Joe Rogan supported Trump – and showed us who he really was all along.

Inside every young MAGA male are two very stupid wolves. (It's basic science, people.) A wolf is Donald Trump telling young men that, like him, they should be able to do and say whatever they want without ever suffering consequences. The other wolf is Joe Rogan, who tells them that their parents unfairly scolded them for calling Pope Francis an “idiot.” There's probably a third wolf who stages elaborate trick-shot stunts on YouTube or gives out gross dating advice on Twitch or something, but I'm over 40 and can only keep track of so many wolves. The first two wolves are the only ones we have to worry about today.

There has been much commentary in recent months about how and why so many young American men appear to be turning to the political right. While I suspect there are fewer die-hard young MAGA bros than the thinking industrial complex would suggest, I'm also betting that it's the boys who are doing it Do Those who fit this description are probably also big fans of Joe Rogan's podcast. On Monday, Rogan endorsed Trump's presidential candidacy, about a week after the candidate conducted a rambling and silly interview with the podcaster in which the two men flattered each other's prejudices and said very little of substance over the course of a three-hour race on the floor. If any of this surprises you, then you clearly haven't been paying attention to Rogan's show or how it's been going over the last few years.

When I profiled Rogan for Slate five and a half years ago, after listening to hundreds of hours of his podcasts, I thought his show was “the factory that whitewashes red pills.” While many of his guests were intellectual dark web types who dabbled in “cultural Marxism,” “shadow banning,” “cancel culture,” and other amorphous reactionary bogeymen, Rogan himself continued to insist that he himself was a liberal who did that I agree with most political positions left of center. This self-identification obviously didn't last, and Rogan's own career illustrates the path by which young men could end up on the MAGA side of the fence.

Nowadays, The Joe Rogan Experience is basically a right-wing podcast that sometimes interviews people like Adam Sandler. In the show, the stand-up comedian and MMA commentator welcomes a variety of guests from the fields of art, business, science and politics. Many of these guests are also the kind of people who ironically use phrases like “The Woke Mind Virus”; Many of them have made it their mission to denigrate our best cultural and academic institutions as diversity-focused indoctrination centers where elite cultural commissioners conspire to prevent white men from getting a fair chance. Rogan covers this reactionary commentary with a facade of curious, good humor, always insisting that he's “just asking questions,” rarely admitting that the questions he's asking are very, very stupid.

Rogan's bailiwick, in other words, is not unlike Donald Trump's. Both men enjoy speculating about conspiracies and disparaging the woke left; both men like to ask bad questions but refuse to listen to complex answers; both men prefer plain, inarticulate speech and performative masculinity; Both men are happy to endorse products of dubious value. They are the twin wolves of the young male MAGA soul, and if Trump is the cool older rich guy that these young men want to be when they grow up, then Rogan is the funny cousin who turns them on while simultaneously encouraging them to break Drop out of college and sign up for a Jordan Peterson seminar instead. You all deserve each other, and the rest of us deserve better them.