Candace Owens reflects on Ye's Chicago comeback and approaches the one-year anniversary of Charlie Kirk's death
Candace Owens covers Ye's sold-out Chicago concerts, then pivots to scrutinize statements from Turning Point USA figures ahead of the one-year anniversary of Charlie Kirk's death — including a hospital-room admission by Blake Neff and an op-ed by Erika Kirk in the New York Times.
Summary
Eight months pregnant and attending Ye's sold-out Chicago concerts, Owens opens with a personal account of the shows, framing his return to the stage as a cultural triumph over cancellation and drawing explicit parallels to her own experience of being fired from the Daily Wire and to Charlie Kirk's final weeks. She then delivers an extended commentary on Ye's artistic legacy, walking through specific songs — including 'All Falls Down,' 'Runaway,' and 'Homecoming' — to argue that his music has consistently challenged the mechanisms of social control and peer pressure she sees operating in media and politics, and playing a 2013 BBC clip in which Ye describes himself as 'just the espresso' for his fans' self-belief. The episode then shifts to the approaching one-year anniversary of Charlie Kirk's death, with Owens dissecting two new public statements from TPUSA figures: a Deseret News profile in which Blake Neff recounts that while sitting in the hospital waiting room, someone said Candace Owens would have an extreme reaction to Kirk's death and Neff agreed — a detail Owens argues suggests foreknowledge that the official narrative would be challenged rather than genuine grief or curiosity about who was responsible; and an op-ed by Erika Kirk published in the New York Times, which Owens characterizes as emotionally hollow, politically calculated, and a near-verbatim repetition of statements Erika has already made publicly, contrary to everything Charlie Kirk stood for in his opposition to that publication. Owens also revisits the detail that Kirk sent messages saying 'they're going to kill him' during a Zoom call with Israeli officials, and notes that this information was passed to Tulsi Gabbard's office by Andrew Kolvet — which she argues proves the conversation was not treated internally as casual or joking. She additionally flags the forthcoming Salem Media documentary about Kirk, arguing its backers' ties to Israeli foreign influence apparatus make it likely to be propaganda. Owens closes by announcing she will soon name a guest host for three days a week during her upcoming maternity leave.
Key Takeaways
FULL TRANSCRIPT
Candace's return from Ye's Chicago concerts
Candace Owens: Happy Tuesday, you guys. I hope everyone enjoyed the long weekend. You absolutely know that I did, because I went to a Ye concert. I'm going to tell you all about that. It was easily the most inspiring show that I have ever been to. And I saw it at the exact right time, because I keep telling you guys — I am back. I feel healed. I'm fighting now with a very clear mind, which is good, because in two days it will be the one-year anniversary of Charlie's passing. I've been listening to the Kanye West classics, so the forecast is not looking good this week. For those that betrayed Charlie Kirk, stay indoors. In fact, this just might wind up being the coldest story ever told. See what I did there?
Now, Turning Point USA is firing up the anniversary engine, so to speak. First, Erika Kirk has moved to publish a one-year look back on her grief in an op-ed for the New York Times. And it's not exactly a tearjerker. I've read it. We're going to go through that. In addition, Blake Neff has shared a totally bizarre detail about a conversation that he had in the hospital shortly after Charlie was pronounced dead. It is not good. It is not going to do anything about those pesky rumors. We're going to talk about all of this. Welcome back to Candace.
Ye's sold-out Chicago return and the media blackout
What a weekend, you guys. I'm sitting at a peak of inspiration in this moment. In case you did not know, the artist formerly known as Kanye West — Ye — has been touring and has been selling out stadiums between 70,000 and 100,000 seats all over the world. He's essentially doing a world tour that is equal to Taylor Swift's Eras Tour, and he's doing it amidst a total media blackout. That's what makes this really a cultural phenomenon, because the media cannot stand to acknowledge the success of those that it attempted to destroy. I'm going to say that again: the media cannot stand to acknowledge the persistent success of individuals that they attempted to destroy.
Hence the crash-out from people online who dedicate their lives full-time to trying to destroy me. They were completely traumatized by me living my life this weekend. I saw one person post their conversation with Grok about whether it's safe for me to go to a concert at eight months pregnant. And Grok said, "No, the baby could be startled by the music because their hearing is developed." And then I saw the same people who told us that overwhelming happiness and fireworks displayed at a funeral was perfectly normal — those same people were then trying to convince us that my happiness and fireworks displayed at a Ye concert one year later was completely unacceptable. Things are just hilariously backward.
I also wish to underscore the sincere stupidity of their excuse as to why fireworks were okay at Charlie's funeral. They were like, "Charlie loved pyrotechnics." Yeah, I'm sure he did when he was celebrating. I'm sure he also loved birthday cards, birthday cake, candles, hot girls, and bikinis. That does not make any of those things appropriate in a funeral setting. It's just a bizarre way to argue that people were wrong for feeling weird about the celebratory nature of that funeral. Anyway, enough about that.
