🚨NEW: Joe Rogan and Chris Williamson torch AOC’s “Woke 1.0” Rebrand:
“If you really believed in Defund the Police EXPLAIN what the hell you thought would happen when the police disappeared.”
“You owe America an explanation for how you ever thought less policing would mean less crime.”
CONTEXT: There’s an important piece of history here that makes Rogan’s question much harder to dismiss.
AOC wasn’t merely associated with the phrase “defund the police.”
In 2020, after New York officials proposed roughly $1 billion in reductions and transfers from the NYPD budget, she responded:
“Defunding police means defunding police.”
She argued the proposal didn’t go nearly far enough.
And when she was asked what a country with defunded police would actually look like, her answer was:
“It looks like a suburb.”
Her theory was that affluent communities stay safer partly because they invest heavily in housing, education, health and young people, reducing the conditions that produce crime before police ever become involved.
Fast-forward to 2026.
AOC was recently asked about progressive candidates walking away from controversial positions from that era and said a local councilman has a saying:
“Woke one was crazy.”
She argued that COVID-era politics opened the “Overton window” dramatically and said politicians should be judged partly on what they believe now.
ROGAN: “What did you think defund the police meant? Everyone's gonna eat mushrooms and we're all going to be flower children?”
WORTH NOTING: Here’s where the argument gets more interesting than the slogan.
There is strong evidence that police manpower actually affects crime.
A major study published in the American Economic Review: Insights estimated that each additional police officer prevented roughly 0.1 homicides, with the homicide-reduction benefit per capita roughly twice as large for Black victims as for white victims.
Another natural-experiment study of federal police-hiring grants found that cities receiving funding increased their police forces by about 3.2% and subsequently experienced about a 3.5% reduction in victimization-weighted crime.
But the first study also found a real cost that helps explain why the 2020 debate existed in the first place:
Larger police forces produced more arrests for low-level “quality-of-life” offenses, with Black Americans disproportionately bearing that burden.
So there were legitimate problems progressives were trying to solve.
And redirecting some responsibilities like mental-health crises, homelessness, addiction, and youth intervention away from armed police is a very different proposition from simply pretending police don't deter crime.
But that actually makes Rogan’s central question more important:
AOC had a specific theory in 2020.
Spend less on policing. Invest more upstream. Build communities where fewer situations require police in the first place.
Six years later, saying “Woke 1 was crazy” leaves an obvious unanswered question:
Which parts were crazy?
Was defunding police itself a mistake?
Was the underlying policy right but the slogan disastrous?
Does she still believe police budgets should be substantially reduced?
Or did the evidence change her mind?
Politicians absolutely should be allowed to change their views.
But Rogan’s argument is that changing your mind and explaining why you changed it are two different things.
MAIN TAKEAWAY: If “Woke 1” really was crazy, the interesting story isn't that politicians moved on. It’s figuring out what they learned from it.
Flock has 120,000 cameras tracking cars across America, no warrant required. Over 5,000 police agencies have signed on. This isn't crime fighting. This is mass surveillance of every American, and a violation of our 4th Amendment rights.
After 11 years as a sports columnist at the Seattle Times, I have decided to resign. It was entirely my choice, and it was not an easy one. The impetus was the Times declining to run a column I wrote from the perspective of two female student athletes who were opposed to competing against biological males. It was one of several pieces of mine that had been spiked, and I no longer felt like I could properly do my job as a columnist. I lay out the situation in greater detail in the link below, but I want to say that I enjoyed my time with the paper, find the talent there to be immense, and have no animosity toward anyone who works there. It was just time for a change.
https://t.co/NAhfUbmaPI
🔥NEW: Ex-Biden Aide Michael LaRosa *FIRES BACK* at Michigan Dem C-SPAN Caller who rips him for attacking Abdul El-Sayed🔥
Caller: "As a Democratic strategist coming on a national program, I think that’s totally UNACCEPTABLE — and I think that you’re doing a DISSERVICE!"
