Joe Rogan finds it “ironic” and “wild” that former NSA contractor Edward Snowden has fled a possibly “authoritarian” US for Russia, and seems happy there.
“Edward Snowden exposes the United States – exposes this like deep underlying surveillance system that it is essentially monitoring everybody and violating all of our constitutional rights, and he gets kicked out of the country and goes to Russia, and Russia takes him in. He’s happy over there. Fine in Russia,” Rogan said in a podcast with comedian Tom Segura on July 14.
“But that’s of course deliberate on their part to be like – we took your…” Segura interjected.
“Oh clearly, clearly. But still – wild. Because he went from one – you know, the way they treated him, the way they treat him, the way they treat Julian Assange, you could absolutely make the argument that this is an authoritarian state – and he leaves here to a far worse one, and there, he’s protected,” Rogan responded.
Rogan spoke to Snowden in October 2019 and then again in September 2020, with the interviews racking up tens of millions of views. In each podcast, Snowden opened up about his life in Russia, including how he occasionally gets recognized in the street, how he deliberately tries to avoid interviews with Russian media to stay out of the limelight, and how he is openly critical of the Russian state when he feels it deserves it.
Snowden has been living in Russia since 2013, taking shelter in the country while en route to Ecuador after the US stripped him of his passport in an attempt to smear him as a “Russian spy.” In late 2020, the former NSA contractor-turned-whistleblower became a father, and announced that he and his wife Lindsay Mills would be applying for dual US-Russian citizenship.
In 2015, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange told reporters that he had advised Snowden against seeking asylum in Latin America (Snowden’s original planned destination) due to fears that he might be kidnapped or assassinated there, and said that Russia was the smarter move because it was one of the few places on Earth where the CIA couldn’t reach him.
Assange’s instincts proved correct. In 2019, the Ecuadorian government allowed UK police to drag the 51-year-old WikiLeaks founder out of the Latin American country’s Embassy in London after President Lenin Moreno sold him out, reportedly to get approval for an International Monetary Fund loan. Assange now faces deteriorating health after being held in confined spaces for more than a decade, and is threatened with extradition to the United States on charges under the Espionage Act for his release of thousands of classified documents shedding light on US war crimes in Afghanistan and Iraq.