Joe Rogan’s most recent podcast episode unknowingly cited a fake tweet, bringing about an apology from Rogan and a removal, edit and re-upload of the episode.
Wednesday’s episode of “The Joe Rogan Experience” involved an interview with evolutionary biologist Bret Weinstein and discussion of the spectrum of views surrounding the COVID vaccines.
Rogan apologized for spotlighting the seemingly doctored tweet on Twitter.
“I was informed last night that this tweet is fake. The show was already out, so we initially decided to post a notice saying we got tricked, then later thought it best to just delete it from the episode,” Rogan wrote. “My sincere apologies to everyone, especially the person who got hoaxed.”
During the podcast, Rogan zoned in on a tweet from an account with the name Dr. Natalia which read “I will never regret the vaccine. Even if it turns out I injected actual poison and have only days to live. My heart and is was in the right place. I got vaccinated out of love, while antivaxxers did everything out of hate. If I have to die because of my love for the world, then so be it. But I will never regret or apologize for it.”
Rogan summed the tweet up as an example of vaccine hysteria that has spread alongside the virus, calling out the perspective that anti-vaxxers are hateful.
“It’s also a fascinating perspective that this person claims to be about love, but has the most uncharitable view of people who didn’t get vaccinated,” Rogan said. “That everyone got anti-vaxx out of hate. The idea that I didn’t get vaccinated out of hate, I find so ridiculous. Like, I don’t hate anyone. I am a loving person. I do it on purpose. I go outta my way to be as charitable and as kind as possible.”
The host then described how he self-regulates in times of flippant decisions, jokes or not-well-thought through choices.
“When I don’t, I feel very disappointed in myself. If I make any decision or a statement that I feel like doesn’t align with that, maybe flippantly in the moment, maybe joking around, I’ve — I’m very disappointed in myself,” Rogan said. “I’m very self-critical. When I see something like that, I’m like, that is ideological capture at its highest level.”
Overnight, Rogan’s team received word that the tweet was fake. Dr. Natalia’s account, which joined the platform in 2017 and has over 31.8K followers, has since gone on the private lockdown setting, and the profile picture changed from the portrait of a woman to a black circle.
