As Aaron Rodgers repeatedly went on The Pat McAfee Show to spew anti-vax narratives last season, everyone assumed it was only a matter of time before he joined Joe Rogan’s podcast for a tell-all interview.
The tell-all interview came this week, but it wasn’t with his “good friend” Joe Rogan, it was with his other friend Aubrey Marcus. During a wide-ranging interview with Marcus, Rodgers spoke out against the backlash he received for not getting vaccinated last year and the narratives it provided for our binary news media.
“It’s ugly on both sides,” Rodgers said. “And I could feel it when I came out and said what I said, some of the interview requests – it was like all the right was like ‘he’s our champion now’ and all the left was like ‘he’s the enemy.’ Which was people against the vax and people for the vax, basically.”
While Rodgers was widely criticized after it was revealed that he was unvaccinated and tested positive for COVID-19 last season, the backlash was less about his vaccine refusal and more about the fact that he lied about being immunized against the virus a few months earlier. But Rodgers is correct in his assessment that he provided fuel for news outlets on the right and left to politicize the quarterback.
“Politics is a sham, first of all,” Rodgers continued. “And I wouldn’t do CNN just like I wouldn’t do Fox News. I have no desire to be a part of this. I’m sharing a personal opinion based on my own health, what I think is best for my body and you can disagree with it all you want, you can agree with it and champion it, but I’m not saying it to gain favor with one side and hate from the other. Naturally my opinion became very polarizing, because feel strongly on both sides about it.
“I hope, at the bare minimum, that there was conversation that could be had, civil conversation,” Rodgers added. “We’ve taken out of our society a lot of that ability to have differing opinions because one has to be right and one has to be wrong. ‘I have to be smart and you have to be dumb.’”
After Rodgers lied to the media about his vaccine status, Fox News and other conservative outlets seemed to appreciate his dishonesty and treated the quarterback as a hero. Apparently, Rodgers didn’t appreciate the new fanfare. He didn’t help his cause by casting doubt over the 2020 election during an interview earlier this year, but Rodgers is now attempting to disavow that conservative media support.
No Aaron Rodgers on CNN, no Aaron Rodgers on Fox News, but I’m not ready to say that his appearance on The Aubrey Marcus Podcast will negate an eventual interview with Rogan.
About Brandon Contes
Brandon Contes is a staff writer for Awful Announcing and The Comeback. He previously helped carve the sports vertical for Mediaite and spent more than three years with Barrett Sports Media. Send tips/comments/complaints to bcontes@thecomeback.com