Joe Rogan has responded to nasty comments from ABC chair Kim Williams, who launched a brutal tirade against the podcasting giant.
Williams claimed Rogan ‘preys on people’s vulnerability’ and was ‘not a consumer or enthusiast’ about his work while speaking at the National Press Club on Wednesday.
‘People like Mr Rogan prey on people’s vulnerabilities. They prey on fear. They prey on anxiety,’ he said.
He went so far as to say he found Rogan’s reach in the US ‘deeply repulsive’.
‘I’m also absolutely in dismay that this can be a source of public entertainment, when it’s really treating the public as plunder for purposes that are really quite malevolent.’
A clip of Williams’ comments was shared to social media platform X, where Rogan replied ‘LOL WUT’ in a post that more than 8.4million users have seen.
The owner of the platform, Elon Musk, similarly denounced the ABC boss.
‘From the head of n government-funded media, their Pravda,’ Musk said
Pravda is the former official newspaper of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, which still operates in the Russian Federation.
Daily Mail contacted the ABC for comment.
Williams’ comments come after Rogan told his audience that he would not move to because the country put people in ‘concentration camps’ for ‘a cold’ during the Covid lockdowns.
The podcaster said he had once considered as a viable alternative to the US but his mind had since changed.
‘I used to think but then I saw how they handled the pandemic I was like ‘”oh f**, that well that’s what happens when no one has guns”,’ he said.
‘Yep the army just rolls in and tells you what to do and puts you in concentration camps because you have a cold, like it’s crazy.’
During the Covid pandemic quarantined people arriving in the country for weeks before they were able to enter the community.
Most were put in hotels but some were also housed in temporary isolation camps.
‘s specialised national quarantine facility, Howard Springs on the outskirts of Darwin, hosted around 64,000 people for a mandatory two-week isolation period.
Opponents of the quarantine arrangement described the Howard Springs centre as a ‘concentration camp’.
The Joe Rogan Experience is the most popular podcast on Spotify with 14.5million followers.
Rogan signed a $200million deal with the streaming giant in 2020.
His interview with Donald Trump was cited as a key factor in deciding this month’s election, with the Republican candidate’s vote among young men – the core of Rogan’s audience – reaching new highs.
Williams, who took over as chair of the ABC in March, has since taken swipes at his own journalists over the quality of the news they were producing.
He said in August that the national broadcaster was producing too much news and current affairs that was ‘filler and bland’.
‘We tend at times to go to that which is more representative of tabloid sensibility, than what I would regard as being national responsibility.’
He inherited a ‘severely depleted’ broadcaster and largely blamed a lack of funding for the ABC’s downfall – specifically a 13.7 per cent reduction during the Coalition Government’s time in power.
He has also had to deal with Sydney staff grumbling about a shift from headquarters near the CBD to an office in Parramatta.
The move to ‘modernise’ has been widely lamented by ABC staff with the 25-minute commute from the city centre sparking logistical issues.
The ABC plans to move some 300 staff to the new location, a project set to cost $39million, in order to improve its services in the western suburbs – which Williams has labelled ‘the nation’s fastest growing residential region’.