Podcaster Joe Rogan predicted last week that if former first lady Michelle Obama ran for president — even against former titleholder Donald Trump — she’d win.
“I really believe if Michelle Obama runs, she wins,” the podcaster said in a “Joe Rogan Experience” episode that came out Christmas Eve. “She’s great, she’s intelligent, she’s articulate, she’s the wife of the best president that we have had in our lifetime in terms of like a representative of intelligent articulate people.”
Rogan’s prediction for a potential 2024 matchup involves a Democratic ticket led by Obama and current Vice President Kamala Harris (“a double dose a diversity”) and a Republican challenge from Trump and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis (“a super team”).
Though Rogan was confident the former first lady would have a 2024 run in the bag, he did say there was something that could prevent her from winning: A poorly-received response to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic crisis.
“The only thing that would stop her is if she bought into some of these policies that are destroying businesses in America that are making people scared,” he explained. “If she somehow or another supported or showed any support for lockdowns and mandates and all this craziness that’s going on.”
DeSantis is famously against lockdowns or other mandated measures to curb the spread of the virus, which has killed over 800,000 Americans since its arrival in the United States in 2020. Democrat-run cities, like New York and Los Angeles, have instituted some level of vaccination mandate while current President Joe Biden, also a Democrat, has implemented mandates for employees of large private companies and federal contractors.