Mike Rowe Is Passionately Outspoken When It Comes to Politics
Updated April 20 2021, 4:27 p.m. ET
Through his starring role on Dirty Jobs, Mike Rowe effectively became a household name. However, he is known largely nowadays for his vocal advocacy for certain political talking points that are highly controversial.
Regardless of your views on what he says, the effectiveness to which Mike has leveraged his television fame to boost his political opinions and ambitions is quite impressive. So, what are his views on politics as a whole? Keep reading to find out.
Politics mean a lot to Mike, and he seems to hold a lot of conservative viewpoints.
The television star has made sure to interject his political viewpoints into a lot of his recent work, and his newest show, Six Degrees, offers his own personal context on history as well. Mike has remained firm on viewpoints that center around conservatism but has actually never publically claimed a political affiliation.
Nonetheless, plenty of assumptions can be made about where he leans on the political spectrum thanks to the issues he gives the most attention to, as well as the shows he often appears on. A frequent face on Fox News as well as a bevy of the most famous conservative radio personality's programs, Mike has frequently discussed hot-button issues of importance to Republicans and causing some controversy along the way.
Mike's biggest passion project politically seems to be his Mike Rowe Works Foundation, an organization he established to champion "alternative" career paths pushed to the wayside by the pursuit of college degrees. He claims that skilled laborers in the U.S. aren't being given the recognition they deserve and that the college debt pipeline is dangerous and needs to end. The star has frequently spoken on this point in interviews and has even established scholarships within the foundation to aid potential students in need.
Mike Rowe has spoken out against increasing the federal minimum wage.
"I want everybody who works hard and plays fair to prosper," Mike said during an interview with Fox. "I want everybody to be able to support themselves. But if you just pull the money out of midair you're going to create other problems.
"There is a ladder of success that people climb, some of those jobs that are out there for seven, eight, nine dollars an hour, in my view, they're simply not intended to be careers. They're not intended to be full-time jobs. They're rungs on a ladder."
Between discussions about uneasiness amongst Republicans regarding the integrity of the 2020 presidential election, hardcore support for blue-collar jobs, and poignant fiscally conservative stances over the years, it's clear that Mike aligns somewhere on the conservative spectrum. However, he's never fully clarified which political party he actually aligns with.