Joe Rogan admitted that he’s not a fan of Tony Hinchcliffe’s controversial Puerto Rico joke — and said he would have warned his fellow comic to avoid using it at former President Donald Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally.
The podcaster, on Wednesday’s episode of “The Joe Rogan Experience,” said he even joked with Hinchcliffe in the past that the bit that’s landed him in water is “the one that’s gonna get you stabbed.”
Hinchcliffe, 40, known for hosting the “Kill Tony” podcast, joked during Trump’s Sunday campaign rally that Puerto Rico is “a floating island of garbage.”
Author Konstantin Kisin, who was on Wednesday’s podcast, told Rogan that whoever booked the insult comic to perform at the rally should be blamed because “Tony Hinchcliffe is going to be Tony Hinchcliffe.”
“Literally, his great specialty is roasting,” Rogan replied, referring to him as one of “the best roasters ever.”
Rogan, 57, shared that Hinchcliffe has made that joke before, and it “kills at comedy clubs.”
“I don’t like the joke, [but] it kills,” Rogan said. “It’s just like if you’re Puerto Rican and you hear that in the audience, you’re like [groans]. But it’s a funny joke. The joke does well.”
“But I said to him, I go, ‘Dude, that’s the one that’s gonna get you stabbed.’ And he used to talk about it on stage, saying, ‘Joe Rogan always says that’s the one that’s gonna get me stabbed,’” the UFC commentator said.
“I think he’d pick stabbed at this point, given the sh-t that’s going down,” Kisin joked.
However, Rogan believes backlash over his comedian buddy will “blow over.”
“There’s people that are always going to hate someone like Tony, and it’s going to make other people love him more,” he explained, but noted he’s “going through the storm.”
Rogan mentioned on Wednesday’s podcast that political rallies are “a bad environment for comedy,” and he would have warned Hinchcliffe, “Don’t you f–king dare do that joke” if he had spoken with him before he took the stage at the rally.
“I didn’t know what bits he was going to do, but then I heard he did that joke, and I was like, ‘Oh, Jesus, Tony. Here it comes,’” Rogan said.
Rogan also warned “all comedians” against doing an event that’s “not a comedy event.”
“Don’t do it,” he said. “Don’t ever do comedy at a place that’s doing ‘also.’ Is it going to have a bunch of speakers, and you’re going to go up and do 10 minutes? Don’t ever do that.”
But still, Rogan was not leaving his buddy and fellow Austin comic to hang out to dry, coming to his defense against prominent figures — like Former President Barack Obama — who are taking Hinchcliffe’s joke as if “it was a statement.”
“You know that’s a joke,” Rogan proclaimed and said it would be like “going to a Quentin Tarantino movie” and watching a man kill a woman and thinking it’s real.
“Like, he didn’t really kill that woman … this is a movie.”
But Rogan believes his buddy will “get through it” and “come back better.”
Trump, 78, distanced himself from Hinchcliffe during an interview with Fox News host Sean Hannity, claiming that he has “no idea” who the comedian is and doesn’t want anything to do with him in the wake of his “nasty” joke.
“I still have — I have no idea who he is,” Trump told Hannity.
Despite Hinchcliffe being slammed by Democrats, including the Harris-Walz campaign, the controversy around his joke was overshadowed by President Biden’s comments on Wednesday, where he called Trump supporters “garbage.”
Biden, 81, appeared on a campaign call and insulted fans of the 45th president — just as Harris was making her much-hyped “closing argument” speech just a few hundred yards away at the Ellipse.
“The only garbage I see floating out there is his supporters. His demonization of Latinos is unconscionable, and it’s un-American,” Biden had said on the campaign call.
