How Long Will The Daily Wire Stand By Candace Owens?

The relationship between The Daily Wire and one of its biggest personalities, Candace Owens, has grown increasingly untenable.

Owens has long been a brash and intentionally inflammatory commentator. She kicked off her career in journalism as a liberal running a website that speculated about the size of Donald Trump’s genitals. Owens herself pined for the death of the “Republican Tea Party.” But after Trump’s ascension to the presidency, she quickly restyled herself as a right-wing culture warrior and was rewarded with regular appearances on Infowars, which she converted to regular appearances on Fox News and then a hosting job at the Daily Wire, amassing a large and growing audience along the way.

Owens’s ability to evolve has been on full display in the wake of the October 7 terrorist attack in Israel and amidst the war in the Gaza Strip. Over the last six months, she’s worked earnestly and incessantly to cultivate a following on the anti-Semitic right.

Owens has emerged as a fierce critic of Israel, arguing its war in Gaza constitutes a genocide. Her commentary has been laden with amateurish claims; she recently alleged that the historic Muslim Quarter of Jerusalem is a a state-enforced ghetto, for example.

More recently, Owens has waded into wild conspiracy theorizing and outright anti-Semitism, lashing out against “political Jews” and even, as Mediaite reported on Monday morning, endorsing the blood libel that Jews murder Christians in order to drink their blood during religious ceremonies.

As far back as November, it was widely speculated that The Daily Wire — a conservative political news site founded in 2015 — might sever its relationship with Owens. The site’s founding editor, Ben Shapiro, called Owens’s initial commentary on the conflict in the Middle East “disgraceful,” and she responded by musing that “you cannot serve both God and money” in what was widely seen as an anti-Semitic crack about Shapiro’s Jewish faith.

Owens went on to characterize Shapiro as “emotionally unhinged” and take more shots at him during an interview with Tucker Carlson, who has founded a competitor outlet to The Daily Wire and argued that Shapiro’s concern for Israel suggests that he “doesn’t care” about the United States.

At the time, Daily Wire co-CEO Jeremy Boreing released a statement putting speculation that Owens might be let go to rest.

Boreing said that neither he nor Shapiro would fire Owens because of the company’s commitment “not to regulate the speech of our hosts, even when we disagree with them.”

“Candace is paid to give her opinion, not mine or Ben’s. Unless those opinions run afoul of the law or she violates the terms of her contract in some way, her job is secure and she is welcome at Daily Wire,” he added.

This was a hole-ridden excuse at the time, and it has aged worse than Boreing could have ever anticipated.

No one would expect to The Daily Wire to cut ties with Owens over some political or philosophical difference in opinion.

But what Boreing describes as “opinion” can at this point be universally recognized as a misleading euphemism. Perhaps it is technically true that Shapiro and Owens have a difference in opinion over whether there is a “small ring” of “sinister” Jews exercising disproportionate power in Hollywood and Washington. And perhaps it is technically true that they disagree about whether some Jews are “drunk on Christian blood.”

But to describe it, principally, as a difference in opinion is to miss the point, which is that Owens is a bigot detached from reality and paid by The Daily Wire to promote her worldview to its audience.

Toleration for diverse viewpoints and an aversion to censorship are important values. In conservative media, they are particularly revered as a result of conservatives’ ostracization in the entertainment industry, academia, and mainstream media.

But to treat Owens’s continued employment with and promotion by The Daily Wire as a necessary evil in light of the outlet’s commitment to free speech is absurd on its face. Ceasing to lend Owens the outlet’s credibility would not be to stop Owens from expressing herself; she has 4.8 million followers on X and will be able to speak and monetize her speech long after the two sides part ways.But it would send a message about what the outlet’s values are.

No one is asking Boreing to stop Owens from peddling hatred and conspiracy theories (she recently staked her “entire professional reputation on the fact” that Brigitte Macron, the French First Lady, is a man), they’re just wondering why he’s choosing to subsidize such behavior. That’s a distinction that he may wish to elide, but that honest brokers shouldn’t allow him to.

In 2016, Shapiro left Breitbart News because under the leadership of its “bully” of a chairman, Steve Bannon, it had “sold out” its mission “in order to back another bully, Donald Trump.”

“This is disgusting,” he continued. “No news outlet would stand for it. Nobody should.”

Eight years later, The Daily Wire finds itself at a similar crossroads of its own making.

This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.