Joe Rogan suggested that the Jan. 6 Capitol riot was a set-up by the US government’s intelligence agencies to take down former President Donald Trump.
“The Jan. 6 thing is bad, but also, the intelligence agencies were involved in provoking people into the Capitol building. That’s a fact,” the controversial podcaster said during a nearly three-hour episode of “The Joe Rogan Experience” on Friday.
Rogan also speculated that a 61-year-old man named Ray Epps — who found himself at the center of conspiracy theories surrounding the attack after videos showed him breaching Capitol grounds — could have been a federal agent.
“I think that every other person who was involved in Jan. 6 — who was involved in coordinating a break-in into the Capitol and then instigating people — they were all arrested. This guy wasn’t,” Rogan said of Epps, who filed a defamation suit against Fox News for a series of on-air claims that he instigated the insurrection.
“Well, he clearly instigated,” Rogan said. “He did it on camera.”
The video Rogan is referring to was posted the night before the riot, where a MAGA hat-wearing Epps is seen telling a crowd of fellow Trump supporters that they should enter the Capitol.
In response, they started chanting: “Fed!”
Epps later claimed that he was encouraging a peaceful protest, which is legal.
Rogan continued: “I don’t know if he was a fed. I know a lot of people think he was a fed. The people that were there were calling him a fed. What I do know is when they asked the FBI, the FBI said, ‘We can’t tell you.’”
Rogan also noted that Epps, a former Marine, was “defended in the New York Times [and] the Washington Post.”
In addition, “there’s also been reports that there were hundreds of federal agents there [at the Capitol] that were doing that [encouraging the riot].”
Though Rogan wouldn’t state exactly who he believed incited the Capitol attack, he said that “they do use agent provocateurs to disrupt peaceful protests. It’s a common tactic.”
When his skeptical guest, comedian Jim Gaffigan, questioned Rogan’s contention, the famed podcast host and UFC commentator doubled down.
“You’re saying that they’re [the government is] like: ‘We’ll make this — instead of an awkward protest — we’ll encourage it so that it’ll backfire on Trump rather than it being this rising of people that believe there was election corruption’?” Gaffigan asked.
Rogan responded: “I think it is certainly possible.”
“I’m more suspicious why Trump didn’t call for backup for the Capitol Police,” added Gaffigan, who’s called Trump “a traitor and a con man” in an uncharacteristic, profanity-infused rant on social media in 2020.
Rogan clearly disagreed, telling Gaffigan that his explanation “doesn’t make sense.”
“I think it’s a standard tactic,” Rogan repeated of US intelligence agencies’ so-called habit of turning peaceful protests into violent ones in order to oust a leader.
“Trump set himself up against the intelligence agencies. He did it openly, and he did it brazenly, and a lot of people think it’s very dangerous,” Rogan said.
“So you’re saying when he was in Helsinki and he was saying, ‘I believe Putin more than my intelligence community,’ that was something the intelligence community was like ‘We’re gonna get him’?” Gaffigan asked.
“Well, I think they were going to get him in any way that they could because he’s an enemy of the intelligence agencies, and he was openly talking about them being incompetent and being corrupt,” Rogan answered.
Rogan — who openly supports the Second Amendment but has also said he’s “far away from being a Republican” — has reportedly turned down numerous requests from Trump’s camp to interview the former president on his popular Spotify podcast.
One of Trump’s informal advisers, Roger Stone, offered to engage Rogan in a UFC-style cage match in hopes of forcing the podcaster to interview the former president, the Daily Beast reported.
“The mere discussion of Donald Trump on a blockbuster podcast like Joe Rogan builds a remarkable audience,” a Trump adviser told the Daily Beast.
However, despite a large chunk of the podcaster’s 11 million listeners supporting the Republican front-runner, Rogan said he has no desire to give the 45th president a platform.
“I’ve had the opportunity to have him on my show more than once. I’ve said no every time. I don’t want to help him. I’m not interested in helping him,” Rogan told podcaster Lex Fridman last year.
This story originally appeared on NYPost