I have to show you guys some clips from Ye's return to the stage. Here is the crowd singing "Heartless." And I am borrowing this footage from people on Instagram — I did not record one second of it. I was just way too excited. I was a true fan. No time to be behind a camera lens. He closed out both shows with his song "Runaway." When it starts, he just makes one piano note and everyone goes crazy. He has essentially made one piano note famous, and then he starts playing more notes and the crowd just goes wild.
All I can say is that it was a night of art — moving art. There's no other way to express what I witnessed, what I felt. It was something uplifting and it further inspired me. And it's difficult to express to audiences what Ye returning to Chicago during the week of Charlie's death anniversary meant to me. Obviously you guys know Charlie was from Chicago. He was very proud of that. He loved Kanye — thanks to me. He loved the song "Homecoming" in particular, which was Kanye's ode to Chicago effectively. And it all just felt to me extremely providential, the timing of it all.
I should also mention that Ye had not been back on stage in his hometown in over six years. So there was no way in the world that I was going to miss this show. Months ago we started planning to attend. We were willing, of course, to pay ourselves to go, but Ye's team was like, "Absolutely not." They went above and beyond. We had the most fantastic time.
We landed into Chicago thinking we'd have plenty of time to go to dinner before the show, but the traffic was insane. He just shut down the city. The entire city was attending this concert — that's what it felt like. By the time we got to our hotel through all the traffic, we had about fifteen minutes to drop our bags before heading over to Ye's hotel. And it was just such a beautiful and wonderful thing to see people lined up outside, just waiting for him to exit his motorcade to cheer and take photos and applaud as he was leaving his hotel. They just wanted to wave. I stopped and took photos with a lot of those people. We have a lot of joint fans, and it was exciting for me as well just to be with people again after a long year.
The Kim Kardashian lobby moment
I do have to tell you guys about this terribly awkward moment in the hotel lobby. My brain just sort of glitched for a second. We were grabbing our concert passes and I'm speaking to someone on his team, and suddenly I look behind them and Kim Kardashian is in the lobby. I hadn't seen her since pre-divorce. I was so confused. I'm thinking, "Oh no — she's going to this concert." And you know, I've said some things about Kim, and now I'm about to be in a box with her all night, because Ye makes up with people at random times. I just kind of stared across the lobby at her with a half smile.
Have you ever seen that viral staredown meme? It's Diddy and that guy looking back and forth at each other. I was effectively the one in that scenario. It was all fine. Turns out she was actually in town for a show that North West had the following night. It's all good. No hard feelings, everybody. All love to her and hers.
The concert experience
From there we went to the concert in the motorcade and got to witness greatness. We had all-access passes so we could go to any section in the arena. But as soon as we were up in a box and I saw the energy and the movement of the people on the ground essentially just having a party, I looked at my husband, looked at security, and I was like, "I have to be down there." I was down to crowd surf at eight months pregnant. It's just who I am. I was so energized.
You can still go see the concert if you're on the fence. I think his next US date is maybe in Dallas — might be Houston. Go.
What Ye means to culture — a crash course
I wanted to introduce this because a lot of people don't understand what Ye means to the world and what he means to culture, and why people like myself truly believe he is the greatest artist living. You've probably seen him through a lens of the media and you probably did not grow up with his music. I'm going to do my best to very quickly explain this, because it's relevant — honestly, it's relevant to the person that I am today.
There is a depth to his artistry that, even if you never become a fan of his music, it is good for you to grasp at least peripherally why he has this effect and why he's able to survive all of these so-called cancellations.
I've told you guys this story many times before, but when Charlie and I were driving in a rental car we'd picked up at Denver airport and we had this three-hour journey up the mountain side to wherever we were going, we were just listening to music and I realized that he didn't know Kanye West's music at all. I mean, he didn't know the difference between Kanye West and Jay-Z. And I was like, "Stop the car. This is not a thing. You are from Chicago." And I just sort of took him through the story and the journey. I'm going to give you guys a crash course from that car ride effectively, which turned Charlie into a big Ye fan. He would then run ten miles a day to his music and we would text about it all the time and feel really inspired and uplifted by it.
I want to start with this little snippet from an interview that Kanye — back then he was called Kanye — gave to the BBC in 2013 regarding his fans and this is what he said.
Ye: "Go listen to all my music. It's the codes of self-esteem. It's the codes of who you are. If you're a Kanye West fan, you're not a fan of me. You're a fan of yourself. You will believe in yourself. I'm just the espresso. I'm just a shot in the morning to get you going, to make you believe that you can overcome that situation that you're dealing with all the time."
Candace Owens: So if you grew up listening to Kanye West's music, you understand that he really is sort of a white hacker, as it's referred to in the Matrix, right? We live in a matrix of some description. There's a certain computer code that's running that we are impacted by, that we are meant to follow, and we don't really know who's programming it — only that they expect us to exist mindlessly within it. And any person that notices that there is this code is perceived as an immediate threat. Kanye's music represented a hacking of that code. He is correct. You listen to what he's saying and suddenly you start recognizing: why do I think this? Why am I not allowed to think this?
