Joe Rogan parroted a baseless claim about the assassination attempt against President Trump in D.C. to open the newest episode of his massively popular podcast.
Rogan, 58, led his three comedian guests—Shane Gillis, Mark Normand, and Ari Shaffir—down a conspiracy rabbit hole about a supposed time traveler who predicted the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner shooting.
The right-wing podcaster directed his guests and his massive viewership towards an X account whose only tweet is from 2023 and contains part of the gunman’s name: Cole Allen. The tweet does not include the attempted assailant’s middle name, Tomas.
The post, which now has over 56 million views, is part of a broader conspiracy theory that alleges a time traveler from the future went back in time to warn about the assassination attempt.
“The tweet is nuts,” Rogan said as he read it.
The podcaster then proceeded to read aloud a post that explained the unsubstantiated conspiracy theory in full. Rogan even noted that the account’s profile picture was a Pepe the Frog, a popular symbol of the alt-right during Trump’s first presidency.
“I wonder if he just tried to search somebody’s name, and he just got it right,” Gillis, 38, joked.
The conspiracy theory, as Rogan describes it, also connects Allen, 31, to a former NASA scientist with the same name as the X account—Henry Martinez—and alleges that both were at the Jet Propulsion Lab in 2014.
“It is weird where you find out a lot of these guys have these weird ties,” Rogan said, noting that the gunman in the second assassination attempt against Trump in 2024 was in the background of a BlackRock advertisement.
The derailment of Rogan’s May 1 episode by the uncorroborated conspiracy theory is not the first time the right-wing podcaster has been accused of pushing baseless claims to his large following.
After the July 2024 shooting at a Trump rally, Rogan falsely asserted during an episode with X owner Elon Musk that CNN had prior knowledge of the assassination attempt.
In the wide-ranging discussion, Rogan wondered out loud why “everyone stopped asking questions” about the Pennsylvania shooting, despite a Congressional probe into the incident.
“There was never a formal report,” Rogan said. “There was never press conferences where they detailed all the information we know currently and where the investigation stands at the moment.”
The podcaster also echoed the dispelled conspiracy theory that Ray Epps had “clearly instigated” the January 6 Capitol riots as an undercover FBI agent.
“I don’t know if he was a fed,” Rogan said, adding, “I know a lot of people think he was a fed.”
Rogan has also been accused of touting conspiracy theories about COVID, Charlie Kirk’s assassination, and Jeffrey Epstein, among others.
