Joe Rogan’s Trump Interview Triggers YouTube Search Controversy

Joe Rogan claimed on his Oct. 30 podcast that YouTube search results appeared to obscure his highly anticipated interview with former President Donald Trump.

Rogan and Vance began their 3-hour conversation discussing their children’s first experiences uttering swear words.

Rogan shared, “When my 14-year-old was two we were on a skiing trip and we forgot her helmet and my daughter looks at the helmet and says: ‘Shit.’”

Vance added, “I took my 3-year-old son on a trip and my son drops a cookie in between the seat and he looks at me and says: “Dad, well…f&ck.”

The two went on to discuss a wide range of topics including abortion, (Rogan is much more liberal than Vance), and what happened when Vance found out Trump was shot, “I grab my kids up, throw them in the car, go home and load all my guns, and basically stand like a sentry at our front door.”

Rogan and Vance were both critical of the pharmaceutical industry, Vance said, “One of the reasons why we don’t have more people asking questions about Big Pharma, of course, is the entire national media. The whole conduit of money into politics is fundamentally broken. They corrupt the media ecosystem because if you’re getting all that money from the pharma companies, then you’re not going to launch investigations into some of the things you should be launching investigations into.”

Vance and Rogan speculated that men who are healthier and have higher testosterone levels tend to be conservative. The pair suggested that META CEO Mark Zuckerberg might now be a Trump supporter.

Rogan shared, “There are very few things that will turn you into a conservative more than martial arts training.”

Vance added, “Have you seen all these studies that basically connect testosterone levels in young men with conservative politics?”

“Maybe that’s why the Democrats want us all to be, you know, poor health and overweight is because, because that means that we’re gonna be more liberal.”

“If you make people less healthy, they apparently become more politically liberal. That’s an interesting observation.”

“My secret theory is that Zuck is now a Trump supporter, but he can’t say that publicly of course, but hopefully he is.”

Rogan claimed on his Oct. 30 podcast that YouTube search results appeared to obscure his highly anticipated interview with former President Donald Trump. Rogan noted “something happened” with the platform’s search visibility for the video, questioning why the episode wasn’t trending. “There’s no way it was a mistake, that’s too convenient,” he said, speculating it could have been a deliberate move by “some rogue engineer.” Rogan declared that platforms “can’t suppress sh*t anymore,” pointing to what he views as declining influence of traditional tech gatekeepers.

Rogan shared that Elon Musk, also frustrated by the search issue, directly reached out to Spotify CEO Daniel Ek to discuss the situation before Musk reposted the full interview on his X account (formerly Twitter). In a follow-up tweet, Rogan highlighted the difficulty viewers were having in finding the interview on YouTube, prompting him to upload the video to X as a workaround.

Responding to the accusations, YouTube’s parent company, Google, told Variety that the video “didn’t appear prominently” in some searches on Monday, attributing the issue to a glitch now resolved. Google didn’t clarify what caused the issue.

The Trump interview has since become one of Rogan’s most prominent episodes, marking the first time a former U.S. president appeared on the “Joe Rogan Experience.” Rogan had long maintained he would never host Trump, making the interview all the more significant. During the discussion, the two covered topics from election fraud and Trump’s policies to speculation about aliens.

For Trump’s campaign, the podcast appearance represented a rare opportunity to connect with a broad, primarily male audience as a counterweight to expected strong support for Vice President Harris among women voters. Rogan’s podcast, the most listened to on Spotify, provided a direct line to a young male demographic that the Trump team has increasingly sought to engage over the past year.

Rogan had hoped to record a podcast with Kamala Harris but they have been unable to agree on terms. The Harris campaign offered to record an interview but he “would have had to travel to her and they only wanted to do an hour.”