One of his first mainstream songs was entitled "All Falls Down." It was a song where he laid out, which was quite shocking, all of his insecurities. No artist had ever done this before at this stage — a famous person referring to his own shortcomings, his financial irresponsibility, his inability to pronounce certain words. Prior to that, we all sort of had this idea of fame being unattainable in a way, and then Kanye drops "All Falls Down" and he's calling everyone out.
I felt very seen by his lyrics. In one verse he's speaking about a woman in college, and the lyrics are: "Man, I promise she's so self-conscious. She has no idea what she's doing in college. The major that she majors in don't make no money, but she won't drop out. Her parents will look at her funny." Then he says, "Now tell me that ain't insecure. The concept of school seems so secure."
That was me. I had no idea what I was doing in college. Journalism and English, double major. No clue. I was just following the embedded matrix code that if you don't sign up for government debt — I had no money to go to college, signed up for government debt anyway — if you don't go to school, then you're a failure. That's just a code. And we don't know why we do the things we do other than insecurity. That's peer pressure and insecurity, which cost me about $150,000 in student loans. You're just scared that you're not going to fit in unless you do what everyone else is doing. And he's speaking to that.
Then he has the second verse where he addresses himself and says, "Man, I promise I'm so self-conscious. That's why you always see me with at least one of my watches. Rolies and Poshas done drove me crazy. I can't even pronounce nothing past that Versace." So he's talking about Rolexes and Cartier watches, and he's so self-conscious that he feels like he has to wear this stuff. He can't even pronounce Versace. You should know that young Kanye had aspirations to be in fashion — we'd see that later in his life — even if he couldn't pronounce the words. And that in and of itself is meant to be a bar to entry. Like, you're not saying the words right, so how could you be fashionable?
It all really culminates in the song when he says, "It seems we're living the American dream. The people highest up have the lowest self-esteem. The prettiest people do the ugliest things bent on the road to riches and diamond rings." And that is a reality. I have seen that up close. It's what people will be willing to do to get to the top, what people will be willing to do to have money. And when you get up there, you sort of realize that these people do not have any self-esteem whatsoever, and they will do practically anything to maintain their popularity.
That has been the consistent messaging of his music, which is why it's so funny — people who don't listen to it think he's so narcissistic because he just believes in himself. But if you listen to his music, you think: narcissistic? This man is constantly talking about his addictions, talking about the traps in life, talking about the lure of women, him not doing the right thing, talking about his divorce, talking about the mistakes that he's made. Letting people know that you essentially have to believe in yourself has been Kanye's consistent messaging.
The current design of the matrix is to lean into whatever they think will make you feel too self-conscious to express yourself. You're not allowed to run counter to the mainstream. However you feel, it's not allowed to be counter to the mainstream. They want you to feel isolated and alone. They tell you who to like, what's fashionable, who's cool, who's crazy. Of course, that's one of their favorite tools — this person has gone crazy. You don't want to be associated with crazy. So even if you kind of like that person, you don't want to express that publicly.
For me, it was: why you can't like Trump — well, you're Black, right? Then when I expressed that I liked Trump, it became: well, now you have to like Trump forever. Well, I don't like him anymore. Why can't I change my mind on the basis of what he's actually doing? Why can't I now despise all the things that he's doing? Oh, then you're going to get kicked out of this crowd. You just got welcomed into this crowd. You were in MAGA-land. Now you're kicked out of MAGA-land.
And for a very long time, the media had the power to create and to delete people with what seemed like a Department of Defense-level budget. Now that we know they engage in this sort of thing, the media has always operated as the real digital assassins. And that really is until Ye — no one faced that enemy harder than Ye did. Not many people understood what he was doing. Many people still do not understand the battles that he fought. It's very difficult to understand it outside of his music. He has never been accused of being a great orator, so when he sits down for interviews, it sometimes goes very sideways. But if you followed his music, you understood it.
The billion-dollar offer Ye refused — and what it cost him
I stressed this to Charlie: as you climb, the pot of gold they're going to offer you for your soul — or to stop growing at a certain level — gets bigger. And it also comes with bigger guardrails. And it's hard not to say yes to that.
Kanye started as a Grammy Award-winning producer. He was making beats for the biggest artists in the world. And then he said, "I want to be a rapper." And he was told, "No, keep making beats. This is where you are. You're great at this." And he said, "I don't accept that." And he went on to become a Grammy-winning rapper. And then he decided he wanted to get into fashion. And he was told, "No, you're an artist. You're at the top of your game. You have everything. You don't belong in fashion." But he didn't accept that no. And he did it anyway. And then he created a billion-dollar brand of sneakers — Yeezy. And then came even bigger offers: the Adidas and the Gap deals, worth billions. And all Ye had to do to maintain that was to shut up about politics.
