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More than a year after endorsing the 79-year-old for president in the 2024 election, Joe Rogan has spoken out against President Donald Trump’s immigration enforcement tactics and likened Immigration and Customs Enforcement to the “Gestapo.”
On the Tuesday, January 13th episode of The Joe Rogan Experience, the host spoke with guest Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul about his concerns over the actions of ICE agents.
Logan, 58, said that while “most people” believe law enforcement is necessary and that criminals should be arrested, many of those same people also believe that ICE is “acting illegally.”
“The same people who believe that, once someone comes to this country, they should be able to stay in this country, may also believe that ICE is operating illegally, that masked armed groups roaming the streets are snatching people up, including American citizens, and that they shouldn’t be sending them to countries where they don’t even come from,” he said.
The podcaster, whose show consistently ranks No. 1 on Spotify’s podcast charts and has more than 20 million subscribers on YouTube, also compared ICE’s requests for documentation from U.S. residents to actions taken by the Gestapo.
The Gestapo was a political police force under Adolf Hitler’s Nazi regime that used tactics such as surveillance, house searches, and interrogation, including torture, in investigating people considered enemies of the Nazis.
“I can understand people thinking, ‘Yeah, but we don’t want people in military uniforms roaming the streets and picking up people, many of whom actually turn out to be undocumented American citizens,'” Logan said. “Are we really going to become the Gestapo? “Where are the papers?” Is that what we came for? ”
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Trump’s immigration enforcement tactics have come under intense scrutiny over the past year, with videos circulating on social media showing ICE agents wearing masks and using extreme force while detaining people in public, reports of agents arresting legal U.S. residents and citizens, and recent shootings, including the killing of Renee Good in Minneapolis.
Roughly 75,000 people arrested by ICE during Trump’s first nine months in office had no criminal records, according to data obtained by the Deportation Data Project at the University of California, Berkeley.
The data, compiled by ICE’s Internal Office and made public in a lawsuit filed against ICE, shows that nearly one-third of those arrested during that period had no criminal history. For people with past convictions, the data does not differentiate between misdemeanors and violent crimes.
Rogan’s opinion of Trump appears to have changed in recent years, with some researchers finding the podcaster to be an influential source for young people forming opinions ahead of the US election.
In 2022, Rogan publicly shared that the president had asked him to appear on his podcast, saying he was “not a Trump supporter in any way, shape, or form” and had “no interest in helping Trump.”
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By October 2024, Trump was a guest on Rogan’s podcast, and the two spoke for nearly three hours. Just days later, Rogan officially endorsed Trump in the 2024 election in a post shared to X following a podcast episode featuring Elon Musk.
“Great and powerful @elonmusk. If he wasn’t there, we would be frustrated. He’s making what I think is the most convincing argument for Trump you’ll ever hear, and I agree with him every step of the way,” Rogan wrote. “Just to be clear, yes, this is an endorsement of Mr. Trump. Enjoy the podcast.”
