‘She’s Wrong’: Daily Wire Chief Speaks Out on Candace Owens Defending Kanye’s Anti-Semitic Comments

Jason Kempin/Getty Images

Daily Wire co-CEO Jeremy Boreing spoke out on Candace Owens, one of his own employees, who defended superstar rapper Kanye West over a series of anti-Semitic posts that saw him suspended from social media.

“I think we’ve all expressed our disparate views on Kanye’s comments pretty thoroughly. I don’t begrudge Candace her view, nor do I begrudge her defending her friend. I suspect she is right that he has no hatred of the Jewish people in his heart. She would know far better than I,” Boreing told Mediaite in a statement. “I think she’s wrong about the anti-Semitism of the remarks themselves. But I’m not in the business of telling our hosts what to think and say, more’s the pity.”

Over the weekend, Instagram locked West’s account after he suggested that Sean “Diddy” Combs was being controlled by Jews.

West took his ideas to Twitter, where he wrote: “I’m a bit sleepy tonight but when I wake up I’m going death con 3 On JEWISH PEOPLE The funny thing is I actually can’t be Anti Semitic because black people are actually Jew also You guys have toyed with me and tried to black ball anyone whoever opposes your agenda.”

During her Daily Wire podcast on Monday, Owens came to West’s defense, coming up with inventive ways to deny West’s declaration of war on Jewish people was anti-Semitic.

“Now, if you are an honest person, you did not think this tweet was anti-Semitic,” she said.

“You did not think that he wrote this tweet because he hates or wants to genocide Jewish people. This [does] not represent the beginning of a Holocaust,” continued Owens. “That’s if you’re an honest person, you’ll admit that, right? If you’re an honest person, when you read this tweet, you had no idea what the hell he was talking about. I had no idea, when I read this tweet, what the hell he was talking about.”

She continued by arguing that “death con 3” represented a “defense position,” not “an offense”:

This tweet inspired questions, not answers. First and foremost, what is death con 3? Did he mean defcon 3, which would be a military defense position? Not an offense, for those of you that are offended, a military defense position, is he tweeting this because he’s reading the Newsweek headline, calling him an anti-Semitic.

Is he angry because he can’t believe that he’s not free to talk about people in his life who happened to be Jewish? Right? Without being accused of anti-Semitism? Is he saying, “I’m not gonna shut up and I’m gonna keep tweeting and I’m gonna keep calling these people out,” referring to his friends that he feels slighted by?

Is he talking about Jared Kushner and Josh Kushner? If you’re a liar, you’ll say, ‘I know I was scared, Candace. I actually thought that Kanye West was going to launch a military strike in Israel. Because that’s the reaction. Like when I woke up and I looked at the headlines, the reaction was like Kanye West had gotten together a military strike and it was going to go forward in the morning time in Israel. That was the reaction that was met with this tweet.

Now, once again, I want to make this very clear. This is not a defensiveness tweet. This is an open question, which never seems to happen anymore. It’s like you cannot even say the word “Jewish” without people getting upset in the same way that you’re not allowed to say “Black” anymore.

Ben Shapiro, the co-founder of The Daily Wire, also rebuked West’s comments, though he did not mention Owens’s defense.

“As usual, two things can be true at once: Kanye’s moves toward pro-life, faith, and family conservatism are encouraging; his “death con 3″ posts and Black Hebrew Israelite language are clearly anti-Semitic and disturbing,” he wrote.

West had previously, in an interview with Tucker Carlson on Fox News, said Jared Kushner only pursued the Abraham Accords “for money” — though he did not seem to understand in the interview what those peace deals actually were.

West made no apologies on Wednesday night following the screening of Owens’ documentary on the Black Lives Matter organization.

“Hey, if you call somebody out for bad business, that means you’re being anti-Semitic,” he told The New York Post. “I feel happy to have crossed the line of that idea so we can speak openly about things like getting canceled by a bank.”

JP Morgan Chase has cut ties with West’s business, Yeezy LLC, according to a letter shared by Owens on Thursday.

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!