. “Perhaps surprising to outsiders who may not understand the nuances of the community, the furry fandom is typically a safe place –sometimes the only safe place – for people of all genders, sexual orientations and those who are neurodiverse to be accepted by peers who celebrate their best, most authentic selves.”According to CNN, between 100,000 and 1 million people are part of the furry fandom. A FurScience.com study found that most furries “create for themselves an anthropomorphized animal character (fursona) with whom they identify and can function as an avatar”, and some, though not all, dress up in “elaborate costumes”. More than 75% of furries are under the age of 25, the group reported, and 60% “agree that they felt prejudice against furries from society”.As she previously told NBC News, Dr Roberts noted one crucial fact; she has never “seen or heard of” furries using litterboxes – anywhere. “While I can’t say for certain that no one has ever asked for a litter box, I can say that the aggregate data and the underlying logic of what a furry is don’t support the suggestion,” Roberts added. “Furries are human.”TopicsJoe RoganUS politicsGendernewsReuse this content More