I would say that's an offer that most people would take. Don't express that you like Trump. Don't talk about Jewish power in Hollywood or the messages that certain Jewish people in your life are sending you, and you can be a billionaire. I've been in the room with those sorts of offers. Not billions ever offered to me, of course, but I definitely said no to a lot of millions. I've told you that story.
It was when Kanye tweeted that he was about to go defcon 3 on some Jewish people in his life. And the amount of peer pressure that anybody who had a platform faced — make a statement about Kanye, call him crazy, say something is wrong. I remember sitting in that conference room. I had nothing to do with the statement, literally nothing to do with it. And despite everyone in the world condemning him, they needed me to make that statement because they knew I was friends with him. They just wanted a simple, copy-and-pasted: "I do not abide by antisemitism in all its forms and what Kanye is doing is wrong." So many people who were in his life made that statement. And I didn't.
The consequence I faced at the Daily Wire, after a very heated conference where literally the co-CEO banged his fists and said, "Why won't you do this for us? Don't you realize how hard this is for Ben that you won't make a statement?" — I look back on that. Could you imagine if I had sold Kanye out for Ben Shapiro? It's funny to reflect on. But I held the line and I lost millions because of it. They changed my contract because of it. They said they needed to build trust with me, so they edited the contract and put in a different clause because of what Kanye said.
But you have to think about that and think about yourself — if you were Ye and you were offered billions and all you had to do was shut up to maintain it, be somewhat controlled, how many of you honestly would have acquiesced to that?
Probably a lot of people. At maybe the level I'm at, the ask is simply: say nothing about Charlie Kirk's assassination, or say something and pretend to be overwhelmed by the evidence that this one person did it alone, and we'll give you millions, hundreds of thousands — who knows what the number is. Would you do it? I think people are doing it for a lot less.
We know that Charlie faced that moment in his own life. I know he did. I know what Andrew told me. Bibi offered to take Turning Point to the next level. You can only imagine the weight of what Charlie was facing in those final weeks of his life when he was at a table and offers were made to him. And I think we all know that he said no. He said no. Like Ye said no.
Ye let it all burn to the ground. I never get tired of telling the story, but when those decisions were made and when Adidas and Gap pulled their deals back and he was no longer a billionaire, I was in tears. Seeing someone that you've looked up to your whole life who has fought and won various battles — really the only battle is just to be himself — suddenly have everything stripped away from him in a moment, including his marriage. The demise of his marriage happened at the exact same time. I just felt tremendous sadness.
And when I spoke to him on the phone — I spoke to him within hours of that public announcement of Adidas making that public announcement — I will never forget what he said. He said, "I'm finally free." I thought he was going to be upset, and he said, "I'm finally free." And I always reflect on the weight and the courage of that statement and how it shaped me.
A year and a half later, it is exactly what I would refer to in my own mind and what I would tweet when it was announced that I was parting from the Daily Wire — aka fired. I tweeted, "The rumors are true. I am finally free." I just wanted to be free. Take it all. Do what you do. Have the media matrix lie. Paint me as some villain because I said genocide is always wrong. Ban me from Australia after the Zionist lobby of Australia got me banned like I'm some threat to society — because in politics you have to be pro-Israel or get destroyed and have your character destroyed. Yeah. I had the courage to believe in myself and to rebuild, because Ye had the courage before me. And that's what he means to culture and to so many people.
And boy did he rebuild. That's really what the concert was about. Against all odds, he had the ability to not sell himself out. And he resurrected his own career.
The "Avengers assemble" moment — avenging vs. revenge
Ye actually shared a meme created by one of his fans online of what it felt like to those who had followed his story and then watched his return to Chicago — with so many other artists by his side, brought on stage or in the audience like I was, just supporting him. Their take on it was Avengers-style: Avengers assemble. He beat cancel culture. You can never take that from him. No one thought he was coming back after the last couple of years, and how quickly he came back.
I do also love that it's the Avengers, not the Revengers, because there's an important distinction between the words "avenge" and "revenge." The latter — revenge — signifies a personal vendetta, personal malice, vigilante justice in a sense, wherein you're taking the law into your own hands. There's an inherent anger and a selfishness in that pursuit. But to avenge something is different. It's cleaner. It's not angry. It's the restoration of moral order — a defense of the helpless.
And I feel like in this moment, we are collectively avenging the public execution of Charlie Kirk. I've said I'm not angry anymore. I still would sit down with all of the characters in Charlie's life who I think are moving suspiciously. I wake up and I am happy every day, because I think that it has brought people from both sides together on this team of Avengers. We all sense that what we're doing is about restoring moral order. That what happened on September 10th of last year cannot stand, and it won't stand. And we all sense and know now that the Department of War is seeking revenge on us for doing so. Revenge is not going to cut it. Anger is not going to cut it. Truth is going to win the day. And I have a strong hunch, as I always have, that we are going to win this thing.
