It is one thing for the Trump campaign to claim that Joe Biden’s mental abilities are slipping. It is another thing entirely for an extremely popular, mostly apolitical celebrity to say it too.
Joe Rogan, the pot-smoking, socially liberal podcast host who supported Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont in the 2020 Democratic primary, again voiced concerns this week about the presumptive Democratic nominee’s mental awareness.
“I believe there is also a large group of people that are very uncomfortable with a man who seems to be mentally compromised winning the election and doing so by hiding,” Rogan said. “I mean, the guy’s never — [Biden] was just at a thing the other day, and he forgot where he was.”
He added that Biden’s running mate is “going have a bucket of lube and she’s going to dunk it in there and stuff her hand up his ass. She’s going to be working him like Weekend at Bernie’s.”
Questions about Biden’s mental acuity appear to be getting under the former vice president’s skin. He snapped this week at CBS News’s Errol Barnett after the journalist pressed him to say whether he should take a cognitive test to become president.
“No, I haven’t taken a test. Why the hell would I take a test?” Biden responded to his interviewer, who is black. “Come on, man. That’s like saying you, before you got on this program, you take a test where you’re taking cocaine or not. What do you think? Huh? Are you a junkie?”
Rogan, meanwhile, maintains that the 2020 election is going to be an absolute mess, considering both the uncertainty of mail-in voting and the fact that so many people seem to be uncomfortable with both presidential candidates. And forget about the polling, the host added.
“The dumbest people in the world are the ones who answer polls. So, out of the dumbest people in the world with nothing to do, most of them are picking Biden,” he said. “Or more of them are picking Biden, but says who? Says all of the media outlets that want Trump to lose?”
“How do we know? How do we know if they’re being accurate?” Rogan asked, adding, “This is going be such a contested election, no matter what.”
This narrative, that Biden is losing it mentally, could be a real problem for the Democratic nominee, but not because of the Trump campaign. Those who are not obsessively plugged into politics do not know or care about what the president’s team says about the Democratic candidate. Also, people in the all-important middle expect mudslinging and name-calling from major, and even minor, political campaigns. Politicians lie, especially about their opponents. Stop the presses.
However, having the same criticisms echoed in nonpolitical, well-trafficked corners could do actual, real, and lasting damage to the presumptive Democratic nominee. There is no surer way for the “Biden is losing it” narrative to go mainstream, making its way to even the least interested voter, than to have someone such as Rogan, who is both exceptionally popular and not particularly interested in politics, repeat the assertion to his massive, trusting, and largely Everyman audience.
As of this writing, more than 2.1 million social media users have viewed the YouTube clip of Rogan questioning Biden’s mental health. If the former vice president and his 2020 campaign team were not already worried about this mental-health-related narrative going mainstream, they should be now.
