Joe Rogan talks a lot of shit, and his newest narrative involved schools providing litter boxes to students that identify as furries. Except that’s not true — obviously — and Rogan clarified his fib on a recent episode of his podcast.
In an episode of The Joe Rogan Experience, titular host Joe Rogan followed up on his previous comments claiming that a school agreed to put a litter box in the bathroom so a student who identified as a furry could urinate and defecate in peace. Last month, Rogan shared the ‘story’ in an episode with Tulsi Gabbard, saying that a friend of his — whose wife is a teacher — informed Rogan that the school made the decision to install the litter box in the bathroom.
However, about two weeks later, Rogan walked back on his story, specifying that no decision by the school had been made before blaming a “whacky mother” who caused the school to have “discussions,” before he pivoted to an anecdote about passing by a furry convention while travelling. Rogan provided clarification on his comments in Episode 1888 with guest Michael Shermer — who prompted the conversation after discussing how misinformation is politicized by those on the right end of the political spectrum. Rogan says shortly after the 54-minute mark:
I fed into that and I should probably clarify a little bit. I have a friend, and my friend’s wife is a schoolteacher, and she told him that there was [sic] discussions in the school that a mother wanted to put a litter box in one of the bathrooms. He told me this and I talked about it on here, and then people were saying ‘That’s not true, that’s an internet rumour.’ So I contacted him again, and I said ‘Tell me exactly what she said. Contact her and find out.’ She no longer works for that school, she works for another school. She contacted the other school, she didn’t get a response.
But Mr. Rogan, that’s not the story you told to Gabbard in the episode published on October 11. Rogan made the claim that the school had not only agreed to put a litter box in the girl’s bathroom, but that they had already done so. He says to Gabbard at the 26:40 mark:
My friend, his wife is a school teacher. She works at a school that had to install a litter box in the girl’s room because there is a girl who is a furry who identifies as an animal, and her mother badgered the school until they agreed to put a litter box in one of the stalls. So this girl goes into the litter room, or to the girl’s room, and urinates or whatever. I don’t know if she poops in it, that’s gross…You’ve conned the school into putting this fucking litter box in a girl’s room, which is bananas.
The litter box conspiracy has been a repeated attack on LGBTQ students on the Republican campaign trail since early October, when Colorado representative Lauren Boebert claimed the same. “They are putting litter boxes in schools for people who identify as cats,” Boebert said, as quoted in the Colorado Times Recorder. “Durango is doing this. This is how extreme it is.” A representative from Durango School District told the Recorder that Boebert’s comments were false.