Joe Rogan and Bret Weinstein target doctor over a fake vaccine tweet
Spotify's star moron got duped by photoshop, compromised a physician's safety
Self-described moron Joe Rogan appears to have fallen for a Twitter photoshop hoax. On his Spotify podcast, the Alex Jones of the anti-vax movement discussed an “insane tweet” allegedly from Dr. Natalia with Bret Weinstien, a Portland biologist who promoted ivermectin for Covid. The tweet discussed said the following:
“I will never regret the vaccine. Even if it turns out I injected actual poison and have days to live. My heart is and 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.”
While most intelligent life forms could determine this was an obvious fake, Rogan could not. A video clip from the podcast episode was sent around the Twitterverse including the #DiedSuddenly hashtag.
Twitter user @ante_diluvian posted a video explaining the origins of the photoshop job in outreach to Twitter Support (if that is still a thing under Elon Musk). Rogan’s misstep is not just totally embarrassing for him, it is more importantly incredibly frightening for Dr. Solenkova who does not have the safety of a Texas man cave provided alongside a $200 million Spotify deal. She’s an incredibly highly educated woman passionate about public health advocating for truth for free on the internet. Thanks to the action of some trolls and bullies like Rogan and Weinstein, she is under attack.
As Rogan is targeting a woman far more intelligent and accomplished than he could even hope to be, it is worth pointing out his history of misogyny. This was something that fellow Spotify podcaster Brené Brown went to their platform leadership with concerns over. These seem to have been ignored.
As we discussed previously, we took part in the Rolling Stone letter to Joe Rogan last year. Our concerns were also not properly addressed by Spotify’s leadership.
Since his anti-vax hey day where the Defeat the Mandates extremist rally was announced on his podcast, Rogan has had to watch the disinformation doctors and politicians who used him for his platform getting appropriately called out for their lies. Rogan has proven that he does not care about the damage the lies he platformed have caused (reminder: he bragged about the bump in listeners the controversy brought him).
After an extremely lame apology, he continued to use his huge platform to endorse anti-vaxxers like Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Governor Ron DeSantis. If only his platform size correlated with the size of…his brain.
Rogan has since issued a “sincere apology” for this latest incident. We aren’t buying it and we hope Spotify isn’t either.
