Fact Checking Charlie Kirk’s Claim About R. Kelly and Spotify

Yes, his music is still available on the streaming service.

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In a tweet, Charlie Kirk claimed that while the presence of Joe Rogan’s podcast on Spotify has been controversial, convicted sex offender and trafficker R. Kelly’s music is still hosted by the streaming service.

The post received more attention when it was shared on Facebook and went viral.

Kirk’s comments come on the tail of a number of musicians and other figures pushing for Spotify to remove Rogan’s podcast for Rogan’s promotion of COVID misinformation on his show and the revelation that he’d used racially offensive language in the past. Rogan has a deal with Spotify worth more than $100 million, through which Spotify receives exclusive streaming rights to his podcast.

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  1. Avatar photo
    Ben Connelly

    Good. Spotify shouldn’t take down music just because the artist did something terrible.

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    The Bell Tower

    Why can’t we “mute” Rogan then?

    Oh, right. Because he’s a threat to the narrative and information dissemination that certain powers within this country are desperate to retain control of.

    R Kelly just urinates on little girls.

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    Evan Donovan

    Joe Rogan's podcast in itself didn't kill people. That's a pretty condescending view of people's intelligence. I know that it's not strictly speaking a violation of free speech for a private platform to choose not to air someone, but if there are no channels through which debate on contested issues can be held, then people will think the truth is being withheld from them.

    I am more concerned about mainstream authorities like Fauci lying in the name of the greater good than I am about Rogan - especially since he also had guests on that supported vaccines.

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      The Bell Tower

      I love it when I get to trot out Tocqueville quotes. This tactic is now new:

      “Authors were harried to an extent that won them sympathy, but not enough to inspire them with any real fear. They were, in fact, subjected to the petty persecutions that spur men to revolt, but not to the steady pressure that breaks their spirit. The legal proceedings taken against our writers were almost always dilatory, widely publicized but ineffective; indeed, they seemed less calculated to deter them from writing than to incite them to persist. In short, total freedom of the press would not have been so injurious to the Church as these half measures."

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    Victor Clairmont

    So, this one was an easy one to fact check obviously since one can just hop on Spotify and see if R Kelly’s music is there.

    I guess it’s a mandatory thing for viral posts on Facebook that are political to get fact checked?

    Hopefully this was one of your easiest to fact check Alec!

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    Frank Lee

    So...

    The billionaire boys club (BBC) wants the Great Reset globalist project because it means more billions.

    The BBC has their assets managed by Blackrock, Vanguard, State Street etc.

    Those trillion dollar asset management companies own the media. So the BBC owns the media.

    Neil Young recently sold the rights to his portfolio to Blackrock.

    If you think that any of this has anything to do with principles, you are either in on the looting scheme, or are just ignorant to be manipulated by your media feeds.

    This is all about money. Has always been about money. BLM is about money. #MeToo is about money. You are either a producer trying to make money by adding value to the economy. Or you are a looter trying to make money by taking from producers. Or you are a moocher that will sell your loyalty to a looter for some crumbs.

    The BBC and the American political establishment need to destroy people like Rogan because he thinks. The BBC and the American political establishment cannot allow people to think... they need to just be complaint and do what their media feeds tell them to do.

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    Frank Lee

    This point of Kirk's is yet another fantastic example in a long list of examples of blaring hypocrisy of the left. However, it does not matter as the left is not attacking Rogan based on any moral principles. The left is attacking Rogan only because of politics.

    Everything the Democrats and their left mob armies are doing is because of their clinging desperation to hold onto their voter demographics. Since Rogan has attracted a large audience of young people that he is waking up from their campus Marxist indoctrination fog, he has become a choice target.

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      Pat Riot

      Brillant. Joe Rogan endorsed Bernie Sanders. The word "marxist" probably doesn't mean what you think it means.

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        Frank Lee

        Whom the Democrat establishment has destroyed in two elections. Joe is a rational thinker who asks questions and gets on interesting guests who are not just partisan hacks, but are other rational thinkers. Rational thinkers threaten the Democrat establishment. Frankly, the armies of woke campus clones are sleepwalking in error supporting the establishment. Rogan is waking them up.

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          Pat Riot

          They have nothing to lose but their chains!

