Joe Rogan took aim at Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez over what he described as a recent shift toward the cultural center, focusing in particular on her effort to brush aside earlier support for calls to “defund” the police.
Rogan, 59, made the comments during Friday’s episode of The Joe Rogan Experience after guest Chris Williamson asked whether he had seen Ocasio-Cortez’s widely discussed August 9 interview with ABC News.
“I did,” Rogan replied with a sigh, saying the exchange reinforced his view that the progressive lawmaker was “willing to change [her] opinions based on public reaction” as speculation continues around a possible presidential run.
Rogan singled out the moment when Ocasio-Cortez said it was her “understanding” that Wisconsin gubernatorial candidate and fellow democratic socialist Francesca Hong had “moved away” from some of those far-left positions.
In Rogan’s view, the congresswoman sidestepped the fact that she had previously backed several similar policies herself.
“If you really thought ‘defund the police,’ and then you just [ascribed] it to ‘Woke 1 was crazy,’ well how did it get you? Because it didn’t get me. How did it get you?” he asked.
Rogan was especially critical of Ocasio-Cortez, 36, for joking that “Woke 1 was crazy” before moving on. Ocasio-Cortez expressed support for proposals tied to defunding police and prisons in 2020, and for amnesty for all immigrants as recently as 2023.
He argued that the lawmaker owed voters a fuller explanation of how and why her position on defunding the police had changed.
Rogan, 59, offered the remarks on Friday’s Joe Rogan Experience. Guest Chris Williamson had asked if he had caught New York Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s high-profile interview with ABC News on August 9
Rogan chided the congresswoman for glossing over her past support of far-left policies ahead of a possible presidential run
‘Give me your thoughts. How far out did you track the consequences of defunding the police? Because I immediately went to, you’re going to have more crime because no one is going to be able to stop the crime – it’s going to get scary and then you’re going to want more police,’ he said.
The podcaster wondered what the bartender-turned-politician’s vision for the movement actually was.
‘Like… everyone is gonna like eat mushrooms, and we’re gonna be flower children?’
He offered a more serious solution.
‘If you want us to take you seriously, you have to say how you f***ed up. You have to say how you f***ed up, and you have to say what you really think about how you f***ed up,’ Rogan said.
‘You have to be honest, and you have to be authentic. We have to know that you are embarrassed by your choices and that you kind of went with the hive.’
Otherwise, ‘you’re full of s***,’ he said.
‘I think that anything is possible at this juncture,’ Ocasio-Cortez said at a point during the ABC interview, after being prodded on whether she is mulling a run for president.
The congresswoman was an advocate of the ‘defund the police’ movement a few years ago
Wisconsin gubernatorial candidate Francesca Hong supported the same causes at the time but, like the New York representative, no longer does. Both women are democratic socialists
She brushed off her past support of defund the police as being, at least partially, the result of panic and desperateness caused by the COVID pandemic and lockdowns.
‘And I actually think that the discussions that had – that were had in that time were quite fruitful. I think that when we talk about crime today, it’s fundamentally different than the way that we talked about crime in bringing crime down, right?,’ she said
Ocasio-Cortez previously criticized a New York City proposal to cut its police force by $1 billion back in 2020, on the basis that it was not enough.
‘Defunding police means defunding police… It does not mean budget tricks or funny math… The fight to defund policing continues,’ she said at the time.
The year before, she posted on social media that ‘we need to have a real conversation about decarceration & prison abolition in this country,’ several months before the pandemic broke out. She assumed office earlier that year, in January 2019.
That year, she told Hot 97 some marginalized groups ‘have no choice but to riot.’
During a political rally in Ohio in July 2021, she said: ‘I want to abolish our carceral system that’s designed to trap Black and brown men.’
Ocasio-Cortez also sponsored an immigration bill in 2021 and 2023 designed to decriminalize border crossings. Both efforts were unsuccessful.
She told the New Yorker in 2019 she would consider dismantling the Department of Homeland Security, which includes Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
‘I think so. I think so,’ she said at the time.
Woke 1, meanwhile, is an increasingly popular buzz word. It retroactively refers to the era of cultural progressivism that occurred around 2020.
This includes the #MeToo movement and the outrage seen after the killing of George Floyd, which itself sparked protests, calls to scale back funding for police, and support for other movements like Black Lives Matter.
The New York Times published a piece seeking to explain the phrase on August 12, after Ocasio-Cortez’s interview.