Ye introducing Candace to the world — and Charlie in the background
A lot that I'm bringing up from the archives I'll be sharing on September 10th. And just seeing Ye back on stage — there's just so much that has come full circle. Even my introduction to the cultural world, Charlie was with me. He was with me when I met Ye. He was by my side. He made it into the Ye documentary that was released last year. When Ye introduced me on TMZ, Charlie was there — you can see him in the background if you watch the full interview. And Ye was talking about the ever-relevant topic of being intentionally deplatformed — me, at the time. I was not being platformed by the hip-hop world because I didn't fit neatly into the box of what a Black person was supposed to be. Take a listen.
Ye: "Okay, so Ebro — I FaceTime and I'm there with Candace, right? And Ebro starts bringing up his version of facts. And Candace has facts. She's researched. Candace Owens has facts. She's researched. And then Candace just pulls out her Jedi lightsaber and just chops Ebro's head off with facts. Then Ebro FaceTimes me the next day and he's talking about the scoop scoop and poop. You want to talk about music now? I said, 'Yo, you going to have Candace on your show?' He's like, 'No, I'm not. She's mean.' So you're going to stifle her voice, Ebro. You're choosing to enslave people's minds. You're choosing to not let the truth be free."
Candace Owens: I just love that. And it's so funny now to see so many corporations and people that I've worked with in politics try to take credit, or in a sort of backhanded way — "I created Candace," "I helped to create the monster," deranged former CEOs and people saying, "I worked with her, so I have some inside scoop on who she is." No. None of you created me. None of you contributed to creating me. And actually, if there was one person who could say that, he would never utter that statement, and that would be Ye.
There's no Candace without Charlie. And in many ways, there was no Charlie and Candace — when the real storm happened and we both were given this jet fuel in our careers — it was because of Ye. Anyway, that's all I want to say about that. Just to share what was on my heart and my mind.
Blake Neff's hospital conversation — a strange admission
Okay, so for months now we have been asking Blake Neff what feels like a very simple question: where did he go after he landed into Salt Lake City aboard Charlie's jet on September 10th? Because despite flying in with Charlie, we know that Blake got into the second rental — a Denali — with Danny Phillip, perhaps some other people, because Blake then arrived to the event from the back seat as if someone else had been sitting in the front seat. We know that neither Danny nor Blake attended the restaurant event that morning where Charlie gave an interview. And we know that Blake cannot account for where he was. He says he was keeping time or something of that nature. He didn't even remember who he was with. He had to be reminded that he was with Danny, who was driving the vehicle.
Which is strange, because apparently he's been keeping account of my vacations. He tweeted this over the last couple of days: "Candace finds it implausible and ridiculous that Charlie would be excited about his largest campus tour ever because it was also his job. Somehow I am not surprised that Candace seven-vacations-a-year Owens can't imagine someone liking work."
Okay. So I understand that it could be hard for a 36-year-old incel who has no prospects, no family, no kids to imagine that someone might prioritize their family and their friends above podcasting. But just to set the record straight — if you're going to avail yourself to tracking my time spent traveling, please put your best foot forward, Blakey, and do it accurately. Thus far this year, we've taken a total of three vacations: our family holiday to Spain, our partial family trip to Russia — we didn't take the youngest because of the intensity of the flight — and my seven-year anniversary trip to Iceland fishing with my husband.
And for clarity: if Charlie's death has taught me, and I hope everyone back at home, anything — I probably didn't take enough time off. Charlie rarely took time off. We have obviously tracked all of his dates, all of his appearances. He was hardly home. He gave everything to build the very organization that now seeks to lie about who he was and actually seeks to make him appear as though he himself was a liar. They've not been honest or forthcoming about what he was up against in his final days, what his struggles were, who he was fighting. And yeah, he fed that monster. I'm not going to make the same mistake of thinking that bigger somehow means better.
I think my team is trustworthy. That's why I like to keep my team small. The benefit of having a small team is that you have people that you know. And they're going to continue to get time off, because they work hard when we're on air. I expect 100% from them when they are here and then I expect them to enjoy their real lives outside of me. I don't do the Erika Kirk "you're my family" thing. I'm not their family. They should go home to their families, work hard, and live a good life — especially after this year. This has been the most emotionally taxing year of my life. They have stood by me through that. So Blake, you're just sort of off the mark trying to tell people that somehow they should be wanting to dedicate their lives more in the way that Charlie did. And clearly, judging by your actions and the things that you have said, you were not worth that investment.
