Joe Rogan says 'weasels' in Biden admin are 'gaslighting' Americans by changing definition of 'recession'

Podcaster and comedian Joe Rogan called the Biden administration a "bunch of weasels" that are "gaslighting" the public by changing the definition of "recession."

Rogan made the comments during the latest installment of his show while speaking with guest Chris Williamson.

Williamson informs Rogan that the Biden administration has refused to admit that the US is in a recession and noted that they are using an altered definition of the word. He then tells Rogan about Wikipedia changing its definition to reinforce the false notion that the US is not in a recession.

The White House changed the definition of "recession" last week ahead of the release of Thursday's economic report, which showed that the US has, in fact, had two consecutive quarters of declining GDP. This was the standard definition, but the White House declared that the definition should be tied more closely to unemployment numbers.

The Biden administration quietly changed the definition last week and wrote in a White House blog post, "While some maintain that two consecutive quarters of falling real GDP constitute a recession, that is neither the official definition nor the way economists evaluate the state of the business cycle."

"They redefined recession?" asked Rogan.

"Recession used to be two consecutive quarters of negative GDP growth," said Williamson. "A bunch of economic advisors have got quotes of them saying what a recession is, especially when Trump was in office... negative GDP growth for two consecutive quarters, and then this weekend they're asking them, 'are we in a recession' because the second quarter economic just came out, and it's an 0.9 decline again," he said.

Rogan then said that White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre was guilty of "the wildest gaslighting."

"Have you seen the White House press secretary define the economy as being strong and the best economy we've had in over a decade? Have you seen her do that? It's hilarious, it's the wildest gaslighting," he said.

"That's gaslighting. Just that alone—people think that it's trivial because they're talking about this economic downturn, but it's not trivial. We've always used the term, 'recession' and we've always used it to define whether or not the economic policies that are currently in place, and whether or not the government has done a good job of making sure that the economy stays in a good place," said Rogan.

"They definitely haven't done that, so in order to escape that sort of distinction, they're literally changing the definition, which is terrible and should be pushed back against in a big way. It should be something that people get angry about, like hey, 'you're f*cking with definitions in order to pretend that you're doing a good job.'"

"The reason that you attach a sequence of letters to something is to represent what that thing is. You don't change reality by changing what those words actually mean. But if you can't control the economy, you might as well control the language and hope for the best," said Williamson.

"What a bunch of weasels," Rogan said.