Former California Assemblyman Chuck DeVore told “Fox & Friends” Monday that comedian and podcast host Joe Rogan‘s announced move to Texas from California likely stems from a desire to get away from the “stultifying conformity that demands that everybody speak and think the same.”
“I’m going to go to Texas,” Rogan said on “The Joe Rogan Experience Pocast” last week. “I just want to go somewhere in the center of the country, somewhere [where] it’s easy to travel to both places and somewhere where you have a little bit more freedom.”
Rogan added that he thinks that Los Angeles is “overcrowded” and suggested “it’s a real issue when you look at the number of people that are catching COVID because of this overpopulation issue, when you look at the traffic, when you look at the economic despair, when you look at the homelessness problem that’s accelerated radically over the last six, seven, ten years.”
“Sure, after the Spotify contract that he signed, he will probably save in excess of $13 million in state tax by moving from California to Texas,” said DeVore, who moved to Texas from California in 2011. “But, it’s not just the taxes.
“Look at what is going on in California right now, and really in this moment in history around the U.S.,” he continued. “Joe Rogan is in the entertainment industry. He’s in the ideas industry and what you have now is this stultifying conformity that demands that everybody speak and think the same and here’s Joe Rogan.”
DeVore noted that Rogan “supported [Former Republican presidential candidate] Ron Paul, he supported [former Democratic presidential candidate] Bernie Sanders, but he likes Donald Trump more than he likes Joe Biden and he likes his Second Amendment gun rights.
“I mean, how does a guy like that even get along in LA anymore?”
In a Fox News op-ed published Monday, DeVore suggested Rogan’s planned move signals a “coming exodus from liberal cities.”
Last week Tesla CEO Elon Musk announced that he is planning to build a new car plant in Texas.
Earlier this year, Musk had threatened to pull most Tesla operations out of Northern California, citing the state’s coronavirus-related restrictions on its operations.
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Earlier this month, officials in Travis County, Texas, which includes the state capital Austin, approved a plan to provide millions in tax subsidies to Tesla if it builds a $1.1 billion vehicle factory in the area, according to Reuters.
Texas had been competing with Oklahoma to attract a new factory to build Tesla’s Y sport utility vehicles and cybertrucks.
Fox News’ Sam Dorman and Fox Business’ Ken Martin contributed to this report.