Also, I have to draw your attention to this. This is wacky. They're all sort of giving these interviews right now coming up upon the one-year anniversary. And Blake Neff spoke to Deseret News, which is a local news outlet in Utah. Here's what it says. Neff — in what I guess is supposed to be a profile piece — remembers sitting in the waiting room at the Orem, Utah hospital where Kirk was taken on September 10th and talking about how podcaster Candace Owens would react to Charlie's death. He said Charlie was aware of Owens's theories about the First Lady being transgender, as well as what he described as "weird stuff about Jewish cults," and that some of her views were part of the reason that TPUSA had become less involved with Owens around 2024. Now they're quoting him: "Someone said Candace is going to have an extreme reaction to this. And instantly I was like, 'Yeah, yeah, she will.'"
I'm sorry. What?
I want to remind you guys: I don't know this creature. I've never met Blake Neff. He has never — he doesn't know Charlie the most of everyone in this story. He has spent the least amount of time with Charlie. He himself says that he didn't join Charlie's team until mid-2023. So he knew Charlie for a year and a half. I never came across him. He's out in Arizona. I'm in Tennessee.
You're having a conversation about how Candace will react and conspiracy theories while you're sitting in the hospital and you just found out that Charlie's dead. Why are you not a conspiracy theorist in that moment? This is in the middle of the manhunt. Nobody knew anything. You guys are already having conversations about how other people are going to react rather than reacting yourselves and going, "Who could have done this?" Does that make sense? Is there something very wacky and bizarre about that conversation that he's now admitting to?
He won't name the person, which makes me think — usually when he develops his amnesia, it's usually about Danny Phillip for some reason. Maybe it's about someone else. I don't know that for a fact, obviously. But that's their conversation. "Oh, Candace is going to have a reaction to Charlie being murdered." I'm sitting in the waiting room. That's the first thought. This girl that I don't know is going to have a strong reaction. Why are you not having a strong reaction? Why are you not in that moment going, "Oh my gosh, who could have done this? Who were his enemies? What did he say last night?"
Blake, why didn't you say, "Oh, well, Andrew says that Charlie was worried someone was going to kill him. Who could have done this?" Why are you guys not imagining the scenarios, coming up with answers? Why does it feel like you already know it's not a conspiracy while Charlie's in the hospital? This is very odd. This is a very odd admission from Blake — that they were worried about me. And there's a reason they were worried about me, because they should have been worried about me. They knew that I would never bend the knee to this. I would never bend the knee to a dumb story, the cookie-cutter story that someone climbed on a rooftop who had never committed any even petty crimes in their life, who took just one shot out of pure confidence — not even a couple of shots to make sure they hit him — and then scaled the rooftop.
So maybe that's why they were concerned. It started to feel like Blake, for some reason, had confidence and knew that I would not trust the science on Charlie's assassination. That's what I get from that admission. Candace is not going to just trust the narrative and the science. I really do wonder who he was speaking to. Blake always says too much because Blake wants to be a star despite the fact that he has no talent. And I find that admission to be strange.
Erika Kirk's New York Times op-ed — a missed opportunity
In other news, Erika Kirk — if you have not seen it — released an op-ed in the New York Times, a one-year look back on her grief, which we kind of never saw displayed publicly. On the contrary, we just saw an Erika who wanted to move on, to be the CEO. But now she's writing an article about her grief. And I'm going to be honest with you: it's another terrible installment in the never-ending book of PR blunders.
Let's start with the fact that she's even doing this in the New York Times. And it's behind a paywall. She just continues to partner with a publication that her deceased husband hated. This was the first publication she partnered with — she opened their apartment to an in-person interview and sat down with them, what was it, two days after Charlie's assassination. Charlie never wrote an op-ed for the New York Times. His opinion of them is long documented all throughout his career. He perceived them as what they are — a fixture of the deep state apparatus. He registered himself as opposed to their perspectives. He would read the New York Times so that he knew what their perspectives were. Take a listen to one of many clips where you could find Charlie Kirk speaking about how and why he consumed the New York Times.
Charlie Kirk: "So there's a new story out of the New York Times, and I'm not really sure what to make of this. It's possible the New York Times is actually telling the truth. I have the New York Times right here. I read it so you don't have to. Every morning I'm reading the New York Times, the paper of record. I always get a kick out of it. The New York Times — 'All the news that's fit to print.' I get some really nasty emails: Charlie, why do you read the New York Times? Because I want to know what the intelligentsia is saying. It's also — I think it has the most circulation of any newspaper in the country. Actually, the Wall Street Journal might have more, but anyway, you should know what the other side is saying."
Candace Owens: Always the same perspective that he held. Somehow, immediately after his death, that was something Erika reversed course on and felt comfortable having them in her home. Okay, fine. So right off the bat, we're just going: why is this in the New York Times? Why is it behind a paywall? And why can't you just do anything that feels normal and as Charlie was?
I guess you've been honest. It's just Turning Point 2.0. It has nothing to do with Turning Point 1.0. It's a totally different organization. You work with the Department of War. You work with the deep state apparatus. You are their emotional asset. We get it. It just feels like you're laying it on thick, and maybe you could have just published a Substack about how you feel, what you've learned about grief. Don't put it behind a paywall.
