Just as Joe Rogan curbed one controversy he walked right into another. The podcast icon has been at the front of a Spotify scandal and faced accusations of racism for weeks, and recently, Rogan found himself once again being ridiculed, this time over a fake article about the Russia-Ukraine conflict. Of course, the world has been watching with keen attention on Russia's described "unprovoked" invasion of Ukraine. This has caused a worldwide backlash against Vladimir Putin as sanctions have come down on Russia and international companies have vowed to stop doing business with the country.
Social media has been pelted with information from all directions, and it isn't difficult to find millions of reposts across all platforms. Rogan has been sharing information about the conflict and on Instagram, he uploaded a screenshot of an alleged CNN article that stated famed actor Steven Seagal had joined Russian special forces.
Action star Steven Seagal was famously banned from Ukraine back in 2017 after Putin, a friend of the actor's, gave him a Russian passport. Ukraine deemed him a threat, but recently Seagal has stated that he is praying for both countries.
“Most of us have friends and family in Russia & Ukraine,” he reportedly said. “I look at both as one family and really believe it is an outside entity spending huge sums of money on propaganda to provoke the two countries to be at odds with each other.”
Meanwhile, a fake post circulated online that looked to be from CNN stating that Seagal was with Russian special forces near Kyiv in Ukraine. It even included a photo of Seagal in military garb with other soldiers, but a quick search found that the image was from one of the actor's films. Over 400K likes and 11K comments later, Rogan deleted the post returned with an explanation.
“I deleted my earlier post about Steven Seagal being in Ukraine because it was parody, which isn’t surprising, but honestly it wouldn’t be surprising if it was true either,” wrote Rogan. “He was banned from Ukraine in 2017 because he was labeled as a national security threat. I, like all of you, hope the tragic situation is resolved there quickly.”
Because Rogan has been long accused of spreading misinformation with the public via his over 10 million podcast listeners, this Seagal controversy has caused him to once again face allegations of perpetuating harmful fake news. Check it out below.