Podcaster Joe Rogan shredded The New York Times after one of its writers published a piece asking whether the United States Constitution is itself a threat to democracy.Â
On Sunday, The Times’ book critic Jennifer Szalai penned an article headlined, “The Constitution Is Sacred. Is It Also Dangerous?” that speculated “one of the biggest threats to America’s politics might be the country’s founding document.”
After noting how Trump lost the popular vote but won the presidency in 2016 due to the Electoral College, Szalai suggested there is growing skepticism about the Constitution’s ability to keep “authoritarianism” in check.
“Trump owes his political ascent to the Constitution, making him a beneficiary of a document that is essentially antidemocratic and, in this day and age, increasingly dysfunctional,” Szalai wrote.
On Wednesday’s episode of The Joe Rogan Experience, the podcaster spoke to author Bret Weinstein about the article, referring to his post on Instagram where Rogan shared the headline and wrote, “What a fascinating time to be alive.”
“This isn’t the Babylon Bee; this is an actual New York Times article, you see it? This is so crazy,” Rogan said. “It’s really hard to believe that someone would print this, and that the New York Times would say, ‘Yeah, we like it, put it out there!'”
Rogan marveled at the article’s headline and lede and asked rhetorically, “What the f— are you talking about? One of the biggest threats to America’s politics might be one of the greatest documents that any country was ever founded on, if not the greatest ever? That could be a threat to America’s politics? What politics are we talking about? Like what-how could you possibly gaslight me enough to go along with you on this?”
Weinstein responded by suggesting, “It’s on the one hand, completely predictable, right? Because there’s obviously an authoritarian force there that just grinds its teeth at night over the Constitution and the fact that it prevents it from doing things that it just wants to do last week, you know? And so of course, they’re like, scratching their heads, like ‘Can we come up with an argument for why it might be time to get rid of that thing?’ And of course, if you’re a normal, thinking person, this is complete insanity. But, if you’re a New York Times reader, I’m sure that fits with the kind of ethos that’s been cultivated.”
“This is why a person like Trump is so important to them because if you don’t have someone that is an imminent threat on the horizon in three months, it’s very difficult to justify all this s—,” Rogan said, arguing former President Trump is a bogeyman who allows the left to make these arguments, whereas it would be harder to do so with previous Republican nominees.Â
“You can’t make that argument that we don’t need- we can’t have a First Amendment because the First Amendment is getting in the way, the First Amendment is allowing people to say things that aren’t true, ‘misinformation’ and ‘disinformation.’”
Weinstein later argued that there have been similar hyperbolic arguments against previous Republican presidential nominees as well: “They did pull this stuff when it was Mitt Romney, when it was George W. Bush, right? The rhetoric was still ‘existential threat,’ and they always have particular versions of this.”
