In a tense exchange during their marathon podcast conversation released Friday, Joe Rogan delivered a masterclass in speaking truth to power when Mark Zuckerberg attempted to downplay Meta’s role in suppressing COVID treatment information.
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The Meta CEO tried to paint the censorship as well-intentioned, claiming:
“I still think it’s good for more people to get the vaccine. I’m not sure in that case how much of it was like a personal political gain that they were going for. I think that they had a kind of goal that they thought was in the interests of the country.”
But Rogan wasn’t having it. He fired back:
“Well, there’s a bunch of problems with that,”
Rogan begins to systematically dismantle Zuckerberg’s defense:
“There’s the emergency use authorization that they needed in order to get this pushed through. And you can’t have that without valid therapeutics being available. And so they suppressed valid therapeutics.”
Drawing a devastating historical parallel, Rogan connected the dots to earlier controversies associated with National Institute of Health’s infamous Dr. Anthony Fauci:
“This was Fauci’s game plan. I mean, this is the movie Dallas Buyers Club. That’s Fauci in that movie. That was with the AIDS crisis. This exact same game plan that was played out with the COVID vaccine.”
The podcast host then laid bare the profit motive behind the censorship:
“They pushed one solution, this only one, suppressed all therapeutics through propaganda, through suppressing monoclonal antibodies, like all of it. And that was done, in my opinion, for profit. The amount of money that was made was extraordinary during that time.”
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Zuckerberg’s interview was going exceptionally well—he was hitting all the right notes, earning nods of approval from Rogan where it counted most.
But the momentum came to a screeching halt when Zuckerberg made a COVID censorship claim that struck a nerve with @JoeRogan.
While… pic.twitter.com/4x2zy1gEVm
— The Vigilant Fox 🦊 (@VigilantFox) January 10, 2025
This exchange revealed the stark divide between Zuck’s corporate spin and the reality of how content moderation was used to shape the pandemic response. While Zuckerberg tried to frame the censorship as serving the greater good, Rogan exposed how it actually served to create a vaccine monopoly by eliminating discussion of alternative treatments.
For conservatives who have warned about the dangers of Big Tech-government collusion, this conversation provided smoking-gun evidence. It showed how content moderation policies were used to enforce a single narrative about COVID treatment, even when that meant suppressing legitimate medical information.
When companies like Meta can decide what medical information Americans are allowed to discuss, we’ve moved dangerously far from the principles of free speech and open scientific debate.
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Moving forward, this exchange raises crucial questions: How can we prevent similar censorship in future crises? Should unelected tech executives have the power to suppress medical information at the government’s request? The answers to these questions may determine whether Americans remain free to make informed decisions about their own health care.
Zuckerberg’s appearance on The Joe Rogan Experience didn’t exonerate him from his censorship sins. But, it did remind the public of why we need independent voices like Rogan’s to challenge the official narrative and speak truth to (Big Tech) power.
