Joe Rogan and Bret Weinstein unload on NYT article about danger of Constitution

(Daily Caller News Foundation) – Popular podcast host Joe Rogan and biologist Bret Weinstein on Wednesday criticized The New York Times for a piece about the threats posed by the U.S. Constitution.

The NYT’s non-fiction book critic Jennifer Szalai published an article on Saturday titled, “The Constitution Is Sacred. Is It Also Dangerous?” featuring a subheading that reads, “One of the biggest threats to America’s politics might be the country’s founding document.” Rogan, on “The Joe Rogan Experience,” said the article is “so crazy” and Weinstein characterized it as stemming from an “authoritarian force.”

“I want Brett to see this so he knows this is real. This isn’t the Babylon Bee; this is an actual New York Times article … This is so crazy,” Rogan said. “It’s really hard to believe that someone would print this, and that The New York Times would say, ‘Yeah, we like it, put it out there.’”

Rogan then read the headline and subheading, asking, “What the fuck are you talking about? One of the biggest threats to America’s politics might be one of the greatest documents that any country was ever founded on — if not the greatest ever. That could be a threat to America’s politics? What politics are we talking about? Like, how could you possibly gaslight me enough to go along with you on this?”

Szalai’s article was a review of a University of California law school dean Erwin Chemerinsky’s “No Democracy Lasts Forever,” which was published Aug. 20 and argues that the United States Constitution has become a “threat to American democracy” that is “beyond redemption. The critic claimed that “Constitution worship” is potentially harming the American political system in her review, referencing the arguments of Chemerinsky and other liberal legal scholars.

Weinstein said the article is “incredible,” but also “completely predictable.”

“There’s obviously an authoritarian force there that just grinds its teeth at night over the Constitution and the fact that it prevents it from doing things it just wants to do last week, you know?” he said. “And so of course, they’re like scratching their heads, like, ‘Can we come up with an argument for why it might be time to get rid of that thing?’ And of course, if you’re a normal thinking person, this is complete insanity. But if you’re a New York Times reader, I’m sure that fits with the kind of ethos that’s been cultivated.”

Chemerinsky also called for a new constitution on “Morning Joe” Friday, claiming that failure to modify the current document would cause the U.S. to “drift toward authoritarianism.”