Joe Rogan said Democrats trying to rebrand after Woke 1.0 cannot just joke that the era was crazy and expect voters to forget who went along with it.
The podcaster’s message for Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and other liberals was simple: admit what went wrong, explain why they backed it and stop pretending the old positions somehow happened to them.
“If you don’t say that, then you’re full of s—,” Rogan said. “And if you’re full of s—, you’re going to get more and more full of s— over time. And that’s how politicians get soured.”
Rogan used Ocasio-Cortez’s “Woke 1 was crazy” comments to drill into one of the most radioactive slogans of that period: defund the police.
🚨NEW: Joe Rogan and Chris Williamson torch AOC’s “Woke 1.0” Rebrand:
“If you really believed in Defund the Police EXPLAIN what the hell you thought would happen when the police disappeared.”
“You owe America an explanation for how you ever thought less policing would mean… pic.twitter.com/0IbRPbMHN9
— Fan Commentary: Joe Rogan Recaps (@JoeRoganRecaps) August 21, 2026
“If you really thought ‘defund the police’ and then you just ascribed it to ‘Woke 1 was crazy,’ well, how did it get you?” Rogan said. “Because it didn’t get me. How did it get you? How did ‘defund the police’ get you?”
He argued that the likely result was obvious from the start: fewer people stopping crime, public fear rising and a demand for more police anyway.
“Give me your thoughts. How far out did you track the consequences of defunding the police?” Rogan said.
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“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.”
Rogan also mocked the softer vision he believed was sitting behind the slogan.
“Like… everyone is gonna like eat mushrooms, and we’re gonna be flower children?” he asked.
The Joe Rogan Experience host said Democrats still had a path away from the “woke” label, but only if the cleanup started with confession instead of messaging.
“There’s a way out of it for them, but they have to be honest,” Rogan said. “If you want us to take you seriously, you have to say how you f—ed up.”
He said voters needed to hear Democrats say what they truly believed about the mistake, why they made it and why they were embarrassed that they “went with the hive.”
YouTuber Chris Williamson, Rogan’s guest, questioned whether any of that distancing would be happening if former Vice President Kamala Harris had won the election.
“Think about what would have happened if Kamala had won,” Williamson said.
Williamson wondered whether Ocasio-Cortez would have still called Woke 1.0 “crazy,” or whether Democrats would have insisted the same agenda had voter support.
“How much of this is a reversal of the position because it wasn’t effective?” Williamson asked.
Rogan’s attack on the left did not stop with Ocasio-Cortez’s wording.
In another episode, he said democratic socialist ideology “sucks” and argued that social media, not serious study, was making socialism sound attractive to some people.
“It sucks. … People are really [arguing], ‘Oh maybe being socialist is cool.’ Like, this is all coming out of social media. One hundred percent,” Rogan said.
He rejected the idea that people were sitting around reading Marx and naturally deciding the system should be put into practice.
“It’s not natural that people are sitting around reading Marx and going, ‘What a great idea, let’s implement this.’ They’re not doing that,” Rogan said.
Rogan said many “quote unquote Marxists” on social media do not understand the history behind the political strategies they promote.
“It’s like checkers, it’s like real simple: You’re going to have a military that controls everything you do,” he said. “As soon as you give up everything to the state, well the state has the guns and you have nothing and they tell you what to do.”
Conservative commentator Steve Hilton brought the discussion back to daily life under Soviet rule, saying state-run grocery stores in Hungary were “terrible.”
Hilton’s point came in response to Mamdani’s proposal for government-run grocery stores meant to promote affordability.
Rogan has also aimed his frustration at Vice President JD Vance, whose July appearance on The Joe Rogan Experience came back up when fellow podcaster Jesse Michels raised Vance’s comments about aliens, demons and angels.
Vance, 42, had told conservative podcaster Benny Johnson in April, “I think [aliens are] demons anyway,” after Johnson asked whether he had seen unidentified-flying-object files the President had promised to release.
“I actually haven’t,” Vance said then. “I have not been able to spend enough time on this, but I am going to. Trust me, I’m obsessed with this.”
Rogan later asked Vance directly what he meant. Vance laughed and sighed before explaining that he believes in God, does not consider himself a “hyper-rationalist” and believes “there are supernatural things that are happening.”
Vance pointed to historical accounts of strange human-like beings showing interest in people and doing experiments on them, while also saying belief in the supernatural did not mean believing every supernatural claim.
“Just because I believe in the supernatural doesn’t mean I believe in everything supernatural,” Vance said.
He said a human-like extraterrestrial being with “effectively infinite powers” that tortured people could be described as an alien, but also had historical precedent as a demon.
Rogan said he only partly understood Vance’s answer and accused him of trying to appeal to “Christian believers.”
“I kind of understand it, but kind of don’t,” Rogan said. “Plenty of time to go to church. Like, bro, look into it.”