In 2020 Joe Rogan endorsed Bernie Sanders, so the guy is no Right-wing fanatic.

But during the Biden administration, a lot of people have gotten the impression that he is a conservative because he has been harshly critical of Biden.

That impression will probably be reinforced now that he blasted the Democrats for using “banana republic” tactics to take down Donald Trump.

NSFW, as always when you listen to Rogan:

Joe Rogan goes off on Democrats ahead of 2024: "They have no cards. They're depending upon party loyalty and Trump getting convicted and imprisoned. It does make sense if you want to look at Banana Republic tactics." pic.twitter.com/IsBb4BBYLV

— TheBlaze (@theblaze) November 29, 2023

Rogan was stating the obvious: Democrats are in a world of hurt because they “have no cards” to play in the upcoming election. On the one hand, Biden is deeply unpopular, but if he stepped down, Kamala Harris would become president. If Biden announced he wasn’t running again, replacing Harris would be difficult, and she is an obvious dunce. Newsom is the obvious choice, with all his problems, but there is no path to getting him into position to run.

So, the Democrats are using “banana republic” tactics to take out Donald Trump.

Of course, he is referring to the lawfare–trying to destroy Trump by illegitimately manipulating the legal system to cripple him or put him in jail. That these cases are being brought now–at a time when they overlap with the presidential campaign and are likely to keep him tied up in court during 2024 makes it crystal clear that all this is about politics, not the rule of law.

The irony is rich. The Democrats argue that Donald Trump cannot be let near the White House again because he would destroy democracy and the rule of law, so of course, the Democrats are being forced to destroy democracy and the rule of law to prevent Trump’s winning office a second time.

The most obvious–even incontrovertible–example of the use of lawfare is the Letitia James case in New York, in which the New York Attorney General argues that Trump committed financial fraud. The case is absurd on its face since there is no victim, and the AG and court are making overt moves to distort the evidence. Claiming that Mar a Lago is worth only $18 million is so patently absurd that it would only fly in a jurisdiction utterly stacked against Trump. It still might not fly.

Even if there were a case, it would be ridiculous to suggest that the highest law enforcement official in New York should be spending so much effort to destroy Trump. The “aggrieved” party–a bank–testified that there was no fraud and that Trump paid back the loan in question.

So yes, all this is banana republic stuff. Rogan is right. The Democrat Party’s entire strategy has been to get Trump nominated and then destroy him during the campaign.

What Rogan says matters quite a bit for a simple reason: he moves opinions and votes in a way that most political commentary does not. Rogan’s audience is not primarily political, in the way a Sunday show’s is, and they fit the profile of independent voters whose votes are not locked into a single party or candidate. He doesn’t lead a cult, so those voters don’t necessarily follow his lead, but they take him seriously.

In other words, he shapes opinions.