Joe Rogan has been one of Donald Trump’s most valuable allies. He endorsed him. He hosted him on the most popular podcast in the country. He helped legitimize him to millions of listeners who might not otherwise tune into politics.
But when Trump responded to Rob Reiner’s murder by mocking the director’s politics, Rogan wasn’t having it.
Trump posted his comments the day after the murders were reported. It took Rogan almost two weeks to weigh in — but when he did, he didn’t hold back.
“The Rob Reiner thing is not funny, right?” Rogan said on Friday’s episode of The Joe Rogan Experience, with comedian Shane Gillis as his guest. “When you see it with no empathy, that’s when it’s hard to like him.”
Reiner, 78, and his wife Michele Singer were found dead in their Los Angeles home on December 15. Their son, Nick Reiner, has been charged with murder. The news prompted an outpouring of tributes from Hollywood and beyond.
Trump’s response was different.
“Rob Reiner, a tortured and struggling, but once very talented movie director and comedy star, has passed away, together with his wife, Michele, reportedly due to the anger he caused others through his massive, unyielding, and incurable affliction with a mind crippling disease known as TRUMP DERANGEMENT SYNDROME,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.
Reiner had been a vocal Trump critic for years. But the post drew rare bipartisan backlash — even Marjorie Taylor Greene called it “a family tragedy, not about politics or political enemies.”
Now Rogan has added his voice to the criticism. And he didn’t just call Trump’s comments tasteless. He compared them to something MAGA world universally condemned.
“There’s no justification for what he did that makes any sense in a compassionate society,” Rogan said. “It’s no different than people that were celebrating when Charlie Kirk got shot. It’s the same kind of thing.”
Kirk, the conservative activist, was assassinated in September. Some on the left celebrated his death — a reaction that Trump and his allies called disgusting. Rogan is now using that same standard against Trump.
Gillis, sitting beside him, offered a quieter observation: “I wish he could apologize. I know he can’t and he won’t.”
That might be the most telling line of all. Not outrage, not condemnation — just the resigned acceptance that this is who Trump is, and nothing will change it.
Even from his allies.
