Activists and commentators on the right are facing a reckoning over how to handle conspiracy theorists as podcaster Candace Owens and others purportedly digging into the assassination of Charlie Kirk have directed their fire at their friends and former colleagues at Turning Point USA.
The sense among conservatives in the immediate aftermath of Kirk’s assassination just more than three months ago, I wrote at the time, was that it would be an inflection point that inspired post-9/11-like righteous anger against the political left. But the last three months have turned out to be more like 9/11 in that the killing stoked conspiracy theories that suggest it was an inside job, fracturing the right.
Owens, a former friend of Kirk who once worked at Turning Point USA, has been the ringleader of those insisting Tyler Robinson, the 22-year-old charged in Kirk’s murder, was not the one who pulled the trigger. She does not believe the messages between Robinson and his roommate included in Robinson’s indictment were authentic.
Among the tentacles in her “investigation” are flight patterns of Egyptian planes that “crossed” with Kirk’s widow Erika Kirk (originally misstating the times) and suspicions about specific Turning Point USA staffers who were present when he was assassinated.
Charlie Kirk was “betrayed by the leadership of Turning Point USA,” she said.
The result of all that, according to "Charlie Kirk Show" producer Blake Neff, was Kirk’s staff enduring more harassment due to the conspiracy-stoking than they did “from antifa supporters who overtly celebrate Charlie’s murder,” all while they’re grieving the loss of their friend and mentor that they witnessed firsthand.
The problem, though, is figuring out how to effectively rebut a conspiracist who sees pushback as “psychological manipulation” — and a sign she’s on to something.
“There is no amount of increase in pressure and propaganda and headlines written about me that are going to convince me,” Owens said.
Turning Point USA ignored Owens for a while, before responding earlier this month and scheduling a livestream rebuttal for Monday. Owens was invited to appear in person but claimed she couldn’t work it into her schedule. Erika Kirk went on a media tour and explicitly asked Owens to stop spreading conspiracy theories.
Then on Sunday, the eve before the scheduled conspiracy take-down stream, Erika Kirk said she would meet Owens in person on Monday and that all other “discussions, livestreams, and tweets are on hold until after this meeting,” though the Charlie Kirk Show on Monday did devote a chunk of time to debunk a number of conspiracy theories.
The two met for four and a half hours, with both of them later calling it “productive,” promising further comments later, and Owens saying they “were able to share intel and clarify intent.”
It’s not just Turning Point USA that is facing a dilemma about how to handle the scrutiny of those who were closest to Charlie Kirk. The feud has put other conservative influencers — many of whom are trying to appeal to the same audience as Owens or have a personal relationship with her — in a tricky position.
Tucker Carlson said on Theo Von’s podcast that he does not “understand the official story at all” and asserted that Owens’s observation about Egyptian planes was “true,” adding: “I just don't have a ton of confidence in the FBI or the men who run it.”
An old-school principle in political discourse was to debate on the basis of facts, and not your opponent’s motives. That’s largely gone out the window over the last decade — and for conspiracy theory apologists, motives have become paramount.
“How do you know what the truth is?” Carlson said in a follow-up video. “Anybody who is earnestly searching for the truth, whether they’re right or wrong, but as long as they’re motivated by a desire to find out what happened and therefore honor Charlie's memory by getting to justice — anyone who’s doing that, I’m not going to criticize.”
Other major conservative figures, though, are now publicly pushing back on the conspiracies. Megyn Kelly has promised she will have more to say about Owens and Turning Point soon, but she did push back on demands for the FBI to reveal more.
“Because I am a sane person who understands the law, I also know that the FBI, hello, does not run around updating its investigation and releasing the very latest on what they found. And people who are demanding that the FBI or DOJ do so do not know anything about law enforcement,” Kelly said last week.
"The Daily Wire’s" Matt Walsh put out a half-hour-long show on why he doesn’t believe the Kirk conspiracy theories — adding that he considers Owens, a former Daily Wire employee, a friend, and that he has privately talked to her about his disagreements. The lack of a bullet exit wound that Owens said she didn’t believe? Walsh cited a “plausible” analysis explaining the trajectory.
But in a sign of how intertwined conspiracy theories are with the political right, Walsh in an offhand comment said that “everybody, I think, rightly assumes that [Jeffrey] Epstein didn’t kill himself.”
The political right has been conditioned to reject the authority of long-standing institutions, experts, and traditional authority figures. President Trump for years dubbed the investigation into links between his campaign and Russia a “hoax,” animating the political pushback on the right. Owens herself referenced COVID-era recommendations from authority figures who said to “ignore your gut” and make toddlers wear masks.
And conspiracy theory believers are a sizable portion of the conservative coalition. A Manhattan Institute survey measuring the current Republican coalition found that about a fifth of them believed five or six out of six listed conspiracy theories about 9/11, the 2020 election, COVID-19 leaking from a lab, Holocaust denial, the moon landing, and vaccines causing autism. And the current Republican coalition is slightly more conspiracy-prone than the full population.
But for all the major conspiracy theories that have gained traction on the right over the last decade — from QAnon to the insistence that federal authorities instigated the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol attack — none have turned the conservative right against itself in the manner of the Kirk conspiracies.
This pushback to Owens doesn’t necessarily mean the right is heading for a reckoning on conspiracy theories more broadly. Many of those reading this will, I am sure, consider at least one of the conspiracies I’ve mentioned and say: “But THAT one is actually true.”
But the dominant narrative that emerges from Kirk’s assassination will be important to the event’s lasting cultural impact, and to the meaning of his assassination. Sixty years after President Kennedy’s assassination, a sizeable majority — 63 percent — of Americans said they didn’t believe his killer Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone.
Robinson, the man charged with killing Kirk, appeared in court for the first time last week for a hearing on media access for court motions and proceedings in the case — an issue that will be critical to combating conspiracy theories. The judge is expected to rule on the matter on Dec. 29.
