Joe Rogan had Elon Musk back on his podcast heading into the weekend, and after the two got through talking, the conspiracy theorists were fired up about the attempted assassination of President Donald Trump in Pennsylvania.
And CNN … well, it can’t be appreciating the unwarranted heat directed at it.
Rogan and Musk also discussed the billionaire’s controversial hand gesture at President Donald Trump’s inauguration that many believed resembled a Nazi salute, and Rogan said he thought it was “strange” that people that people would think that way. Then Musk threw out a few Nazi puns, telling Rogan “I did not see it coming,” while discussing folks calling him a Nazi on X after the incident.
“People will Goebbels anything down,” he added.
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The two found that pretty darned funny, and had some laughs, but that wasn’t the issue for CNN. That came when Rogan wondered openly about the assassination attempt on Trump at his rally in Butler in 2024.
After first wondering if BlackRock was involved, Rogan pivoted.
“I highly doubt it would be a corporation that chooses to do something like this,” he said. “I think more likely it’s individuals involved that recognize that it’s beneficial to them if he gets assassinated. And so, a small group of people carry something out, and with this kid, we don’t know anything, and everyone stopped asking question and there was never a formal report. There was never press conferences when they detailed all the information that we know currently and where the investigation stands at the moment. What we know is we have a very young kid, who was filmed, they knew he was there with a rangefinder a half an hour before the event.”
The next part is what had folks targeting CNN.
“You also know that CNN streamed it live, which I do not believe they did for any other rally, and certainly not for a rally in the middle of nowhere in Pennsylvania,” Rogan said. “Like, there’s a lot of weird s—.”
That led many of the conspiracy theorists to believe that Rogan was suggesting that CNN might have known about the attempt in advance. Of course, Rogan is a big enough name that he could have reached out to CNN to ask about that, and all of this could have been avoided.
But he didn’t and so folks took it and ran with it.
“What are the chances @CNN was tipped off to stream the Butler rally?” billionaire hedge fund manager Bill Ackman wrote on Twitter. “Why isn’t this worthy of an investigation? It shouldn’t be too hard to figure out who orders the coverage and why.”
CNN, of course, did have an answer and it does make sense. If anyone cares.
“CNN provided live coverage of President Trump’s Butler, PA, rally in anticipation of news about his pick of Vice President,” the network said while responding to several accounts on X. “Any suggestion contrary to that fact is completely false.”
—Brian Linder, pennlive.com (TNS)
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