How Iran Could Tear MAGA Apart

After spending the last three years in Joe-Rogan-world, I know secrets. Here's one of them.

On Monday, I asked you to take a poll about what would make you most interested in a new book. The winner, overwhelmingly, was “Makes you feel hopeful.”

So I’m going to focus on that next week, when It’s Only Drowning hits shelves. Today, I want to talk about the runner-up: “Helps you understand politics.”

If you write a non-fiction book, by the time it comes out, you feel should feel like you know secrets. And one of the secrets I know, and which I’m about to share with you, is about why Iran could end up being the issue that leads Joe Rogan to break up with Stephen Miller - and by extension, with Trump.

I should say, by the way, that this was not at all what I expected to be talking about when I started writing a surf memoir. In fact, I thought It’s Only Drowning would be my break with politics. But three things happened. First, my surf guru turned out to be my brother-in-law Matt, who’s a huge Rogan fan. Second, it turned out Surf World in general was a pretty Rogan-y place. Third, the divide between college-educated professional and non-college educated blue collar workers — which is to say, the divide between Matt and me — became the most important political force in the country. So much so that without it, Trump never would have won.

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Let me pause briefly to say that even though the book is near publication, pre-orders are still incredibly helpful to its success. So if you haven’t yet, you can get It’s Only Drowning from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or a local bookstore via bookshop.org.

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To put this all another way: if you want to understand Trump 2.0 - and beat MAGA before it’s too late - you need to understand Joe Rogan and his fans. And here’s something I only know because, weirdly, I’m a surfer.

Joe Rogan doesn’t hate liberals. He hates bigness.

Let me explain what I mean by that. Traditional conservative media, led by Fox News, functions as an unofficial wing of the Republican Party. Its hosts and owners sometimes weigh in to shape strategy and policy, but at the end of the day, they’re not going to take on a Republican president, especially if that president is Trump. Also, as much as they exist to stand with conservatives, their even more important mission is to stand against Democrats and “the left.”

As a network executive once told Vanity Fair’s Gabriel Sherman, “Fox is about defending our viewers from the people who hate them. That’s where our power comes from.”

I would point out that I (and you, I suspect) don’t hate Fox viewers, so a big part of Fox News is also convincing viewers that Democrats hate them and that they need protection. But when you add it all up, conservative media basically plays by two rules. If Trump likes it, they support it. And if Democrats don’t like it, they support it even more.

Because Joe Rogan endorsed Trump - and because, shockingly in my view, lots of Democrats weren’t even familiar with Rogan until this election cycle - many people in the anti-MAGA coalition assumed that he was just another right-wing host. Rush Limbaugh, if Rush Limbaugh had been into ultimate fighting. It’s definitely true that ever since the pandemic, Rogan’s gotten more openly conservative. And since the election, when he was hailed as a kingmaker, he’s brought on more guests who are explicitly MAGA. (When Elon and Trump had their big Twitter fight, Rogan was live with Kash Patel.)

But the animating force behind nearly all of Joe Rogan’s opinions, not to mention the reason he waded into politics in the first place, has nothing to do with partisanship or right-leaning ideology.

He wants to feel self-sufficient. And he wants to be left alone.

The Battle of the MAGA Bald Guys

Think about the issue where, regrettably, Joe Rogan had the greatest impact on American life: vaccines. Basically, Rogan’s argument was that you had big companies doing science that regular people can’t understand, big government pushing us all to accept the results, and big universities that employ fancy experts cheering them on. Everything he promoted - including, infamously, ivermectin - was about taking your health into your own hands.

Obviously, I don’t agree with that frame. The whole point of public health is that there’s a public - we can’t do everything ourselves. Also, while scientists are flawed humans like the rest of us, when it comes to miracle cures, I’d rather not do my own research. I think my life is much more likely to be saved if a medical researcher does it for me.

