Joe Rogan has landed in the middle of another storm, this time over his reaction to an AI-edited image of ICE shooting victim Alex Pretti that aired on a cable news segment. His crack about whether “ugly people” are less valuable, delivered while dissecting the altered photo, has collided with raw public anger over immigration enforcement and police-style shootings.
The backlash is not just about one tasteless line. It is about how the country’s most influential podcaster talks about people who have been killed by the state, and how his commentary shapes a wider fight over victim-blaming, media manipulation and the protests that have filled streets in Minnesota and beyond.
Rogan’s “ugly people” riff and the AI-edited Alex Pretti photo
On a recent episode of his show, Rogan pulled up an image of Alex Pretti that had been used in an MS NOW segment and zeroed in on how different the man looked. The picture, which appeared to sharpen his jawline and smooth his skin, prompted Rogan to ask, “Like, are ugly people less valuable?” as he and guest Andrew Wilson joked about the way the victim’s face had been digitally polished. That line, captured in a clip shared widely online, came as Rogan was reacting to an Ugly People Less style framing of the AI edit.
The image itself was not created by the network’s newsroom, according to a person with knowledge of the situation who said it had been pulled from the internet and dropped into the package by mistake. MS NOW had no public comment, but the same account described the photo as an AI-touched version that gave Pretti “a bit of that Chad jaw,” a detail that Rogan seized on while mocking how the victim had been visually upgraded for television. That explanation surfaced in coverage of how NOW ended up airing the wrong photo and how Rogan and Andrew Wilson turned that into a bit about looks and worth.
Rogan’s phrasing, “Like, are ugly people less valuable?”, has become the shorthand for the controversy, clipped and replayed far beyond his usual audience. The exchange with Andrew Wilson, which was flagged in write-ups of the Like moment, has been read by critics as trivializing a man’s death in favor of riffing on his jawline. Supporters counter that Rogan was really skewering the network’s decision to use an AI-polished image of a dead man, not Pretti himself, but the fact that the joke hinges on whether “ugly people” matter has made it a flashpoint in a debate about empathy and spectacle.
MS NOW’s scramble, social media fury and a broader pattern
Inside MS NOW, the fallout was quick. The segment in question featured a correspondent whose report was superimposed with an image of Pretti wearing his nurse scrubs, an image that, according to an editor’s note, had been swapped after producers realized the earlier version was AI-altered. Coverage of the correction described how Her on-air piece was updated, with the network acknowledging that the first image of Pretti should not have been used at all. The revised photo, showing Pretti in his professional clothes, was meant to restore some dignity after the AI mishap.
Outside the studio, the anger was less controlled. On Instagram, a post featuring a fight-night Photo of Rogan by Chris Unger of Zuffa LLC drew a flood of comments, with users telling followers to “View all 993 comments” to see the backlash. Some replies were flat-out hostile, calling Rogan a “disgusting short pig” and tagging friends into the pile-on. The same clip of his “ugly people” line was also shared in coverage that framed the segment as Joe Rogan Mocks, reinforcing the sense that he was punching down at a dead man rather than punching up at a sloppy newsroom.
The network’s correction did little to quiet questions about how an Altered Image of made it to air in the first place. For critics of both cable news and Rogan, the episode has become a case study in how easily AI tools can distort public understanding of a victim, and how quickly that distortion can be turned into content. It also feeds into a longer running conversation about whether the country’s most popular podcaster, who is used to riffing freely, has any special responsibility when the subject is a man killed by government agents.
Victim-blaming, protests and Rogan’s shifting line on ICE shootings
Rogan’s comments about Alex Pretti did not happen in a vacuum. Earlier this year, he devoted long stretches of his show to the fatal ICE shooting of Renee Good in Minnesota, calling it a “terrible tragedy” and pressing whether the United States wants immigration enforcement that looks like “domestic terrorism.” In that discussion, he criticized ICE tactics and echoed the outrage of people who saw Renee Good’s killing as part of a pattern. That framing aligned him, at least briefly, with protesters who were already in the streets over immigration raids and shootings.
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