Rick Rosner On, 34: Adam Carolla, X, U.S. Midterms, Canada, and Political Polarization

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Personal SubStack

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2026/08/26

In this interview, Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner discuss Adam Carolla’s COVID-era rhetoric, his friendship with Jimmy Kimmel, political polarization on X, slowing U.S. job growth, the 2026 midterm elections, Mike Lindell’s fraud claims, and gasoline prices. They also compare Canadian and American political systems, measurement conventions, colonial legacies, road rules, and roundabouts, while reflecting on how disagreement, misinformation, humour, and institutional culture shape public life across both countries in contemporary democratic societies.

Adam Carolla, COVID, and X

Rick Rosner: So the other night, he put up a thing. He’s still mad about what California did during COVID, shutting down much of the economy for periods of time and later imposing or encouraging vaccination requirements in some settings. California did not literally require every resident to get vaccinated. Some workers, students, and people attending certain venues faced mandates or vaccination-or-testing requirements at different points.

He says, “If you still think that was appropriate, then you can eat a dick.”

I got annoyed to the point where I said, “Ooh, so oppressed that you had to get a shot that 5.6 billion people on Earth also got.” That’s roughly the number of people worldwide who had received at least one COVID vaccine dose by mid-2023, although obviously they weren’t all compelled to do it. About 5.1 billion had completed a primary series.

“You had to go a couple of months standing six feet away from the other shoppers at Trader Joe’s.”

To Carolla’s credit, he deleted the tweet. But his followers, the most common response was everybody telling me to eat a dick.

Even though he’d already told everybody who believes what I believe to eat a dick, they couldn’t come up with anything better.

I don’t know. I’m not disheartened about Carolla because Carolla has his venue, which is his podcast, and he knows his audience. But I’m disheartened about X in general, because you were talking about the other bouncer and how he feels about Jews. Obviously not all of X feels that way about Jews. Still, there is a substantial amount of antisemitic content on the platform, including accounts that traffic in extreme conspiracy theories and sometimes violent rhetoric.

And it’s tolerated to a degree that bothers me. But we’ve talked about that before. So I don’t know.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: What else should we talk about?

Carolla and Jimmy Kimmel

Rosner: Well, one more thing about Carolla. Carolla, when asked about Jimmy, Carolla says they’re still good friends, and Jimmy would agree.

I went to the Jimmy Kimmel Live! 20th-anniversary celebration of 20 years on the air, and Kimmel made a great joke. He said, “And Adam Carolla is here. Adam is missing a Proud Boys meeting to be here.”

Jacobsen: Thank you for your sacrifice, Adam.

Rosner: I could see a whole series of… No, because he had a lot of people to thank, but that was just fricking great.

So they’re still friends. And that’s consistent with how they’ve described their relationship publicly. They have significant political differences but have remained close friends for decades. Kimmel even gave Carolla an emotional tribute at Carolla’s Hollywood Walk of Fame ceremony in May 2026.

Jacobsen: People can differ vociferously, tell mean jokes, and still get along when it’s done in the right spirit.

Rosner: Yes. Up to a point. Adam’s extremely smart. Jimmy’s extremely smart. Maybe people who are good at separating political disagreement from personal relationships can do that.

But a lot of dumb shits in MAGA, lunatics on the far left, and dumb shits throughout the political spectrum have a harder time just getting along.

And apparently, according to Lance, Carolla says when asked about Jimmy, “I’m sure Jimmy has good reasons for believing what he believes,” which is that Jimmy’s a smart guy and he’s got his reasons.

That seems to me like a very kind, non-escalatory way to be. Maybe not on X, where you’ve got to be a motherfucker.

The Midterms and the Employment Picture

What else? There are 70-ish days until the November 3 midterms.

Trump and members of his administration continue to make false or misleading political claims. One area where the rhetoric doesn’t match the data particularly well is employment.

U.S. job creation has slowed dramatically. In 2024, payroll employment increased by about 166,000 jobs per month on average. Revised BLS data show that payroll employment increased by only about 15,000 per month on average during 2025. Over the 12 months ending in July 2026, the average monthly gain was about 34,000, and payrolls actually fell by 23,000 in July. So depending on which periods you’re comparing, job growth is roughly 80 to 90 percent lower than the 2024 monthly pace.

But I wouldn’t say that’s “thanks to tariffs, thanks to AI.” Tariffs, automation, federal employment cuts, business uncertainty, interest rates, productivity changes, and other economic forces can all affect hiring. Pinning the entire slowdown on two causes is too simple.

Yet between Trump, White House accounts, and his media representatives, I’ve seen repeated claims that job creation is booming, or that virtually no jobs were created under Biden and enormous numbers are being created under Trump. The payroll data doesn’t support that.

There certainly were individual announcements of factories or projects involving hundreds or thousands of jobs, and any administration will take credit for those. But that’s different from the national employment picture.

The unemployment rate is still relatively low, at 4.1 percent in July 2026. The labour-force participation rate is 61.4 percent.

That group includes retirees, students, people caring for family members, people with disabilities or illnesses, and others who aren’t seeking employment. In July, about 5.9 million people outside the labour force said they wanted a job, and only about 476,000 were classified specifically as discouraged workers.

So anyway, there’s a lot of political bullshitting about the economy.

The thing I wonder about every day, and probably wonder about too much because I can’t do jack shit about it, is: are people going to buy the bullshit?

House and Senate Control

The Democrats have a plausible path to taking the House, but saying they’re definitely going to take it is too strong this far out. As of August 13, Cook Political Report had 184 seats rated Solid Democratic, 21 more Likely or Lean Democratic, 182 Solid Republican, 29 Likely or Lean Republican, and 19 toss-ups. So the House is highly competitive.

