Robert F. Kennedy Jr. confronted Joe Rogan on his podcast about the host’s recent criticisms of President Trump and ICE’s activities in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
On Friday’s episode of “The Joe Rogan Experience,” the Health and Human Services Secretary pressed Rogan on his recent stance against ICE. Specifically, RFK Jr. wanted to unpack the host’s thoughts while also defending ICE’s actions the last few months.
“I know that’s something that’s disturbed you,” the Trump official said.
He then defended ICE’s choices around immigration enforcement, claiming the agency is looking for “particular people” whose names have been provided by “local law enforcement and others.” Kennedy also claimed that the agents are not “just randomly searching restaurants.”
“Nobody is happy with the way that things have looked, particularly in Minnesota,” he continued. “But a lot of it is because of this capacity of the press to take Trump Derangement Syndrome and amplify it into public outrage.”
Back in January, as things in Minneapolis were hitting a boiling point, Rogan admitted he understood the desire for ICE to “take away some of the damage” done by illegal immigration, but pointed to the way it was done in Minnesota as the wrong way to attack the problem.
“You don’t want militarized people in the streets just roaming around, snatching up people — many of which turn out to be U.S. citizens that just don’t have their papers on them,” Rogan said at the time. “Are we really going to be the Gestapo? ‘Where’s your papers?’ Is that what we’ve come to?”
He added: “After that woman was shot, I think unfortunately — well, everything is unfortunate about it, right? — but one of the real problems is now ICE are villains, and now people are looking at them like murderous military people that are on the streets of our cities and they’re masked up, which is also a problem.”
On the latest episode, Rogan walked back some of those criticisms, telling RFK Jr. that he thought the protests that rose up against ICE were “not organic,” suggesting that the demonstrations had been “organized and paid for.”
However, he remained firm on the idea that people in masks roaming the streets would rattle people — and pointed to the fact that “particular” criminals seemed to be targeted.
“I know you’re saying that they don’t, that they’re targeting specific people, they’re going after bad people,” Rogan said. “But also they’re showing up at Home Depot and just grabbing people, too.”
Watch the conversation above.
