Trump during the recording.
Photo: The Joe Rogan Experience

Two hours and 40 minutes into Joe Rogan’s interview with Donald Trump, America’s most influential podcaster finally asked the former president about at least one of his most common obsessions. “One of the things I wanted to talk to you about was the JFK files,” Rogan said, before lightly pressing Trump to give a reason why he did not fully release the secret files on the assassination that many Capturing Americans who believe the government played a role in the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Trump said there were still some people who were “affected” – to which Rogan suggested that those people were “involved” in a conspiracy to assassinate Kennedy. “If there are living people, you generally don’t want to do that,” Trump said.

It appears that Rogan himself took the same approach to protecting the living on Friday, in Trump’s favor, regarding another of his obsessions: the mysteriously well-connected sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

Since Epstein committed suicide in a Manhattan cell in 2019 to avoid prosecution for alleged sex trafficking, the top podcaster has repeatedly returned to the matter on his show. In a 2020 interview with a former CIA agent, Rogan suggested that Epstein did not kill himself and discussed at length the theory that he was an Israeli intelligence operative whose job was to put pressure on the world’s rich and powerful . In 2022, he told COVID skeptic Alex Berenson how conspirator Alex Jones told him years ago about “an island where they host influential people and have sex with minors.” In 2023, Rogan speculated that Epstein’s painting of Bill Clinton in a dress in his Upper East Side mansion was a reminder of his influence on the former president. He has joked about Epstein conspiracies with fellow comedians like Shane Gillis, Tim Dillon and Whitney Cummings. In August, Rogan didn’t shy away from asking billionaire and former FBI informant Peter Thiel about his planned meetings with Epstein in 2014 – six years after the financier went to prison for sex crimes. (Of course, Thiel disagreed with Rogan’s thoughts about Epstein having “dirt” on the most powerful people in the world.)

But on Friday, he didn’t once ask Trump about Epstein.

Rogan and Trump in the studio on Friday.
Photo: Screencap/The Joe Rogan Experience

There was a lot Rogan could have asked about, such as Trump’s long friendship with Epstein in the 1990s. He didn’t ask about flying on Epstein’s infamous plane. He didn’t ask about Epstein’s alleged victims’ (unfounded) claims that Trump had sex with them. He didn’t ask this week about the new accusation from model Stacey Williams, who claimed Trump groped her in Trump Tower in 1993 while Epstein looked on. And he didn’t ask Trump about his 2002 comment that Epstein “likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side.” (Trump has denied wrongdoing in all of the above allegations.)

However, they talked about much else. Trump was long-winded, rambling but clear as he talked about how impressed he was by the Lincoln Bedroom in the White House and how the word “tariffs” was “more beautiful than love.” Rogan called on Trump to condemn Harris over her policies in the 2020 Democratic primary, and the two discussed their thoughts on wind turbines. (Rogan said they were “disgusting” and ugly, while Trump called them “bird cemeteries” and suggested they could make whales suicidal. “I want to be a whale psychiatrist,” he added.) Trump claimed Google CEO Sundar Pichai had it Told him that his stunt performance at McDonald’s this week was “one of the greatest things we’ve ever had at Google.”

Maybe – as Trump told Rogan – when there are living people, people generally don’t want to ask about them.