Can they take the Senate? That’s harder, but the map has become more competitive. Democrats need a net gain of four seats for outright control, and Cook now has traditionally Republican states including Texas and Iowa in the toss-up category. So Senate control is genuinely in play, but it’s far from guaranteed.

And whatever happens, I expect Trump will claim fraud if the results go badly for him or his party, because he’s repeatedly made unsupported election-fraud claims before.

Mike Lindell and Election-Fraud Rhetoric

Mike Lindell, the MyPillow guy, is another example. He has publicly discussed his history of cocaine and crack addiction and subsequent recovery. But there’s no factual basis for me to diagnose him with “residual brain damage” or insanity.

He ran for the Republican nomination for governor of Minnesota this year. On August 11, 2026, he lost the GOP primary to Minnesota House Speaker Lisa Demuth, 43.5 percent to 32.5 percent, an 11-point margin. He’s now funding a hand recount and audit while alleging irregularities in electronic reporting. So it’s more accurate to say he lost a Republican primary and is challenging aspects of the result, not that he lost a gubernatorial general election and refuses to concede.

There’s going to be a shit ton of election-fraud rhetoric.

But I’m not saying anything I haven’t said a million times before.

Gas Prices and Canada

The national average price of regular gas is now about $4.11 a gallon. AAA had it at $4.1092 on August 21, after the average had risen to about $4.10 during the week. It’s above $4, but I want to confirm the exact daily series before claiming today is precisely “day 110” above that threshold.

That would be something like five Canadian dollars per U.S. gallon after currency conversion. Still, of course, Canada sells gasoline by the litre, so that’s not how Canadians actually experience the price.

I don’t know what you pay. Well, you haven’t been back to Canada in months and months, so I don’t know what they’re paying there.

Jacobsen: Oh, widespread famine, wildfires, COVID rampant, child marriage has been reinstituted, women are no longer allowed education beyond Grade 6—the Taliban.

It’s been complete chaos in Canada under Carney. I’ve been gone for months. What are we going to do?

Rosner: Yes. So you guys buy gas by the gallon in Canada, right? You’re not that European with your measurements, are you?

Canada’s Constitutional System

Jacobsen: First of all, Canada is no longer a British colony. Canada is an independent sovereign state, but we inherited the Westminster system and remain a constitutional monarchy. King Charles III is separately King of Canada and Canada’s head of state, and the governor general represents the King federally. We’re simultaneously a federal state and a parliamentary democracy.

So we have that British constitutional inheritance without being politically subordinate to Britain. Executive authority is formally vested in the Crown, but in practice the prime minister and Cabinet exercise it under responsible government.

It’s a complicated system, but it seems fine.

Rosner: It hasn’t broken down the way the U.S. system sometimes seems to. It tends to work.

Jacobsen: People love the royal weddings, and things haven’t totally fallen apart. But we also have a cultural flavour you don’t.

Rosner: And vice versa, to be courteous and not insane. You are… When U.S. comedians and even Canadian comedians… Go ahead.

Canada’s Mixed Measurement System

Jacobsen: From that legacy, we use litres. You use gallons. Canada officially uses the metric system for retail gasoline, so gas is sold by the litre. But there’s a joke in which somebody asks, “Which measurement system do Canadians use?” and the Canadian says, “All of them.” Then there’s a guy snorting a line of cocaine.

It’s litres, inches, feet, pounds, kilograms, metres, kilometres, Celsius, and occasionally Fahrenheit, depending on what you’re talking about. That’s generally how it feels as a Canadian. I could do the conversions in my head forever and tell you what they were, but when I was younger, I didn’t necessarily know which units belonged to the imperial system and which were metric. Canadian law specifically requires metric measurement for retail gasoline sales.

Rosner: That makes sense.

Jacobsen: That’s partly the result of Canada’s historical British inheritance, official metrication, and enormous cultural and economic exposure to the United States.

Rosner: Yes. Even in Britain, road signs use miles per hour, which is confusing. At least, probably not to them, but it was confusing to me.

Colonial History and Cultural Influence

Jacobsen: Yes. We should be clear here. Modern Canada emerged from both French and British colonial regimes, on lands inhabited by diverse First Nations, Inuit, and Métis peoples whose histories long predate either colonial power. So saying Canada is “mostly an English colony with some French and Indigenous culture seeping in” would flatten that history too much.

Then there’s the enormous contemporary American cultural influence. We love your media. We do. All of these things came in and mixed in different ways. Regional patterns differ too. Quebec and parts of eastern Canada retain much stronger Francophone traditions, while western Canada often has particularly strong historical and cultural ties to Britain and the United States.

Driving and Roundabouts

Rosner: What side of the road do you guys drive on?

Jacobsen: On the right.

Rosner: Like we do. Yes. All right.

Jacobsen: And that’s nationwide. You don’t start driving on the left as you travel farther east. Canada has national and provincial traffic standards. I don’t want to make the measurement-system confusion sound like traffic rules are similarly improvised.

Rosner: Do you have roundabouts? Do you have a ton of roundabouts?

Jacobsen: We have roundabouts. They’re here in Kyiv too.

Rosner: Yes. Everybody has them. America has historically used fewer roundabouts than many European countries, although they’ve become substantially more common in the U.S.

Jacobsen: They’re a great invention. Multi-lane roundabouts can be confusing if drivers aren’t accustomed to them, but properly designed roundabouts are generally associated with fewer severe crashes than conventional signalized intersections. So saying they would inherently be more dangerous in an American context isn’t right.

And I was going to make a joke about Americans drinking, but Brits drink too, so that’s not fair.

Rosner: Oh, I see. Yes. All right.

Jacobsen: Thank you very much for the opportunity and your time, Rick.

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