On The Daily Beast's The New Abnormal, Alex Paterson explains why Spotify's Joe Rogan is a crucial part of the right-wing ecosystem
Paterson: “It's like eating a bag of Skittles, and one of those skittles is a poison pill. You have to sift through a lot of garbage before you find what's really harmful.”
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Alex Paterson New Abnormal Appearance
Citation From the January 14, 2021, edition of The Daily Beast's The New Abnormal
MOLLY JONG-FAST (CO-HOST): One of the things that he sort of uses as a defense besides that is that he has people who are not necessarily as right – it's not quite the same as Fox, right? Like he has sort of more of a mix, even though he has really – he has really really scary, you know, people like Alex Jones. He also has people who are slightly more – a little bit more liberal. I mean, what do you say to that?
ALEX PATERSON (MEDIA MATTERS SENIOR RESEARCHER): I think, yeah, like last week, he had Carrot Top on his show and they just discussed comedy and like general things of that sort. And it wasn't any sort of harmful rhetoric. And I think that's what the specific problem of the Joe Rogan Experience is. It's like eating a bag of Skittles, and one of those skittles is a poison pill. You have to sift through a lot of garbage before you find what's really harmful. But I think that is why we need to take Rogen seriously because he's building trust among his dedicated fan base. And then why would they question him when he says that, like Joe, when he questions if Joe Biden actually received the COVID 19 vaccine?
JONG-FAST: Jesus, does he say that?
PATERSON: Yeah.
JONG-FAST: Yeah. I'm curious about
PATERSON: Yeah, he on September 30th. Yeah, and I can share this with you afterwards. But like on September 30th, he claimed that Biden didn't actually receive the COVID-19 booster shot because it would have been unsafe and potentially deadly to do so on live TV.
JONG-FAST: Jesus Christ.
PATERSON: Another one of his lies that I'd love to mention is he's also repeatedly spread the baseless claim that the Biden administration is trying to stop people from receiving monoclonal antibodies
JONG-FAST: Right? That's a big lie.