Joe Rogan elevated an election integrity conspiracy theory while celebrating Donald Trump’s presidential win, suggesting if the former president had not won the election, it may have been “rigged”.
“So, turns out voting works. It’s real,” Rogan said with delight on Thursday’s episode of The Joe Rogan Experience.
His comment came hours after the Associated Press called the 2024 presidential election for Trump, who had been lagging narrowly behind Vice President Kamala Harris in most national polls.
Media outlets, election pollsters and others predicted Harris would win the election but that it would be very close and difficult to determine the outcome for several days. The actual results showed the opposite, Trump won by a comfortable margin less than a day after polls closed.
“As much as we f***ing thought they had it rigged, as much as we thought there was shenanigans and bulls*** and it’s just a puppet show and there’s now way anybody can buck the system – turns out, voting is still real,” Rogan said.
He added, “Clearly he was too big to rig” – repeating a slogan Trump has adopted at rallies in encouraging supporters to turn out for him.
Rogan’s claim that “voting is still real” insinuates that at one point, voting was not real. That claim can be tied to the widespread false claims of voter fraud that the former president espoused after the 2020 election when he lost to President Joe Biden.
There was no evidence of mass voter fraud or that the 2020 election was “rigged” by Democrats. X users were quick to point this out when sharing the Rogan clip.
Despite that, the former president continues to assert he lost 2020 unfairly. He began to tee up similar claims before the 2024 results, seemingly preparing to make similar claims had the election not swung in his favor.
Rogan accused “the media” of gaslighting the public into believing Harris would win the election with preliminary polling numbers and accusations that Trump is dangerous.
Later on in the podcast, Rogan theorized that something was skeptical about the 2020 election because it seemingly had higher voter turnout, specifically in favor of Biden, than previous elections including 2024.
Votes are still being counted in the 2024 presidential election so there is no way to currently tell if election turnout is higher than it was in 2020. Additionally, voter turnout was exceptionally high four years ago because the pandemic made voting more accessible with mail-in ballots.
Voter turnout, and voter party demographics, change every four years and while millions of voters rallied behind Biden in 2020 those same voters may have voted for a different candidate, or not voted at all, in this election.
