The Conversation (0)
Sinead Butler
Jun 02, 2025
Joe Rogan reveals the worst guest he’s ever had on his podcast
The Joe Rogan Experience
Elon Musk has hit out at Bono after the U2 frontman mentioned a study which estimates 300,000 people will die as a result of DOGE's USAID cuts.
Bono appeared as a guest on Joe Rogan's podcast on Friday (May 30), in a three-hour-long interview where the 65-year-old musician and activist discussed his new Apple TV+ documentary Bono: Stories Of Surrender, and the discussion also turned to the impacts of international aid cuts under Trump.
"Just a recent report...it’s not proven, but there’s surveillance enough to suggest 300,000 people have already died from just this cut off, this hard cut of USAID. So there’s food rotting in boats, in warehouses," the singer told the podcaster on The Joe Rogan Experience, citing a study from Boston University by infectious disease academic Brooke Nichols, who believes this number of deaths are mostly children.
It didn't take long for Musk to respond via his platform X, formerly Twitter, and the former DOGE lead didn't hold back as he reacted to the Irishman's comments on May 31, writing: "He's such a liar/idiot. Zero people have died!"
During the podcast, Rogan replied to Bono by noting how "they're throwing the baby out with the bath water," then acknowledged that "there have been a lot of organizations that do tremendous good all throughout the world."
But then, at the same time claimed that USAID was a "money-laundering operation" with "no oversight, no receipts".
However, he went on to say: “We help the world and when you’re talking about making wells for people in the Congo to get fresh water, when you’re talking about food and medicine to places that don’t have access, no way that should have been cut out. And that should have been clear before they make these radical cuts. There’s got to be a way to keep aide and not have fraud.”
"The ironic thing is, even though Elon Musk has proposed all these things and the DOGE committee has proposed all these things, they’ve made no cuts in terms of the budget… They’ve cut nothing.”
"...the bureaucracy and the penpushers, I get it and I get people's frustrations for it," Bono later recognised. "But I just want to remind Americans of the size of their country, and I’m not talking about the geography.
"The size of the idea, it’s just an extraordinary thing. It’s an idea big enough to fit the whole world, and when it becomes an island rather than a continent … when it shrinks, America seems to stop being America.”
Indy100 has contacted Musk and Bono's representatives for comment.
Elsewhere, seven times Elon Musk’s leadership of Doge really wasn’t efficient, and Joe Rogan breaks down in tears over death of Anthony Bourdain.
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