Rep. Tim Burchett (R-TN) suggested during an appearance on Joe Rogan’s podcast that the CIA could be behind would-be assassins targeting President Donald Trump.

Burchett joined Rogan on The Joe Rogan Experience for Thursday’s episode where their lengthy conversation touched on everything to UFOs, “freaks” in Congress, and whether an MKUltra-style operation was being used by the intelligence community to take out the president.

While discussing the case of Cole Tomas Allen, the man now charged with an attempted shooting spree at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, Burchett argued Allen was “programmed to do it.”

Allen had reportedly railed against the president and his administration on social media ahead of the shooting, where he allegedly shot a Secret Service agent in his vest.

“The guy’s been programmed to do this,” Burchett declared, immediately pulling in Rogan’s attention from a screen he was reading from. “He immediately turns from one way to the other, overnight almost, and we’re seeing this more and more, I think.”

“What do you mean, the guy’s been programmed? You mean like MKUltra-type programming?” Rogan asked.

“100%,” Burchett said.

“Really?” a surprised Rogan asked.

“I think so, but it’s a different — you’re the expert on it,” Burchett said.

“I’m not really. Don’t say that,” Rogan said, laughing.

“I don’t want to get you bumped off,” Burchett joked.

MKUltra was an illegal CIA operation carried out from the ’50s into the ’70s where intelligence officials were using drugs, psychological torture, and other experimental methods to practice influence and control over individuals and develop interrogation techniques.

Burchett argued such operations are far easier to carry out today with smartphones, and the CIA had previously denied MKUltra, so there’s no reason to trust them saying they’re not conducting such operations today.

The congressman said:

Here’s my thought on this. I think you’ve got a bunch of people today because of this [holds up phone], it’s just open up your head and pour it in. And they can put these things out to people just to where they know there’s gonna be a reaction. You and I are going to read this stuff and go, huh. And there’s some people that are going to stay awake at night and just fume. I’ve known people that read stuff and they’ll call me and text me, “can you believe this?” I’m like, dude, I live this stuff. Cool out. We’re good.

Burchett and Rogan also both raised suspicions about Thomas Crooks, who shot the president in the ear in an assassination attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania, in 2024. Both questioned the lack of a manifesto and virtually no digital trace of Crooks, as well as the fact that his body was cremated just 10 days after the shooting.

Burchett further argued that intelligence groups can easily identify people today who would be more susceptible to suggestion and radicalization, thanks to social media and the internet.

“These folks, they know who they are and they can target them. How many of these people are we going to find that have no internet access, have no history of being on the internet,” he said.

Rogan agreed, noting algorithms, AI, and bots can be used to radicalize people far more easily than the techniques being deployed decades ago.

“They most certainly can do that today if they could do that in the 1960s,” he said.

Watch above via The Joe Rogan Experience.

New: The Mediaite One-Sheet "Newsletter of Newsletters"
Your daily summary and analysis of what the many, many media newsletters are saying and reporting. Subscribe now!