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Rogan Reveals Presidents Contacted Spotify to Remove Him During COVID

Joe Rogan Experience · #2515 - Chase Hughes · June 17, 2026
Rogan Reveals Presidents Contacted Spotify to Remove Him During COVID
Joe Rogan Experience
Joe Rogan Experience
#2515 - Chase Hughes
"There was presidents involved and former presidents involved that were contacting Spotify. Oh yeah. Trying to get me removed for vaccine misinformation. And it happened. It turned out to be right. All of it. Not a single fucking apologize."
Joe Rogan disclosed that sitting and former U.S. presidents directly contacted Spotify during the COVID-19 pandemic attempting to have his podcast removed from the platform for alleged vaccine misinformation. Rogan said he lost many sponsors due to coordinated campaigns involving significant money and multiple political action committees. He credits Spotify being a non-American company and his number-one status in 90 countries with saving his show from cancellation.

About this episode

Joe Rogan sat down with Chase Hughes, a behavior profiler who trains the U.S. Army Psyops Division, for a wide-ranging conversation that touched on psychedelics, government manipulation, memory editing, and media propaganda. The episode's most explosive revelation came when Rogan disclosed that sitting and former U.S. presidents directly contacted Spotify during COVID-19 to have his podcast removed for vaccine misinformation, part of coordinated campaigns involving PACs and significant money that ultimately failed due to his international reach. Hughes revealed he purchased a physical TV station near his home and launched Station One on YouTube to combat psychological operations by running daily news through what he calls a 'SIOPS Index'—a scoring system to identify government and media manipulation tactics. The conversation explored Hughes's extensive DMT experiences, including a 5.5-hour intravenous session where he asked if he was dead 39 times and claimed entities performed surgery on him matching prayers his wife had offered. Hughes detailed a hypnosis-based memory editing technique he's performed hundreds of times, comparing it to glitching a video game by modifying one pixel. Rogan shared that former Texas Governor Rick Perry, once opposed to drugs, now dedicates his life to psychedelic advocacy after ibogaine reversed his brain atrophy. The pair discussed Operation Mockingbird's infiltration of news media, with Hughes revealing Anderson Cooper interned at the CIA and hundreds of journalists served as assets. Hughes taught Rogan CIA elicitation methods used to extract classified information without direct questioning, explaining how KGB agents obtained submarine specs from sailors in bars during the Cold War. The episode covered red light therapy's effects on vision, methylene blue's neurological benefits, the UFC's historic White House event, and theories connecting DMT experiences to religious imagery in ancient mosques and biblical stories. Throughout, both emphasized the dangers of ideological capture, the loneliness pandemic driven by performative behavior, and the need for authentic communication in an era of coordinated propaganda.

Key takeaways

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