BURSTPodcaster Joe Rogan said it’s “horrific” that innocent people could be getting swept up in the Trump administration’s effort to deport gang members and send them to El Salvador’s notoriously dangerous mega-prison.
Rogan, in a podcast released Saturday, praised Trump for lowering the number of illegal migrant crossings at the U.S. southern border, but he expressed concern that the Trump administration’s policy of deporting people it claims to be affiliated with gangs could be targeting non-criminals.
“The thing is, like, you got to get scared that people who are not criminals are getting, like, lassoed up and deported and sent to, like, El Salvador prisons,” the popular podcaster said.
Rogan pointed to recent reporting about several people not affiliated with gangs getting sent to the mega-prison because they had tattoos and were not given the chance to defend themselves before a judge. He mentioned specifically an example of the “gay barber.”
“It’s horrific. It’s horrific,” said Rogan, who landed an interview with Trump during last year's presidential race seen as important in the Republican nominee's efforts to win over young male voters.
Rogan agreed with his podcast guest, political commentator Konstantin Kisin, who said, “a human being, being plucked out of nowhere and ending up in a country he’s never been in, in a maximum-security prison with gang members, seems like a bad thing to happen.”
“I don’t think that should be controversial,” Kisin said.
“No, that’s not controversial at all,” Rogan responded.
Rogan suggested the Trump administration should be more diligent not to make these kinds of errors, saying it’s “bad for the cause” when “horrific” mistakes get in the way of the goal.
“This is the thing, you know, measure it twice, cut once,” Rogan continued. “This is kind of crazy that that could be possible. That’s horrific. And that’s, again, that’s bad for the cause.”
“The cause is: Let’s get the gang members out. Everybody agrees. But let’s not, innocent gay hairdressers, get lumped up with the gangs.
"And then, like, how long before that guy can get out? Can we figure out how to get them out? Is there any plan in place to alert the authorities that they’ve made a horrible mistake and correct it?” he added.
Rogan lamented the state of politics today where the approach is to “never admit your fault. Never admit you’re wrong.”
“And this is the thing we’re seeing with the Signal thing, and this is the thing we’re seeing with this,” Rogan said, referring to the controversy in which a group of Trump officials inadvertently included a journalist in a group chat that discussed a military strike.
“I don’t know if it’s been brought to their attention. I mean, I would assume someone’s alerted them to the fact that they might have rounded up this just random hairdresser and accused him of being a gang member.”