But what I think isn’t the point here. What matters is the logic Rogan employs. Because it makes him very different from a Rush Limbaugh or a typical Fox News host.

Yes, Rogan and his fans dislike big Pharma and big government. But they also dislike big corporations, big agriculture, big oil, big cities, big labor, big business, and big tech. The central tenant of Roganism is a faith, regardless of the evidence around us, that you can take matters into your own hands. Bigness - in any form - is a reminder that that’s not possible.

This explains some of the early spats between Rogan-world and Trump-world. When Kilmar Abrego Garcia was wrongly deported, Rogan spoke up in favor of due process. Not because he’s anti-Trump. But because there’s nothing less ruggedly independent than the state grabbing you off the street and shipping you to a foreign prison. Just last week, Rogan again criticized ICE - because out-of-control federal agents make it hard to feel in control of your own life.

I don’t think that Rogan is turning on Trump over the issues. But he is - whether he thinks about it this way or not - setting himself up as the anti-Stephen Miller in the MAGA coalition. Miller is all about using the size and might of the federal government to dominate the American people. Rogan is all about not being told what to do.

These are mutually exclusive philosophies.

How the Coalition Crumbles

I don’t really like the term “manosphere,” because it’s obviously pejorative. And when you’re obviously pejorative about a group of voters, one of the things they often do is vote against you. So instead I’ll describe the group of people - largely working class, mostly younger, mostly male - who were targeted by Trump’s podcast strategy and who swung the election in his favor, as Roganites.

I want to be very clear about something. Most Republicans are not in this group. The vast, vast majority of them were not on the fence about voting for Trump, or voting in general. Even among swing voters, only a tiny slice are fans of Joe Rogan or his media cohort.

But Trump won less than 50 percent of the popular vote - and given ICE’s behavior, his appeal with most non-white groups, and Latinos in particular, has probably hit a high-water mark. Roganites might be just 5% of MAGA. But they’re a decisive 5%.

The best way to think about them, I think, is as the American equivalent a fringe party that helps form a governing coalition in a parliamentary democracy. They can’t win power. But their absence could take power away from those who currently have it. If the MAGA coalition is going to endure into the midterms and beyond, they can’t lose the Roganites.

And if Trump attacks Iran, that’s exactly the kind of issue tailor-made to split them from the conservative base.

Because nothing says “big government” like America joining another military adventure in the Middle East. There’s the cost to taxpayers. There will, inevitably, be the American troops killed. More than anything, another Middle Eastern war would violate the central principle of Joe Rogan’s philosophy - the right to be left alone. Rogan isn’t against violence. He’s one of Ultimate Fighting’s biggest boosters. But there’s a reason he likes his violence mano-a-mano. In his worldview, it’s totally fair for one person to impose his will on another, survival-of-the-fittest style. But for an organized, massive government to impose its will on an entire group of people is cheating.

Two days ago, Dave Smith, a comedian and frequent Rogan guest, didn’t just announce that he regretted voting for Trump. He called for Trump’s impeachment. I don’t see Rogan ever going that route. Being important is too seductive for that.

Instead, I think we could see Rogan engage is some form of quiet quitting. He might join Elon Musk, his idol, in quasi-exile from MAGA-land. He might decide that politics, in general, is corrupt and stupid. He might endorse a handful of populists Democrats or independents to go along with Republicans in the midterms. Taken together, these things would send a signal to his followers that they’re once again homeless in the two party system. They’re not anti-MAGA. But they’re not part of the MAGA coalition any more.

If that happens, MAGA will still be a formidable force in American life. Not to mention running our government. But in swing congressional seats, and states like Iowa and Texas that Democrats would love for their second target list, the GOP can’t afford to lose the Roganites, and they might be about to.

So that’s one secret about politics I learned from surfing with my brother-in-law. And now, you know it, too.

And if you found this post interesting, or it helped you understand our country just a little bit better, don’t forget:

Thanks as always,

David