Joe Rogan helped Trump win the White House. Now his show is exposing divisions inside it

By Brian Stelter, CNN

(CNN) — In 2024, Joe Rogan’s podcast was a platform for President Donald Trump, helping him win reelection. This year, it’s a place for a whistleblower-style conversation alleging “corruption” at the highest levels of the Trump administration.

That’s quite a shift — and it doesn’t bode well for Trump’s final two years in office.

Last Friday, Rogan released an episode with Calley Means, the MAHA advocate and former adviser to Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who resigned in late October.

Means spoke with urgency on the podcast, accusing Trump’s inner circle of blocking healthy-food policies and favoring corporate lobbyists and donors. He singled out chief of staff Susie Wiles, though he said his bigger target was the “system,” not Wiles.

Wiles had already submitted her resignation by the time the episode was published, according to CNN’s reporting on Trump naming Stephen Miller as his new chief of staff.

But Means certainly intended to get Wiles removed — and to call out the administration’s MAHA failures. He blamed big-money special interests for stymying progress, telling Rogan: “They’ve got the corporate money” while “we have you, we have truth getting out there. Like, and, shaming the system. Shame works. Like, the truth getting out there actually works.”

Later in the episode, Means said that while working inside the government, he would often “threaten” the possibility of “bad press” to push through his and Kennedy’s agenda items.

“That’s all that moves anything,” he said… “All that matters is special interest money or whether they’re going to get a bad article [written] about them.”

“Oh my God,” Rogan sighed.

The whole conversation seemed to weigh heavily on the host, who’d generally rather be joking with friends or speculating about Bigfoot (that was in an episode earlier in the week).

And the episode underscored something about how media works in 2026: Means chose a free-flowing, hours-long podcast to speak out against the Trump administration before granting a more traditional network television interview.

The Rogan episode had an immediate impact. “We’re looking at this very case,” Democratic Rep. Robert Garcia, the incoming chair of the House Oversight Committee, told Dana Bash on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

Republican Sen. Ron Johnson also brought it up on Fox News, saying Means laid out Washington corruption “in gory detail.”

Shortly after the podcast came out on Friday, Kennedy tweeted out a statement alluding to Means’ claims, albeit without naming his former adviser.

“Entrenched interests have exercised power in Washington under both parties for decades,” Kennedy wrote. “President Trump and I intend to keep fighting until the American people — not corporate influence — drive our health policies. I stand firmly behind President Trump and the historic reforms we are advancing together.”

The episode has also resulted in legal threats. One of Means’ targets, Trump’s top political adviser James Blair, pushed back on Means via X over the weekend, and said he’d put Means on notice that “I’d consider suing him if he defamed me.”

And a spokesperson for Wiles told Axios that “Means’ accusations are outrageous, defamatory and provably false.”

Even former Trump White House press secretary Sean Spicer sounded stunned. “I’ve seen a lot in 30 years,” he told The Huddle’s Dan Turrentine on Monday. “What I’ve never seen is what Calley Means did… I’ve never seen someone burn down the house like Calley Means did.”

Means kept up the pressure on Monday, writing that “the Joe Rogan episode has caused cultural impact because everyone watching knows it’s true.”

He suggested that others have evidence of “corporate capture” and should share it: “To current and former leaders in the admin – it is time to speak out. It is time to speak to the press about what you saw.”

Means taped a follow-up interview with Margaret Brennan for Sunday’s “Face the Nation” on CBS and said that some of Trump’s senior advisors treated the president “like a baby in many respects.”

When Brennan asked if Trump knew in advance that Means was going to go public on Rogan’s show, Means said, “I have no idea. I know the president is close with Joe Rogan and appreciates his opinion.”

Last April, Rogan joined Trump in the Oval Office for the signing of an executive order aimed at encouraging expanded research into psychedelic drugs, a policy Rogan had personally urged the president to pursue.

But Rogan’s access to Trump hasn’t stopped him from criticizing the administration on his podcast, including over ICE and the war in Iran, among other topics.

Trump’s courting of podcasters like Rogan was thought to be an important part of his media campaign in 2024 – so much so that its absence during the midterm election cycle also garnered attention.

Trump adviser Alex Bruesewitz was asked about it on Fox News over the weekend. “They weren’t there for us this go-around. They weren’t there to engage,” he acknowledged.

Bruesewitz also suggested that some of the Republican Party’s highest-profile candidates in key races weren’t particularly appealing as podcast guests.

“Somebody like a Roger Marshall, for example, wouldn’t be a compelling guest on a program like Theo Von or Joe Rogan,” he said. “So it was a much different dynamic this go-around.”

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