Episode 1391: Tulsi Gabbard & Jocko Willink

TL;DR: Joe Rogan gave Tulsi Gabbard a friendly platform to defend her 2017 secret meeting with Bashar al-Assad and to amplify her skepticism about Assad’s well-documented chemical weapons attacks — claims that contradicted U.S. intelligence assessments and that Gabbard herself would later walk back under oath.

This episode is problematic not because Gabbard is unqualified to discuss foreign policy — she is a veteran and was a sitting U.S. Representative — but because Rogan failed to seriously challenge her revisionist framing of one of the most documented atrocities of the Syrian civil war.

The Core Problem: Whitewashing Assad’s Chemical Weapons Use

During the episode, Gabbard defended her January 2017 secret trip to Damascus to meet with Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad and minimized concerns about his chemical weapons attacks against Syrian civilians.

Gabbard’s framing on the show: She described her meeting as “exercising diplomacy” and said it was about saying “we’re not going to come in and overthrow you and your government.”
The pattern Gabbard had established: On her campaign website and in prior interviews, she had expressed doubts about whether Assad’s forces carried out the 2017 and 2018 chemical attacks.

“It’s possible” Assad used chemical weapons — Gabbard’s hedged framing across multiple 2017-2019 interviews, even as U.S. intelligence and OPCW investigators had reached firm conclusions.

What the evidence says

U.S. Intelligence Community (2017, 2018): Confirmed with high confidence that Assad’s forces used sarin and chlorine gas in attacks including Khan Shaykhun (April 2017) and Douma (April 2018).
OPCW Fact-Finding Mission (2018): Concluded chlorine was used as a weapon in Douma. OPCW Report
OPCW Investigation and Identification Team (2020): Identified Syrian Arab Air Force pilots as responsible for the March 2017 Ltamenah attacks.
Gabbard’s 2025 reversal: During her Senate confirmation hearing for DNI, Gabbard finally answered “Yes” when asked if she accepts that Assad used chemical weapons — contradicting years of public skepticism. Al Jazeera coverage
Washington Post (2025): Reported Gabbard had relied on a contrarian MIT professor’s contested analysis rather than declassified intelligence assessments. Washington Post

Joe Rogan’s Role

Rogan repeatedly acted as a sympathetic audience rather than a skeptical interviewer.

He treated the Assad meeting as a brave diplomatic gesture rather than scrutinizing why a sitting U.S. Congresswoman met secretly with a dictator credibly accused of war crimes.
He did not push Gabbard on specific U.S. intelligence findings about Khan Shaykhun or Douma.
He allowed the framing that opposition to Gabbard came primarily from “the military-industrial complex” and “corporate media” to go unchallenged — a framing that conveniently sidestepped the substantive concerns of national security professionals.
He did not bring up the OPCW findings or the body of forensic evidence implicating Assad’s forces.

This matches a pattern on JRE where guests with contrarian foreign policy views are given long, friendly platforms without rigorous fact-checking.

Why It Matters

Assad’s chemical weapons attacks killed and injured thousands of civilians, including children. Sanitizing or muddying that record provides cover for one of the worst war criminals of the 21st century and undermines international norms against chemical weapons use.

When a guest expresses doubts about well-documented atrocities on a podcast with tens of millions of listeners, and the host does not push back, the result is the normalization of denialism.

What Was Reasonable

To be fair: Gabbard’s broader critique of U.S. regime-change wars (Iraq, Libya) is a legitimate policy position held by many credentialed foreign policy thinkers. Jocko Willink’s portions of the conversation about leadership and military experience were largely uncontroversial and within his expertise.

The problem is specifically the unchallenged Assad/chemical weapons framing — not the entire conversation.