In probably the best case scenario you’re gonna get here, Joe Rogan mostly walked back his recent remarks to Tulsi Gabbard about public schools being forced to install litter boxes in restrooms to accommodate students who identify as furries. The urban legend, which originated in Canada, has been debunked for an entire year now, but that hasn’t stopped Republican politicians from spreading it on the campaign trail going into the midterm elections.
While hosting Gabbard on his show in mid-October, Rogan spread the thoroughly debunked myth with the following anecdote. Via Reuters:
Rogan claims to know a friend whose wife “works at a school that had to install a litter box in the girl’s room because there is a girl who’s a furry.”
“Her mother badgered the school until they agreed to put a litter box in one of the stalls,” Rogan tells Gabbard. He added that they “conned the school into putting this expletive litter box in a girl’s room.”
Obviously, that’s some incredibly thin and non-credible sourcing, which Rogan learned the hard way after he began getting peppered with messages that the litter box story is an “internet rumor.” On the most recent episode of The Joe Rogan Experience, Rogan admitted that he tried to verify his friend’s wife’s story, and it did not go well.
“So I contacted him again and I said, ‘Tell me exactly what she said and contact her and find out.’ She no longer works for that school. She works for another school. She contacted the other school. She didn’t get a response,” Rogan said via Mediaite.
However, before you give Rogan too much credit, he gave himself some wiggle room by saying he thinks some mom did try to request a litter box, which again, no. Nobody is doing this.
“I don’t think they actually did it,” Rogan said. “I think there was discussions about doing it because there was one particularly wacky mother, but there is — it doesn’t seem that there’s any proof that they put a litter box in there.”
(Via Mediaite)