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    Pat Riot

    Listening to R. Kelly doesn't kill people. Listening Joe Rogan's podcast has. Massive difference.

    The Joe Rogan thing is *not* like the rest of the "cancel culture" cases in the past few years. What Joe Rogan did is something entirely different. It's closer to yelling fire in a crowded theater.

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      David Chen

      You think the people who listen to Rogan and his guests are idiots. Why do you care that they endanger themselves and die?

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    2. Mathew A

      "Listening to R. Kelly doesn't kill people. Listening Joe Rogan's podcast has"

      "It's closer to yelling fire in a crowded theater."

      Having respected doctors/scientists that take a contrary view on something they have expert knowledge on it equivalent to shouting "fire" in a theater that isn't on fire?

      Come on, those aren't equivalent at all. You don't agree with him giving those people a platform fine. But no way are those two equivalent

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        Pat Riot

        A doctor who says the entire pandemic was "planned" is akin to a schizophrenic yelling about the imaginary fire in a crowded theater leading to a crush that kills people.

        Now imagine a comedian bringing this schizo to said crowded theater because he thought it would be funny.

        Now imagine Spotify making millions of dollars on what is essentially a snuff podcast.

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          The Bell Tower

          A doctor who says the entire pandemic was planned is a fool. No power can silence such speech and even if it could, the kind of people who believe such foolishness will soon find some other dangerous bullshit.

          Shall publishers cease publishing Mein Kampf? A lot of people died for the lies in that book and we are told white supremacy is a grave threat right now.

          Of course, Rogan is not a snuff podcast. This is just hyperbolic nonsense. If people can’t be trusted with inaccurate information, they can’t be trusted with freedom at all.

          And while I’m inclined to agree that many certainly can’t be trusted, there is no regulatory power (private or public) that I trust to control that information. The only weapon in such a war is truth.

          But given the choice, I’ll take my chances with the nut jobs who believe in faked moon landings and stolen elections over the people who think they can control appropriate speech.

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            Pat Riot

            For the thousandth time, nobody is being "censored".

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      Frank Lee

      BS. All Rogan did was have on highly qualified guests to discuss their points of view. Rogan just asked questions. Goebbels would be proud of your position here.

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        Pat Riot

        Rogan said that taking the vax was more dangerous than not taking the vax. That is not, "just asking questions". That's why hundreds of doctors from across the United States implored Spotify to stop spreading misinformation.

        https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/covid-misinformation-joe-rogan-spotify-petition-1282240/

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          David Chen

          "In other words, if you are a young male who is vaccinated you have two choices. Option A: don’t get a booster and run a 0.3 in 100,000 risk of ending up in the hospital with Covid. Option B: get the booster and run a 10 in 100,000 risk of getting myocarditis. "

          https://bariweiss.substack.com/p/why-are-we-boosting-kids

          Know who Joe Rogan's audience is? Primarily young males.

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          Frank Lee

          Sorry Pat for my anger and name calling. But you are wrong about this. Go back and listen to the podcast that resulted in the demand for Rogan to be canceled. It is an obvious political attack and an attack on general free speech rights.

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          Frank Lee

          Effing Ministry of Truth BS. I know your colors now. Not a free speech supporter.

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          Frank Lee

          You are a liar sir. He did not.

          The demand to cancel him came after he had two guests on his show.

          Dr McCullough is a cardiologist and he is the most published physician in his field in history.

          Dr Malone owns nine patents on the creation of the mRNA vaccine technology and is at least partially responsible for the creation of the technology that led to mRNA vaccines.

          “Both these people are very highly credentialed, very intelligent, and very accomplished people, and they have an opinion that’s different from the mainstream narrative. I wanted to hear what their opinion is.” Said Rogan.

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            Pat Riot

            Peter McCullough also said the pandemic was "planned" on purpose and scientists and doctors are all conspiring to make people sicker to... make money or something.

            And why would a bunch of random doctors what to launch *political hit* on Joe Rogan? Are all of these doctors secretly Joe Biden supporters angry about Joe Rogan's endorsement of Bernie Sanders in 2020, and they all decided, in lock step, to put their name on a *political* statement?

            And out of the several hundred on the list, not a single one of them wanted to go on Fox News and becoming the Republicans biggest folk hero since Kyle Rittenhouse?

