Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson has publicly shown support for Joe Rogan.
The “Jungle Cruise” star left a comment on a video Rogan posted to Instagram over the weekend. In the post, the controversial comedian addressed those who have spoken out against the spread of COVID-19 misinformation on his popular Spotify podcast “The Joe Rogan Experience.” The video also acted as a response to Neil Young’s decision to pull his music from Spotify last week over the music streamer’s continued support for Rogan’s podcast.
“Great stuff here brother,” Johnson wrote in the comment section of Rogan’s video Sunday. “Perfectly articulated. Look forward to coming on one day and breaking out the tequila with you.”
Last week, Young gave Spotify an ultimatum.
“I want you to let Spotify know immediately today that I want all of my music off their platform,“ Young wrote to his managers in a letter initially posted on his website on Jan. 24. “They can have Rogan or Young. Not both.”
The rock icon explained in the since-deleted letter that he felt Rogan’s podcast spreads “false information about vaccines — potentially causing death to those who believe the disinformation being spread by them.”
Rogan posted a nearly 10-minute video in response to Young a few days later in which he attempted to appease people on both sides of the controversy. In his video, Rogan admitted that he doesn’t always do a lot of prep work for his show but promised to do more research “and have all the pertinent facts at hand before I discuss them.” He also said he would “maybe try harder to get people with differing opinions” on his typically right-leaning show, and pledged to “balance out these more controversial viewpoints with other people’s perspectives so we can maybe find a better point of view.”
Yet, Rogan also took issue with the term “misinformation” in his video — and defended his “highly credentialed, very intelligent, very accomplished” guests. “They have an opinion that is different from the mainstream narrative,” Rogan said. “I wanted to hear what their opinion is.”
Less than 24 hours after his “apology” video, Rogan tweeted and then deleted an incorrect story about the drug ivermectin.
Since Young yanked his catalog from Spotify last week, other musicians have followed suit, including Joni Mitchell and Young’s former bandmates David Crosby, Stephen Stills and Graham Nash.