Why Hasan Piker Isn’t The Liberal Joe Rogan

Special April 1st Edition

Democrats in Michigan have created a Streisand Effect for left-wing political commentator Hasan Piker, whose existence was likely news to most people prior to the big fuss made over his support for Senate candidate Dr. Abdul El-Sayed. Democratic primary rival Mallory McMorrow criticized El-Sayed for inviting Piker to campaign with him. She compared Piker to known Nazi Nick Fuentes, who has dined with Donald Trump, and suggested that his fierce criticism of Israel is rooted in antisemitism. Sen. Elissa Slotkin also joined the anti-Piker pile-on, before appearing on Real Time with Bill Maher, who has spouted anti-Islam and anti-trans rhetoric. I support open debate with everyone, but Slotkin should at least try for consistency.

Politico claims that Piker is driving a “wedge” within the party. Aaron Regenburg, contributing editor at The New Republic, offered an interesting response to this argument: “The Dem establishment spent half a year blubbering about how we need a liberal Joe Rogan. Hasan’s one of the very few ‘popular streamers whose base is young men’ we have, and it's freaking wild that the very folks arguing Dems need a ‘big tent" are trying to push him out of the tent.”

I agree that Democrats could use a “liberal Joe Rogan,” someone who connects with young people and low-propensity voters. However, Hasan Piker does not in any way qualify. Nor do the social media influencers who are unrelenting Democratic Party cheerleaders but without the dignity of pom-poms. (I can’t support calling Hakeem Jeffries “House Leader Bae” or Jon Ossoff “Senator Boo.” No elected official should receive the sort of fannish adoration that I personally reserve for Jennifer Simard. Watch below.)

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Joe Rogan’s audience is predominately young and male. His podcast ranks number one among Black listeners, and more than 20 percent of his audience is Hispanic. Overall, his audience is larger and more diverse than Saturday Night Live, where Kamala Harris made a cameo appearance before Election Day. Rogan boasts an audience of about 20 million — roughly 30 times larger than CNN’s average primetime viewership, which explains why politicians of all stripes are eager to capitalize on his platform. Piker, in contrast, has about 4.5 million followers on YouTube and Twitch. His audience is also disproportionally queer, non-religious, and anti-capitalist. That might best describe my 1990s playlist, but it doesn’t reflect the voters who’ll determine the next senator from Michigan.

Rogan’s audience doesn’t consider him a typical political commentator. He started his career as a standard frat boy stand-up comic in the late 1980s before acting in the mid-to-late 1990s on sitcoms like Hardball and NewsRadio. He was also a color commentator for the Ultimate Fighting Championship. Rogan’s breakthrough came 20 years ago as the host of NBC’s gross-out game show Fear Factor, where adults ate worms on camera for the chance to win cash prizes. This cemented his macho credentials. It’s also how Rogan learned that if you’re allergic to shellfish you’re also allergic to roaches.

Putting his roach consumption days behind him, Rogan launched his podcast in 2009. Not only was it incredibly successful, but Rogan soon became a spokesman of sorts for the Fear Factor/UFC demo—working class guys who don’t identify as either conservative or progressive. They don’t hold strong ideological positions, but they usually demonstrate libertarian leanings (though, as the old saying goes, a libertarian is a Republican who likes to smoke weed). During the 2020 election, they were seen as potentially “gettable” voters for Democrats, and Rogan was the bridge to bro-land. After all, 2016 had proven that connecting with The Daily Show audience wasn’t going to help you win the Rust Belt.

Unlike the overtly political Piker, Rogan presents himself as a normal (very wealthy) dude having conversations, and his political guests would let down their guard, seemingly, have what passed for a normal conversation, sometimes about weed or conspiracy theories.

Rogan had welcomed Democratic presidential candidates Bernie Sanders and Tulsi Gabbard on the podcast, but he turned down requests to host Pete Buttigieg, Elizabeth Warren, and Joe Biden. He said he’d prefer to “talk to his friends,” which presumably didn’t include the first openly gay presidential candidate, a woman whose policies were similar to Sanders’, and even an old white guy who was the first Black president’s loyal wingman. “I like Tulsi and I like Bernie, that’s it,” he said. “Everybody else can eat shit.”

Gabbard served up a shit smorgasbord on Rogan’s show, actively bashing Harris as a warmonger. Less than a decade later, she fully leaned into her evil white hair streak and now serves in the Trump administration, which promotes peace like a drug dealer pushes sobriety. (Watch below … or don’t.)

When Rogan said he planned to vote for Sanders in the primary, this wasn’t treated like your typical celebrity endorsement but as a potential sea change. The New York Times ran an article about how “a Joe Rogan endorsement could help (or backfire on) Bernie Sanders.” As Joe Biden once said, this was a “big fucking deal.” Rogan’s rationale was revealing. He said, “Look, you could dig up dirt on every single human being that’s ever existed if you catch them in their worst moment and you magnify those moments and you cut out everything else and you only display those moments. That said, you can’t find very many with Bernie. He’s been insanely consistent his entire life. He’s basically been saying the same thing his whole life. And that in and of itself is a very powerful structure to operate from.”

A Piker endorsement isn’t a sea change for a candidate so much as an anchor. He only appeals to the far left, which gives his support for any progressive candidate a “well duh” quality while also alienating other segments of the electorate, which is significantly larger. Piker has said some absurd things, like the United States “deserved” the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, for which he later apologized. It’s worth pointing out that Maher lost his ABC show, Politically Incorrect, when he suggested the 9/11 hijackers were courageous.

Democrats struggle with key demos because they aren’t a consistent presence on social media, where most Hispanics get their news. They mostly avoid podcasts when it’s not election season. Meanwhile, just 23 percent of MSNBC’s audience is working class and only 14 percent are blue collar workers. The median MSNBC viewer’s age is 70. The average age for Rogan’s audience is 24.

“There is a massive amount of rightwing radicalization that has been occurring, especially in younger male spaces,” Piker observed in 2024. “Everything is completely dominated by right-wing politics.”

“If you’re a dude under the age of 30 and you have any hobbies whatsoever, whether it’s playing video games, whether it’s working out, whether it’s listening to a history podcast or whatever, every single facet of that is completely dominated by center right to … Trumpian right,” Piker said. “Everything they see is right-wing sentiment.”

Liberals have compared Joe Rogan to The Daily Show’s Jon Stewart, which only reinforces the larger disconnect. The Daily Show’s current median viewership age is 63. It has about 570,000 nightly viewers and just 30,000 of them are between the ages of 18 to 34. Given the outsized role math plays in political elections, Democrats do in fact need someone with Rogan’s audience size.

Daniel Cox, director of the Survey Center on American Life, told Teen Vogue, “There are a number of reasons Trump appealed to young men. First, he showed up in the places they congregate online. He engaged with the podcasters and influencers they follow and trust. More than most other voters, young men are more politically homeless — they have a negative view of both political parties. They do not trust the politicians to serve the public interest, or the political process. Trump offered an easy shortcut. Despite all the stupid and offensive comments, young men also found Trump likable.”

When Democrats claim they want a “liberal Joe Rogan,” they basically want someone with Joe Rogan’s politics who still votes for Democrats. That wasn’t an unlikely concept back in the Clinton and even Obama days, but a liberal podcaster with culturally liberal politics isn’t Joe Rogan. The New York Times described Piker as an “avowed socialist … just as at ease dressing in French maid drag as he is on a basketball court.” That isn’t what sells to working class men of any race.