Candace Owens has always courted controversy, but her behavior in recent years has repeatedly crossed the line. The media personality parted ways with Ben Shapiro’s Daily Wire in March 2024 after her commentary grew increasingly antisemitic following the October 7, 2023, attacks in Israel. She embraced the leftist talking point that there is a genocide in Gaza, and not long before she left the Daily Wire, she claimed “that ‘secret Jewish gangs’ terrorize Hollywood — and … favorited a tweet repeating a lie about Jews drinking Christians’ blood,” according to the Washington Post.
More recently, Owens suggested that conservative speaker Charlie Kirk was actually shot from an underground tunnel, and the roof shooter was a decoy. Later, she claimed Tyler Robinson’s confession was fictional and he wasn’t even on campus the day of Kirk’s assassination.
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But worst of all is her insistence that Kirk was about to “abandon the pro-Israel cause outright” and that Israel plotted to assassinate Kirk as a result. This is both truly deranged and completely unsupported by evidence. But it’s exactly the kind of thing Owens would try to sell as her hatred for Israel and the Jewish people continues to grow.
Following Kirk’s death, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the young man had written him a letter dated May 2 of this year. Owens claimed Netanyahu was “misrepresenting” the letter, but on Sept. 30, the letter was published in full. It shows that Kirk was concerned that support for Israel was slipping away in America, especially among those on the Right. He was worried about antisemitism, had some serious questions about the Israeli strategy to combat misinformation and fight the war, and wanted to offer suggestions. The letter is not what antisemites claim it is.
This week, Megyn Kelly was grilled online for her refusal to criticize people such as Owens and commentator Tucker Carlson for their anti-Israel statements and wild claims.
“I have no obligation to ‘separate’ myself from anyone,” Kelly said in a post on X. “I run my own media company and my own show. That show is where I express my own opinions and I will decide what/what not to opine on. If you need me to condemn Candace or Tucker for their opinions in order to listen to me, then I may not be for you. He’s a close friend and she is under enough pressure w/o gratuitous shots from me. My fight is with the left, not these two.”
As others have pointed out, calling out antisemitism on the Left but not on the Right is a huge problem. And Kelly’s failure to do so boils down to this weak defense: These pundits are stressed out, and they’re my friends. But standards, principles, and morals should come first, especially when it comes to behavior you readily condemn in your ideological enemies. In Kelly’s case, her support for Owens and Carlson seems solely dependent on their criticism of the Left. So long as they oppose Democrats, she apparently couldn’t care less about their embrace of antisemitism or their scurrilous attacks on the Jewish people.
Owens should serve as a litmus test for conservatives. Loyalty should never be blindly given to politicians or commentators. This holds true even if that person is doing what conservatives want: speaking out against the Left. But just because someone stands firm against leftism and cultural rot does not mean she is simultaneously upholding principles that conservatives should also prize. This is especially true now when certain behaviors that conservatives unapologetically condemn on the Left, such as antisemitism, are also growing and supported on the Right.
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Antisemitism from those who call themselves Republicans or supporters of President Donald Trump is just as bad as anything emanating from keffiyeh-wearing college students assembled on an Ivy League campus. In fact, it’s much more of a problem when an ideological ally holds those views because familiarity can sometimes soften the appearance of evil.
At the end of his letter to Netanyahu, Kirk wrote the following: “I think it’s important to be brutally honest with those you love.” This often goes against our natural inclinations, but Kirk was right. Conservatives must not hesitate to condemn antisemitism when we see it on our side. It does not matter if you consider the person espousing it a friend or a political ally. It is necessary for moral consistency and the larger fight against good and evil.
Kimberly Ross (@SouthernKeeks) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog and a contributor to the Magnolia Tribune.