And you get into the article and you're a couple of lines down and she's once again mentioning the Vance family. This has felt like one long promotional event for the Vance family. It's like the deepest thing that she can reach is what Usha Vance said to her on the plane. She remarks — and it's September 11th, 2025, a day after her husband Charlie Kirk was shot and killed — and she writes:
Erika Kirk (quoted): "The past 24 hours feel like a fever dream. As I land in Phoenix from Utah and return home, I get out of the car and my kids run into my arms. They have no idea where I was or what I was doing. They care only that I'm home. As I walk to the front door, there's a tightening in my chest I don't recognize. Is this what grief feels like? I sit on the couch where Charlie sat two nights ago watching the Cubs with our kids. I feel a wave building inside of me. I know it's about to crash. I don't know how I'm going to do this. I told Second Lady Usha Vance earlier that day, and she held my hand and she said, 'You know, when you're on an airplane with your kids and you're going to land in 15 minutes, but the kids are going crazy, screaming, throwing things, and then the plane lands and the kids relax and everything is fine again — that's how it will be. Just get through the next 15 minutes.' Her words are seared into my heart."
Candace Owens: They're not just seared into your heart. They're seared into the first speech that you gave. They're seared into the conference call that you held at Turning Point USA. We just keep hearing this over and over again. And we're at the one-year anniversary and I'm thinking, when I open this, surely they hired someone who could put something that's a tearjerker together. We're going to read this and we're going to see a side of Erika that we haven't seen — not something that constantly feels like an advertisement for someone else and feels political and controlled. You're not getting that from this article. It's everything you've already heard. In fact, I think if you had challenged ChatGPT to write something more emotional, ChatGPT could have risen to the moment without question. It would have said, "This is stuff you've already said."
I would probably try to reach a little deeper. They have seen this surface level of you. We know you love Vance. You opened AmFest and said, "We've got to get Vance elected." We get that. Can we maybe get something Charlie said to you that stuck with you? Maybe something else you learned beyond that first day from the Second Lady aboard another private plane talking about previous private planes that you were on? Because they always traveled private. Charlie was traveling private to all of his events. So she's like, "The last 15 minutes" — it's supposed to be relatable when you're flying private on Air Force Two. This is not the most relatable thing that you could share.
And then she goes on, and it's just a regurgitation of everything she's already said. She wants you to know she's not angry at God. Yes, we got all of this from the Jesse Watters interview. She writes:
Erika Kirk (quoted): "Grief is strange. Time continues even when every part of you wants it to pause or better yet rewind. But the people we love who have passed on would not want us to spend the rest of our lives trying to rewind. At first, I needed to survive the next 15 minutes. Over time, I've realized that Charlie would want me to live them. Occasionally, I'm asked whether I'm angry at God. I say no. My husband was one of one. I was blessed to be his wife and I understood his assignment here on earth."
Candace Owens: Again, this is a regurgitation of the speech that she gave on stage. So what's the purpose of this? What is the purpose of this other than to make money for the New York Times, which is a part of the deep state apparatus — factually speaking. Operation Mockingbird. The New York Times was involved in that. After they committed another state assassination — the assassination of JFK — here she is helping them get signups, running counter to how her husband felt about this publication.
She closes — and I'm not kidding — these are the last three lines:
Erika Kirk (quoted): "I will tell you what a dear friend told me. Just get through the next 15 minutes. One day, maybe when you least expect it, you'll start to see those 15 minutes hold more than just grief. The grief is there always, but so is the beautiful gift of life."
Candace Owens: Vance, Vances, Vance. And like I said, you can read this article in its entirety. I was expecting that they would have hired someone — I don't know, like Nicholas Sparks. Nicholas Sparks is available, right? The Notebook was beautiful. They've got a lot of money. I don't know why the Department of War hasn't used Nicholas Sparks to write this, and then we would go, okay, maybe she was just being weird and robotic. But you learn nothing about Charlie in this. It feels very fake, very surface. There's never any substance to anything, and they had an opportunity to do that. Even after we have to get through the fact that it's the New York Times and it's behind a paywall — they missed it. So this was another missed opportunity from Turning Point USA.
We'll see what they put together for Thursday at UVU. I think Glenn Beck is speaking. Is Erika speaking there? I don't know. We will continue to follow.
Revisiting the Zoom call with Israeli officials — and top comments
All right. So tomorrow we will return to dropping some figurative bombs on the narrative that we have been told from the Fed sloppers, so to speak. In the last episode, thanks to text messages being released, we were able to reveal that for whatever reason Charlie was sending messages saying "they're going to kill him" while he was on a Zoom call with Israeli officials — as Frank Turek termed them. That came from Frank Turek. There were two Israeli officials — we know they were from Israel. Then we know that Rabbi Wikki was on the Zoom call, because he was in Arizona at the time. We've got Josh Hammer. And we're supposed to believe this massive call, which came on the heels — just two hours after Charlie said he was abandoning the pro-Israel cause — was just a friendly debate prep session. And no, he was not kidding. It was not tongue-in-cheek, because I spoke to his wife about it and she never said that he was kidding or that it was tongue-in-cheek. She admitted that that happened. She was getting her nails done when this was going on. That story is now changing.
