“She’s more MAGA than MAGA,” said podcaster Joe Rogan of former Democratic secretary of State Hillary Clinton in a recent episode of his popular show.
He was referring to her tenue in the U.S. State Department under former President Barack Obama. Rogan also said that Clinton’s take on the border was “hardcore” and basically in line with the current administration of President Donald Trump’s policies in 2026 than today’s Democrats.
“If you’ve been convicted of a crime, get out. If you stay here, pay a stiff penalty and you have to get in line and you have to learn English and everybody cheers,” said Rogan of Clinton’s stance on immigration. “That is a hardcore right wing 2026 perspective.”
While she was campaigning against Trump during the 2016 election (which she lost via the Electoral College), Clinton proposed “comprehensive immigration reform with a pathway to full and equal citizenship within her first 100 days in office,” as a way to “bring millions of hardworking people into the formal economy.”
However, her campaigned promised that she would also “focus resources on detaining and deporting those individuals who pose a violent threat to public safety, and ensure refugees who seek asylum in the U.S. have a fair chance to tell their stories.”
Rogan and his guest Bill Thompson – a retired U.S. Army Chief Warrant Officer and the founder and CEO of Spartan Forge, a company that develops AI-powered mapping and predictive tools for hunting – noted that the Obama administration was strict on illegal immigration. According to Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, the Obama administration logged more than 3.1 million Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) deportations during his eight years in office.
“Across four years, the Trump administration recorded fewer than 932,000 deportations,” said the clearinghouse of Trump’s first term.
So far in his second term, the Trump administration has made a crackdown on illegal immigration a key area of focus, and a very visible one. Though he campaigned on a promise to be tough on border security, these crackdown efforts have been met with considerable backlash, most intensely over Operation Metro Surge in Minneapolis, Minn., that resulted in the deaths of two U.S. citizens at the hands of federal agents earlier this year.
Last month, The Washington Post reported that a poll found Americans believed that the administration was going too far in its deportation efforts. Audacy also covered reports that the president was trying to pivot the administration’s messaging regarding immigration.
“It’s like you have to recognize that those, this ideological bubble that we find ourselves in, left versus right, Bill Clinton does not fit in that. Bill Clinton is securely on the right in terms of 1996 standards applied to today,” Rogan also said during the Wednesday podcast with Thompson, referring to Hillary’s husband, former President Bill Clinton, a Democrat.
Hillary seems to be on the podcaster’s mind this week. He also mentioned her in a Thursday episode with guest Dave Smith, a comic and political commenter.
“There was the famous clip with Hillary. I showed a friend of mine the other day that he hadn’t seen it and he couldn’t believe it was real. Well, she was on this show and she gets unconfirmed information first that they got [former Libyan prime minister Muammar] Gaddafi and then she gets confirmed that he's dead. And she goes: ‘We came, we saw, he died.’ She was so excited about it.”
Per the Brookings Institution, Hillary did develop a reputation for being a foreign policy “hawk,” meaning that she would be in favor of escalating U.S. military commitments. Trump has typically not been seen as a hawk, but he recently agreed to have the U.S. participate in a war on Iran. A recent poll from the Pew Research Center found that Americans generally disapprove of the military action in Iran and AP-NORC poll results also show that most Americans think the military actions in Iran have gone too far.
Rogan and Smith also discussed the concept of “MAGA” – a phrase for Trump loyalists that comes from his “Make America Great Again” slogan and signature red hat merchandise.
“But make America great again and then it becomes a movement of a bunch of f***ing dorks,” said Rogan. “Because a lot of them are dorks. A lot of them these really weird, f***ing uninteresting, unintelligent people that have got something they cling to. There’s a lot of people that are just real genuine patriots. They’re all lumped into this one group and you got to accept the dorks too. F*** that.”
Rogan himself has been cited as one of the reasons for Trump’s success in the last election, in part due to an extensive interview with him just before election day. He’s also faced claims that his team avoided a similar interview with Trump’s opponent, former Vice President Kamala Harris.
However, an article from Good Authority published last year said an analysis found that Rogan “isn’t as MAGA as you think.” Audacy has also reported on Rogan’s advice to the president to unite people rather than attack them.
