Joe Rogan, Riley Gaines Edit Goes Viral—’Deserves an Award’

Riley Gaines has shared an edited video of her appearance on the Joe Rogan Experience podcast, saying the clip “deserves an award.”

Gaines is a former collegiate swimmer for the University of Kentucky who has been outspoken in her opposition to transgender policies in sports. In 2022, she tied for fifth place with transgender swimmer Lia Thomas in the 200-yard NCAA freestyle championship. Gaines has been critical of Thomas being allowed to compete and she testified on Capitol Hill about being uncomfortable around the swimmer in the locker room.

When the former collegiate swimmer appeared on Rogan’s show in March, she shared her frustration with the fact that she competed against Thomas as well as her opinion on transgender athletes.

However, social media users online have since edited parts of the two-and-a-half-hour podcast episode into a minute-and-a-half-long clip. In the viral clip, Rogan has been edited to make it seem like he is hitting on Gaines while she is declining his advances.

Gaines shared the video to her X (formerly Twitter) account with the caption: “Whoever made this edit deserves an award [laugh crying emoji].” At the time of writing, the tweet had been viewed 1.5 million times.

Newsweek emailed a spokesperson for Rogan and contacted Gaines via X for comment on Wednesday.

“I can see your bulge,” Gaines said at the beginning of the doctored clip, to which Rogan’s jaw dropped. “That’s disgusting.”

Rogan responded: “So you can see my d***. It’s no big deal. Like, I don’t care. This is normal stuff.”

In reality, in this portion of the podcast, the duo were talking about sharing locker rooms with transgender athletes. In context, Rogan said: “If a trans man’s in the locker room with me, I’m like, what’s up, dude? I don’t care. I’m not nervous you’re going to rape me, right? I’m not nervous that you could see my dick. This is normal stuff, right? But if a woman is in a locker room with a fully intact man who’s six foot four, is walking around and pretending he’s a woman. That’s madness. Now you’re like, oh, my God. The no rules apply. What happened to perverts?”

Elsewhere in the edited video, Gaines asked Rogan to “put it away,” to which the edited clip had him responding: “No. Sometimes I use it to have sex with girls. It’s so fun.”

“That’s grotesque, it is perverse, it is disgusting,” Gaines responded.

In this edited version of their conversation, Rogan told the swimmer, “You and I could have babies.” This was edited from two very different sentences from the podcast episode, which were “You and I could FaceTime” and another in which Rogan said the word “babies.” (L) Riley Gaines on May 20, 2024, in New York City and (R) Joe Rogan on May 7, 2022, in Phoenix, Arizona. Gaines has shared an edited video of her appearance on Rogan’s podcast, saying it “deserves an award.”

“I don’t really care, like, you’re ugly. You’re disgusting. What a disgrace you are. That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard in my life. I’ve got news for you, it is sexual harassment,” Gaines said.

The video concluded with the former competitive swimmer saying, “Let’s deescalate and get me home safely,” to which Rogan said: “I’m gonna put you in a cage.”

In a previous conversation with Newsweek, Gaines argued that being required to change alongside transgender athletes, who may still have intact male genitalia, constitutes a form of sexual abuse.

“If you look at this at the most basic level, we were not asked for our consent, we did not give our consent yet there was a naked man taking his clothes off inches away from where we were taking our clothes off,” she said. “I mean how else could you describe sexual harassment or sexual misconduct or sexual abuse?

“That’s quite literally what the NCAA and other organizations and people continue to put women through. The easiest way to explain it: How can anyone dispute that that is not sexual harassment?”

When contacted for comment previously, a spokesperson for the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) pointed Newsweek to comments by Charlie Baker, the body’s new president, during testimony to a Senate committee in October 2023.

He said: “I’m not going to defend what happened in 2022. I wasn’t there. I was still governor of the Commonwealth. What I will say is, we have very specific rules and standards around the safety and security of all our student athletes, and anyone who hosts one of our national championships has to accept that they know what they are and then abide by them accordingly.

“I don’t believe that policy would be the policy we would use today.”

In a statement sent to Newsweek, the National Center for Transgender Equality argued that not allowing transgender people to use facilities that match their gender identity is a form of discrimination and puts them in physical danger.

“Transgender youth are at increased risk of assault and other forms of harm when forced to use facilities with members of a different gender than the one that they live as every day,” it said.

“Banning transgender students from freely and safely accessing public places, like bathrooms and changing rooms, sends the message that transgender children do not belong. Transgender students simply want to live freely and authentically as themselves, just like every other student.”