            See, that's the problem with all of these conspiracy theories like the moon landing and 9/11 and so forth: you can't answer the question *why* anybody would want to do this, and you can't explain how hundreds or even thousands of co-conspirators can engage in a massive subterfuge without a single conspirator breaking ranks and exposing the conspiracy to the whole world.

            To say nothing of the hundreds of millions of people who have taken the vax and are fine compared to the thousands who haven't who have *died*.

            Maybe go visit your local hospital sometime and ask the people who have worked consistent 110 hour weeks in the last nine months taking care of the unvaccinated how funny they think Joe Rogan is. Maybe they will let you put a toe tag on a dead body if you ask nice.

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        Bill Nelson

        That is a very big step to far.

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    Mike B

    I am a big Neil Young and Joni Mitchell fan but hate that they are doing this. At this rate every artist will have have their own streaming service open only to those artists with whom they are in 100% agreement on every imaginable issue past, present, or future.

    I think I'll put Like a Hurricane on the stereo and kick back and listen to a Joe Rogan podcast. Take that, Neil! And take that, Joe!

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      Bill Nelson

      Saw Neil at a Lollapalozza about 20 years ago, so he was mid-50s. Long hair, skater shorts, baggy t-shirt. Up and down on the stage, he never missed a note. Awesome.

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      Mike B

      Also Neil, what about Down by the River? If I share a service with you, does that mean I approve of murder?

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  9. Jason Runyan

    Ugh! It sickens me when I have to agree with Charlie Kirk.

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    Bill Nelson

    You can go through a lot of music and find artists or songs which are offensive. Remove the Mamas and Papas for the horrendous behavior of John Phillips.

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      Ben Connelly

      What did he do?

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      Pat Riot

      The difference is that the Mamas and Papas *music* doesn't kill people. Joe Rogan's podcast *does*.

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        Probably Wrong

        Podcasts don’t kill people, viruses do.

        A lot of the antivax morons go to certain websites to load up on misinformation, perhaps these should be scrubbed from the internet by those who know better. If Robert Malone wrote all his BS down in a book, perhaps it should be burned.

        This is an unwise path.

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          Pat Riot

          Nobody is talking about using the government to do anything about Rogan nor should they. But what he did was morally reprehensible, and Spotify helped him do it.

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            Probably Wrong

            I didn’t say the government would do it. Maybe AWS refuses to host the servers, as do all the other providers. Maybe we de-list the antivaxxer websites from the DNS registry. Maybe Barnes and Noble and Amazon all get together and burn Robert Malone’s opus, The Hypothetical Guide to Why Vaccines Are Evil.

            Censorship is censorship, and while it is not always inherently evil, it is always risky, and should be embarked on with a lot more humility than the immediate leap to, “people are dying, something must be done!”

            And anyway, the fact pattern strikes me as unlikely wherein someone was still unvaccinated in December 2021 after months of vax availability in the West (where most Rogan viewers live), but was totally just about to go get a shot, then saw Rogan’s podcast and for the first time encountered vaccine conspiracy nonsense, then cancelled the vaccine that they had been putting off for months, then got Covid and died. Really? You think that happened to a hundred people? Ten? Even one? Maybe, but it seems superficially implausible that you could even suppose that causal link, much less prove it.

            Plenty of people who will talk a big game on Twitter about the evil conspiracy of the vaccines or whatever don’t mention that they got the shot back in August or whenever, and the ones that didn’t were locked into their viewpoint long before Joe Rogan was talking to the crackpots.

            Holding Spotify morally culpable for deaths is logically tenuous, extremely unlikely to be effective as a public health measure (as an aside - think how Malone’s profile has now been raised globally by this controversy trying to ban his nonsense), and runs all the risks that moral panicky censorship crazes always do. On net, a very bad idea.

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      Mike B

      Right! There is no bottom to this well.

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        Bill Nelson

        Yeah, as a conservative I know that people are flawed. Which is why it is paramount to protect civil liberties, particularly speech.

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        PaulH

        Yes, and one can always find a justification to ban someone based on the idea that their statements might have somehow, someway hurt someone. Either one believes in a culture of free speech or one doesn't.

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