Joe Rogan on Wednesday tied President Donald Trump’s Iran war to the Epstein files, saying the conflict was being used to pull attention away from the handling of the documents. Speaking on the Joe Rogan Experience with comedian Arsenio Hall, Rogan said, “Look, the Epstein Files comes out. We go to war with Iran,” and added, “It’s, it’s a good way to get people to stop talking about certain things.”
Rogan and Hall both said at least one person should be prosecuted over revelations in the Epstein files released by the Department of Justice in recent months. Hall called the situation a classic distraction tactic, while Rogan said Trump was threatening to prosecute journalists publishing information on the Iran war even as no one was being charged over the Epstein files. Rogan also said, “‘We’ve got to distract these people, this is just too complicated’,” and drew a line back to President Bill Clinton and the Monica Lewinsky scandal, saying that when those claims broke, Clinton started bombing Iraq in 1998.
The comments landed as the White House and Trump have kept up their defense of the Iran intervention, saying it is necessary. They also came after a March 11 poll by Drop Site, Zeteo and Data For Progress found a 52-40 majority of 1,272 likely voters believed the Iran war was at least partly a distraction from the Epstein files issue.
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Rogan has made similar accusations before. In January, he said the Trump administration was using the shootings of U.S. citizens in Minneapolis to divert attention from the Epstein files, and in February he accused the FBI of gaslighting the public while reading an FBI report on the case. He has also criticized Trump and the MAGA movement at times, even as he has largely supported the president.
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The fight over the Epstein files has not gone away. Trump and former Attorney General Pam Bondi had promised transparency before being seen as backtracking, and lawmakers subpoenaed Bondi to testify over her leadership on the issue. After Trump fired Bondi last week, the Justice Department said she no longer needed to appear. The department has said it has made all the documents it can available for viewing, but Rogan’s latest remarks suggest the theory that Iran is serving as a political distraction is now fixed in the center of the debate.
