Joe Rogan turned his massive platform toward one of the most contentious fault lines in American immigration policy on Thursday, calling birthright citizenship "a crazy law" and tearing into the idea that illegal immigrants should receive taxpayer-funded benefits.

The podcaster made the remarks during a Thursday episode of The Joe Rogan Experience with guest Michael Malice, author of the "Anarchist Handbook." The conversation moved from birthright citizenship to municipal spending on illegal immigrants, with Rogan landing hard on both.

"Especially if you are illegal, and then you come here specifically to have a baby, and then you can stay, too. That's kind of crazy."

According to Breitbart News, Malice agreed and went further, arguing that eliminating birthright citizenship would address much of the immigration crisis at its root.

"If birthright citizenship went away, a lot of this would be solved."

The Incentive Structure Nobody Wants to Defend

What makes this exchange notable isn't that two people on a podcast criticized birthright citizenship. It's that the argument is becoming harder for the political establishment to dismiss.

The logic is straightforward. When a child born on American soil automatically receives citizenship regardless of the parents' legal status, you create an incentive for people to cross the border illegally and give birth here. The child becomes a citizen. The parents gain a pathway to remain. The taxpayer funds the whole arrangement. Rogan identified the absurdity plainly, and Malice connected it to the broader welfare apparatus.

"If you're not eligible for welfare, you're not eligible for Medicaid, you could pay your taxes and income, but you're not getting the benefits, people understand that argument, maybe."

Malice also claimed, "I think we're the only country that has that, too." Rogan noted that China "definitely doesn't" offer birthright citizenship, to which Malice quipped, "Well, no one's really banging on the door for Chinese citizenship, to be fair. Unless they're from North Korea, maybe."

The humor landed, but the underlying point is serious. The United States maintains one of the most permissive citizenship frameworks in the world while simultaneously struggling to enforce its own borders. Those two realities are not unrelated.

Rogan Unloads on Mamdani's Budget

The conversation didn't stay theoretical for long. Rogan turned his attention to New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic Socialist who recently announced a budget proposal for the city. After examining the details, Rogan didn't mince words.

"He's a fucking psychopath."

Rogan zeroed in on what the budget allocated for illegal immigrants.

"The amount for migrants is crazy. There should be zero dollars for illegal immigrants."

That line captures a sentiment that polls consistently show a majority of Americans share: the government should not be spending taxpayer money to subsidize people who broke the law to be here. It's not a radical position. It's common sense that has somehow become politically controversial.

Mamdani, a self-described Democratic Socialist, represents a wing of the Democratic Party that views municipal budgets as vehicles for ideological projects. When a city is spending money on illegal immigrants while its own citizens deal with crumbling infrastructure, rising crime, and an affordability crisis, the priorities reveal themselves. New Yorkers didn't elect a mayor to serve as a concierge for people who skipped the legal immigration process.

Why This Conversation Matters

Rogan acknowledged that the immigration debate "doesn't have a clear cut solution that would make both sides happy." That's fair. But the reason no solution emerges isn't complexity. It's that one side benefits politically from the status quo and has no incentive to fix it.

The left has spent years reframing illegal immigration as a humanitarian issue that requires American taxpayers to absorb unlimited costs. Every city that declares itself a "sanctuary" and every budget that carves out funding for illegal immigrants reinforces the incentive structure that drives illegal crossings in the first place. Then, when the consequences arrive, those same leaders act surprised.

Rogan's audience is enormous and ideologically diverse. When he calls birthright citizenship "a crazy law" and says illegal immigrants should receive "zero dollars" in taxpayer money, those aren't fringe positions being amplified. They're mainstream positions that the political class has tried to make unspeakable. The fact that millions of people hear them stated plainly, without apology, is itself a form of progress.

Malice, for his part, appeared on the podcast wearing peculiar face paint and explained simply, "I just wanted to have a fun look." He noted it was his tenth appearance on the show, posting on X afterward: "Tenth time's the charm." The tone was light, but the substance was anything but.

The conversation between Rogan and Malice didn't break new policy ground. What it did was strip away the euphemisms and say what tens of millions of Americans already think. Birthright citizenship creates perverse incentives. Spending taxpayer money on illegal immigrants is indefensible. And the politicians who build their budgets around these policies deserve every ounce of scrutiny they get.

Sometimes the most powerful thing a public figure can do is state the obvious.