LaRosa: "I could NEVER support El-Sayed ... if you're too COWARDLY and too WEAK to stand up to somebody who JUSTIFIES terrorism, 9/11, the suffering of people ... this guy doesn’t have it in him to say it’s WRONG to say that."
"The test of leadership is NOT standing up to the other side. That’s EASY to do. It's standing up to your FRIENDS. And he's too much of a COWARD to do it."
Major props to Michael LaRosa for putting his principles over his party. It shows true courage.
He's taking tons of heat from his own side — including multiple callers during his appearance here on @cspanwj.
So this is pretty wild: A polling firm that came out of nowhere to show Francesca Hong with a 23-point lead over David Crowley in the Wisconsin primary has shut down and said its whole operation was bogus
In France, Gisèle Pelicot became a hero. In Iran, she would have been hanged like Marziyeh and Reyhaneh Jabbari.
Thanks to @CBSNews for the opportunity to tell Marzieh's story, a child bride in Iran who did the ONLY thing she could when a man tried to rape her. Iran called it murder. And hanged her.
Reporting rape is impossible, because under Sharia law, you must produce 4 male witnesses to the assault itself.
If you can't, your accusation becomes a confession. You are no longer the victim. You are the criminal.
Where are the women of the #MeToo movement? Women in Iran are being executed.
💔
California’s High-Speed Rail is the quintessential example of government mismanagement.
I’ve called it out since day 1.
Californians were promised a completed rail 6 years ago. Today we’ve spent billions and billions, for a total of zero trains.
Gavin Newsom owes us an explanation. And an apology. It’s beyond time to shut this down.
It’s becoming clear that many people do not have a “line in the sand,” past which they will not go politically.
I am seeing people:
- supporting known terrorist groups.
- voting for people that do not want police helping you, nor jails to hold murderers or rapists.
- shrugging their shoulders at the rapes of over a quarter of a million women.
- accepting leaders who subscribe to marrying children and raping them (“consummation”).
- taking people’s private property.
The list goes on.
The fact that these people haven’t all said, “Nope. Stop here. I’m done. Not going there,” is proof they are mentally ill. I will not tolerate them if they appear to have zero personal moral code. It’s inhuman.
Islamic Republic in Iran hangs 24-Year-old woman who defended herself from sexual assault
Yesterday the regime executed Marziyeh Neyri yesterday, a young woman who was forced into marriage at age 17 and hanged for fighting back against her attacker.
Marziyeh was 18 years old when her husband's associate attempted to sexually assault her in her own home, in front of her husband. She grabbed a kitchen knife to defend herself. Her husband died in the struggle.
She told the court she had been repeatedly assaulted by her husband's associates before that day. Iran's courts didn't care.
The regime rejected her self-defense claim. Her attacker, who survived, took the stand and called her a murderer. The court believed him over her.
She was sentenced to death.
No clemency. No mercy. The sentence was carried out at Chubindar Prison in Qazvin.
Marziyeh Neyri never had a chance. Forced into marriage as a child under Iran's Islamic laws, she spent the few years of her adult life in a courtroom, fighting for her life after defending it.
She lost.
This is the Sharia Laws in Islamic Republic of Iran where a woman can be hanged for surviving.
💔
AOC and the far-left said these issues were existential just a couple of years ago. They said we needed to reorder our entire society and nation around them…
Now they are laughing it all off, admitting they got swept up and couldn’t think logically.
You are not fit to lead.
Hall of Famer Don Nelson, three-time NBA Coach of the Year and five times a champion as a player with the Boston Celtics, has died at age 86.
The family has issued this statement:
“On Sunday morning our beloved husband, dad, grandfather and great-grandfather Don Nelson peacefully went to be with the Lord, surrounded by his loving family. Throughout his last week, friends and family encircled him with love, sharing the blessing of his friendship and revisiting treasured memories.”
The campaign against men has been shameful.
Men should see this as nothing more than a spiritual attack. It was perpetrated by insecure and weak people wanting to diminish your natural assets, such that they would not appear so insecure and weak by comparison.
Reject it. It’s complete bullshit.
Be great.