Joe Rogan Clarifies His ‘Shoot the Homeless People’ Comment In Conversation That Ends With Joke About Drowning Them Instead

Joe Rogan is finally responding to controversial comments he made about homelessness in Los Angeles during a discussion on his podcast over the summer.

Back in July, on an episode of The Joe Rogan Experience, he and fellow comedian Tom Segura were discussing the homeless crisis in the city.

Segura mentioned that it was illegal to move homeless camps as they are considered personal property.

A shocked Rogan then followed up with a joke saying, “You’d get arrested. Hilarious. But they wouldn’t arrest you if you shot somebody. Maybe you should just go shoot the homeless people.”

The clip went viral and many, including homeless advocates, became enraged.

During a recent appearance on Segura’s podcast 2 Bears, 1 Cave, Rogan addressed the comments for the first time.

Rogan began the conversation by arguing that joking about certain things is almost impossible now.

“Oh my God,” Segura chimed in. “The thing that, you know — you probably lose track of this all the time because it happens to you like every day. But when I did your podcast last and we talked about homeless people –”

“Oh yeah,” Rogan remembered and began laughing hysterically.

Segura explained, “You go, ‘I think we should shoot them.’ And I go, ‘I like your ideas.’ And then news outlets they took the, it was end quote. It was like, ‘He says this, Rogan says this. Tom says, I like your idea. These guys are endorsing violence against homeless.’ And then they go, ‘And then it happened. A homeless person was killed. And this is what these guys are — this is what these guys are.'”

Rogan began reading a headline that had been pulled up on an offscreen monitor.

“‘Under fire for joke intended as political jab.’ I was under fire? I wasn’t even aware I was under fire. That’s what’s hilarious. I didn’t even have any idea. I didn’t pay attention and didn’t affect me at all,” Rogan said.

“I got messages of like, ‘I cannot believe that I supported you and that you advocate violence against the homeless,'” Segura said.

“You got messages?” Rogan asked.

“We should just explain what we actually said,” Rogan added. “What I actually — what we were actually saying is that if you shot them, no one would care because they don’t do anything about violence. That’s what we’re saying. We weren’t saying you should shoot the homeless people. We were saying like, you can’t touch their stuff.”

“In LA that’s considered actual personal property,” Segura added.

“There’s a huge spike in actual violent crime. And to be clear, I was part of the group that paid to have the homeless people that were on Cesar Chavez in — here in Austin drowned in Lake Travis,” Segura joked.

As the pair laughed off the joke, Rogan said, “Imagine someone saying that they thought that we were serious.”

“I mean, they’ll say it about this,” Segura laughed.

“It’s out of context. But all they do is get more people to listen. They don’t understand that they work for you. When they do stuff like that, that’s free advertising,” Rogan concluded.

Listen above via 2 Bears, 1 Cave.

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