Joe Rogan came to the defense of Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy on Thursday after multiple media outlets accused Ramaswamy of suggesting federal agents were involved in the 9/11 attacks.
During an interview with The Atlantic, Ramaswamy questioned if any federal agents were involved in the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol incursion, and he said that the same question should be asked about the 9/11 hijackings.
Ramaswamy’s interviewer began by asking him what he meant when he previously said that people should be told the truth about Jan. 6.
“What is the truth about January 6 that you’re referring to?” reporter John Hendrickson asked him.
Ramaswamy replied: “I don’t know, but we can handle it. Whatever it is, we can handle it. Government agents. How many government agents were in the field? Right?” to which Hendrickson asked, “You mean like entrapment?”
“Yeah. Absolutely,” Ramaswamy answered. “Why can the government not be transparent about something that we’re using? Terrorists, or the kind of tactics used to fight terrorists. If we find that there are hundreds of our own in the ranks on the day that they were, that they were — I mean, look…”
“I think it is legitimate to say, how many police, how many federal agents were on the planes that hit the Twin Towers?” Ramaswamy asked. “Like, I think we want — maybe the answer is zero, probably is zero for all I know, right? I have no reason to think it was anything other than zero. But if we’re doing a comprehensive assessment of what happened on 9/11, we have a 9/11 commission, absolutely that should be an answer the public knows the answer to,” he added.
After facing heavy criticism, Ramaswamy’s campaign responded to the “small snippet” of their interview and claimed his comments were “taken badly out of context.” Ramaswamy also appeared on CNN where he told anchor Kaitlan Collins: “I am telling you the quote is wrong, actually.”
Pressed on his 9/11 comments, Vivek Ramaswamy’s response: pic.twitter.com/hVEglgb5t3
— Kaitlan Collins (@kaitlancollins) August 22, 2023
In response, The Atlantic released the interview audio which showed that the quote was accurate.
In spite of this, while reacting to the audio in a Thursday podcast, Joe Rogan and his guest Dave Smith agreed that Ramaswamy was indeed taken “out of context.”
“Vivek did nothing wrong”
Do you agree with Joe Rogan?Joe Rogan and Dave Smith debunk the Atlantic’s obvious smear campaign. pic.twitter.com/ac8Di5IxEr
— Mythinformed (@MythinformedMKE) August 24, 2023
“Vivek did nothing wrong. There is literally nothing wrong with what he said there,” Smith said.
Rogan concurred, saying: “We’re doing this in comparison to January 6. So we do want to know how many federal agents were involved in January 6. And imagine if there were actually federal agents on the planes of 9/11.”
“He didn’t say there were,” Rogan emphasized, with Smith interjecting: “He specifically said zero. ‘I’m sure it was zero. But we want to know.'”
“It’s still out of context. It’s clearly out of context, otherwise they would have released the entire recording,” Rogan said.
The podcast clip was then shared on X — previously known as Twitter — where Ramaswamy picked up on it and said: “The anatomy of a mainstream media smear, cooked up by the @TheAtlantic and amplified by @CNN. Good for @joerogan explaining how this goes down. The reality is it happens daily.”
The anatomy of a mainstream media smear, cooked up by the @TheAtlantic and amplified by @CNN. Good for @joerogan explaining how this goes down. The reality is it happens daily. https://t.co/79Nvw7B5VK
— Vivek Ramaswamy (@VivekGRamaswamy) August 24, 2023
Even Elon Musk chimed in, writing: “The Atlantic, like many publications, once wrote great material, but has now devolved into a tedious propaganda pusher. They could at least not bore us all to death in the process!”
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
