Video News Clips: In Their Own Words

Friends Don’t Let Friends Meet Epstein: Joe Rogan Called Ex-Guest ‘High’ For Trying To Connect Him With Sex Offender

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Podcast host Joe Rogan said that he told off a past guest who tried to introduce him to deceased sex offender Jeffrey Epstein during a Tuesday episode of “The Joe Rogan Experience.”

Epstein asked theoretical physicist Lawrence Krauss to connect him with Rogan in a 2017 email after he appeared on the show the same year and Krauss said he would oblige, according to documents released by the Department of Justice (DOJ). Rogan said on Tuesday’s episode of his podcast that after researching Epstein, he immediately knew he wanted nothing to do with him.

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“I’m in the files for not going because Jeffrey Epstein was trying to meet with me … And I was like, ‘What?’ … I would have never went anyway,” Rogan said. “It’s like it’s not even a possibility that I would have went, especially after I Googled him. I was like, ‘What the fuck are you talking about?’ This was like 2017. One of my guests was trying to get me to meet him. I was like, ‘Bitch, are you high? Like, what the fuck are you talking about?'”

Rogan’s Tuesday guest, Cheryl Hines asked “what reason” there would be for him to meet with Epstein.

“If I was a guy who was like sucking up to the rich and powerful, if I was really interested in hanging out with rich and powerful people,” Rogan replied.

Krauss organized a scientific conference at Epstein’s Caribbean island, Little Saint James, in 2006, featuring three Nobel laureates, the Daily Caller News Foundation reported on Dec. 12. They remained friends during his incarceration and for years afterward.

Epstein pleaded guilty to state prostitution charges, registered as a sex offender, compensated victims and served 13 months in county jail with work-release as part of a 2008 non-prosecution agreement.

The DOJ’s Feb. 1 release of records related to Epstein unveiled communications the deceased sex offender had with figures like former White House adviser Steve Bannon, Elon Musk, Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick and multiple European officials. Much of the correspondence occurred after Epstein’s guilty plea.

Lutnick downplayed his past interactions with Epstein during a Tuesday hearing after files showed they stayed in touch as late as 2018, according to ABC News. He said he only met with the deceased sex offender a few times and had very little involvement with him despite being neighbors in New York City.

“I literally met him three times over 14 years with widespread in between,” Lutnick said. 

The revelations in the files followed Lutnick asserting on “Pod Force One” on Oct. 1 that he committed to never being in the same room as Epstein after witnessing a massage table in his house.

“In the six or eight steps it takes to get to his house to my house, my wife and I decided that I will never be in the room with that disgusting person ever again,” Lutnick said at the time. “So I was never in the room with him socially, for business, or even philanthropy. That guy was there, I wasn’t going because he’s gross.”