Bulwark Takes - Joe Rogan CALLS OUT Trump’s Cruel Immigration Crackdown

Episode Date: October 10, 2025

Tim Miller breaks down Joe Rogan’s rare moment of moral clarity on immigration, where Rogan slams the idea of deporting longtime residents and families. Tim explains why this clip could shift the conversation, and why even some conservatives don’t want to be the “bad guys” in America’s immigration fight.

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Please play responsibly. If you have questions or concerns about your gambling or someone close to you, please contact Connix Ontario at 1866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. But MGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with Eye Gaming Ontario. Hey, everybody, Tim Miller from the bulwark here. I've been keeping an eye on Joe Rogan and the guys in the mannosphere, as you know, particularly around the immigration issue. And I'm going to keep banging this drum because hopefully watching Joe Rogan speak with moral clarity about this

will continue to give Democrats the backbone to fight about this. Who the hell knows? Maybe it'll shake a Republican or too loose. I'm not exactly counting my chickens before they hatch on that, but couldn't hurt. Most importantly, is helping wake up a lot of people who might not be consuming, you know, whatever, left media or even mainstream media. A lot of people who are outside of, you know, who aren't reading the New York Times or watching the nightly news and who are getting their information from Rogan or Schultz or one of these other guys. Like, maybe some of them will also be woken up to the fact that, holy shit, they signed up for something that was a lot more cruel than they want it. And I think this relates a bit to my conversation with Kevin Clancy with KFC over at Barstool last week where we talked about this a bunch.

But I want to play for you this clip from Rogan. Rogan, I want to play for you a couple clips. Rogan is talking to a guy named Duncan Trussell, who I don't know, who seems to really like acid a lot. And so, you know, maybe there's a little kind of clarity that comes from being next to somebody who's deep into the psychedelic bag. Let's watch Joe Rogum. been here for 25 years. You have a family. Your kids go to school here. You speak the language. You're just illegal. But you're a contributing member to the community that up until now has been protected. This is crazy to ask lower income and middle income people who are, you know, kind of

getting by. And then all of a sudden, you're about to ship them to a country where they've never been. They haven't been since they were four. And you're going to pull up their family and pull And they've been in the community like that. That shows no heart. And that's the problem. Like, you're not going to get any reasonable people to want to go along with that. Any kind person would look at that and go, this can't be the only way to do this. Damn right.

So you can see there, I mean, he's responding just emotionally. Like, this is an empathetic response from Rogan. Right? It's like not really about, you know, winning this fight on the policies. It's not really about, um, you know, concerns about the border, fat, because Rogan still has those, right? Like, this is about just a human that lives in this country saying, no, I do not want to be part of the team that is going and menacing and hassling and harassing and arresting and

shackling people who have been productive members of society in front of their kids. I don't want these thugs going into communities and going after people and doing so in a way, that's going to traumatize their families. Like people, I guess this is my fundamental insight on this. And I think that sometimes some folks on the left, even some of my colleagues, this is maybe something that they don't appreciate, which is that most people want to be on the side of the good guys. Like, most people don't want to be the baddies.

They don't revel in other people's pain. And that's hard for some folks who oppose Trump to process because, like, Trump is just such a brazen asshole and the fact that you would have somebody like stephen miller around him right it's kind of like you know for somebody who sees trump clearly for who they are they're like i assume that everybody is signing up for trump because they want an asshole and there's some people that are signing up for trump because they want an asshole but a lot of people i convinced themselves that you know whatever it was, like, whether it was the fentanyl death or Lake and Riley or inflation, whatever it was.

Or Trump being anti-war. This was a big thing that appealed to them. Like, they were able to come up with a rationalization while they're on the side of the angel, saying that evangelicals, you know, focus on abortion. Like people, most people are not saying, I'm for Trump, I'm putting on the black hat. Elon did. There's some black hats out there, but most of them thought they were doing what was right. and this, these images, a priest getting gathered with a pellet gun,

it starts to lay bare for people that, oh man, like, this is bad. I don't want to be one of the bad guys. I don't want to be one of the people that is responsible for sending a law-abiding person, a person that is just trying to do their job and go to church and be a part of their community and do the right thing. I don't want to send them to some country that they've never been to before or that they don't remember. I don't want to shackle them.

I don't want to do snuff porn, you know, at the expense of migrants. And if you accept that, you can accept that there's at least 60% of the country that doesn't want to be a baddie, maybe more, then you can see why this is an issue that could resonate and work for the Democrats. Just a little bit more from Rogan on this point. The immigration thing, the way it looks is horrific. It looks, when you're just arresting, people in front of their kids and just normal, regular people that have been here for 20 years.

That, everybody who has a heart can't get along with that. No. Everybody who has a heart sees that and go, that can't be right. They can't be right. They can't be the only way to do this. Right. Because you have to think, look, yeah, we have to have a border. Yes, it should have been secure.

Yes, they should make sure you know who everybody is before they get in. Yeah. But when people have been here for 20 years, like, come on. come on that's crazy like yeah let's find a way if they've been productive members of society for 20 years no criminal record they work the entire time they paid taxes find them a pathway the citizenship find a way where you can do this thing that you want to do which is keep terrorists and cartel members from getting across the border with drugs to kill 100,000 people a year okay but also have a fucking heart because if you don't you're not going to get anybody on your

If you're doing this stuff publicly, throwing women to the ground, handcuffing people, just for existing on the wrong side of the dirt. Yeah. Not a criminal. The only crime they ever committed was coming over here as a kid. Yeah. They probably didn't even know what the fuck was going on. Yeah. Yeah, man.

You know, a lot of kids got snuck across when they were already born in Mexico. And they've grown up their entire life in America. They can't even speak Spanish. Yeah. And they could get sent back. Rogan gets a little bit more into policy. I mean, when you're talking about. how they're going after people based on what side of the dirt they're on you know

I mean some some nationalists some far-right immigration hawks would say that that was kind of almost a borderless comment for a globalist John Lennon you know imagine there's no countries type comment from Rogan I don't think he would process it like that like his point is just simply like if you're kind of a libertarian-ish type guy you do not want you know the fucking armed representatives of the state targeting people and going after them and punishing them just because they grew up on the wrong piece of dirt. Maybe there need to be rules. Maybe there are ways to handle this. There are plenty of

other ways to deal with people that have deportation orders, even if they haven't committed other crimes. Like, you know, we can all sort of disagree and agree and argue about what the lines are there. Having a helicopter fly over their building and have, you know, people repelling down onto the apartment and banging down people's doors and ripping people away from their families when they aren't criminals, when they're just people that lived here, that's just, it's just not popular. And Rogan continues to be stalwart on this, and he's not alone. So I'm going to keep flagging it.

The pressure needs to be kept on because what this administration is planning is not dialing this back, not trying to appeal more to Rogan. They're stepping on the gas. They're escalating. They have more funding for ICE. They have more propaganda and adjut prop coming. And so that's got to be countered with counter messaging. And I think effective counter messengers are these folks that were for Trump and that are visible.

So we'll keep highlighting it. I appreciate you guys. Subscribe to this feed. Much, much more to come. I have another interview I'm working on this very topic that I think you guys are going to be interested in. So stick around, tell your friends. We'll see you all soon.