We know it wasn't tongue-in-cheek because Andrew Kolvet gave that conversation to Tulsi Gabbard's office. So we clearly knew and thought that there was something that should be explored about the nature of that conversation. Otherwise, you wouldn't give it to Tulsi Gabbard's office if everybody's joking and you had a friendly conversation thereafter. That was not the case. Turning Point continues to speak and we continue to timeline.
Top comments from last episode. From "The Audacity," they wrote: "The only reason you don't tell your spouse that you're afraid of something like being murdered is because you don't trust them." And yes, it's relevant that Erika, when she gave interviews thereafter, said that Charlie was just excited the night before. Weird for him to be fearful that he was going to die, but so excited that he couldn't sleep. I feel like maybe there was something else going on there. No, I do not believe that Charlie was excited about doing a UVU event. I'm sorry. I've done too many tour stops with him, traveled with him too much, to believe that he was that excited about something that he's always done and that it would cause him not to be able to sleep. That's a high level of excitement for an adult to experience for something that he's always done at a place that he already did it at. He had already done a UVU stop multiple times throughout his career. This was nothing new. Anyway, we are to believe that Erika had no idea that he had any fears the night before. I find that very hard to believe, and I know that you guys do too.
Noah writes: "The fact that Charlie sent those messages while on Zoom with Israel is absolutely bone-chilling. It sent a shiver down my spine." It should. It does to me as well. It is another piece in this puzzle. And it certainly does not register as true to me that Charlie had to speak to Israeli officials at 4:00 a.m. their time to help him with debate prep. Charlie was pretty good at debating. I don't think he needed this much help from so many people. Is Frank Turek some grand debater? Is he known to be a phenomenal debater? It's just all such nonsense — so many people giving tips on debate. And also, Josh Hammer said he just was really interested in Josh Hammer's book. He just wanted to know more about that.
Comments on today's episode. This user writes: "Keep going. You've got this. Love from Stamford, Connecticut, my hometown." Thank you. Love to see you guys here. Ali writes: "Andrew Kolvet tried to make an excuse for the fireworks at the memorial and said, 'The team set that up and Erika didn't know.'" Well, did they also force her to wear a sparkling pantsuit? Yeah, I think she got the message and the theme and she chose her attire accordingly.
M. Sanders writes: "Please consider pre-recording shows to get us through your maternity leave. The withdrawals are going to be a whole vibe." I will be announcing soon who is going to take over my show three days a week while I am on maternity leave. I'll probably make an announcement next week. I think you guys will be happy with my decision.
This user writes: "Salem Media and Waterstone is releasing a Charlie Kirk documentary with an alleged unreleased interview filmed shortly before September 10th, called 'Can You Hear Me Now,' on September 10th of this year." Yeah. Salem Media and Water Street — they are acquiring Salem Media. That's interesting, because we know that Salem Media is behind the filings immediately after Charlie died. We went over that in an earlier episode. The Israeli foreign minister getting involved in spending money in America to give us the October 7th experience, to tether Christians further — their apparatus has been Salem Media. They gave that money because they wanted to see results. Brad Parscale, I believe, was on the board of Salem Media or was at least an executive at Salem Media who brought this forward. So I will assume that that is going to be Israeli propaganda, just judging by the Faradox Faith by Works LLC and the like.
Lin Maria writes: "Though we mourn and grieve, Charlie Kirk is finally free." I love that. That is beautiful and well said. And like I said, he died with his soul intact, because I know whatever he was offered, he said no to.
"I Don't Give a Damn" writes: "Blake Neff would call a hot dog a sandwich and then wonder why nobody invites him to the deli." Just love that.
Jessica Coats writes: "I basically checked myself out of the hospital to make sure that I did not miss your show. I just walked in the door. Battle bun ready."
We will definitely be able to pull out some threads this week, as we should, leading up to the one-year anniversary of Charlie's passing. And we're going to be hit with — I can't even imagine how much money they are going to be spending on attacking me, as they always do, when they should be focused on just getting to the truth. They are now working with — it just seems like now they're working with drug addicts. Their new pocket of influencers just seems remarkably trailer trash in my view. You sense their desperation. They know nobody believes them. Nobody certainly believes that they're carrying on Charlie's legacy in any fashion or manner, because they just seem to do everything that runs counter to what Charlie expressed his desires were publicly.
So it's going to be a week. Buckle in. We have a lot of stuff to share, and I look forward to it. And I certainly will be getting into the Charlie and Candace archives, which has been a very emotional journey. I will leave it at that and we will see you guys tomorrow.