Disclaimer: I do not agree with the beliefs or past statements of Charlie Kirk and Candace Owens. I am writing this to examine and bring awareness of Owen’s perspective following Kirk’s death — not to endorse her rhetoric but to highlight the transparency and intensity with which she has discussed recent events.
I believe that what she is saying holds a lot of importance, and it is apparent that, despite what has been said about Kirk’s death, his passing has a sinister undertone to it, and we need to listen.
Owens is a Black American political commentator whose political positions can be described as far-right or conservative. She is known for her opposition to controversial topics, including pandemic lockdowns and the Black Lives Matter movement.
Owens and Kirk have been friends for a long time. In the wake of Kirk’s death, Owens released a series of online videos — 12 long-form streams totaling around ten hours and over two dozen TikToks — expressing her doubts about the official story behind Kirk’s death, suggesting that there was more to it than has been publicly acknowledged.
Owens is ready to talk, and she has made it a point that she will not be silent.
In her first video of the series, “They Are Lying About Charlie Kirk,” Owens looks to the camera and says, “There will be nothing that can stop me — over my dead body, which I’m sure can be arranged.”
The video starts by referencing the song “Power” by Kanye West, which Owens says was her and Kirk’s “hype” song. Owens describes the song as being about the ability to find it within yourself to become what you are capable of becoming “inside a matrix, when you just realize everything is dishonest, that everything is performative, that people are dishonest, and that they are going to try to stop you from being great.” She says that up until his assassination, Kirk was going through a spiritual journey towards the end of his life, and hints at the fact that there was a larger power above Kirk that wasn’t allowing him to feel the way he felt. In a thin-lipped expression, Owens says, “I believe, in fact, I know, that towards the end, Charlie was fighting for custody of himself.”
Owens claims that Kirk’s freedom of speech was being infringed upon after voicing some doubts about Israeli policies. After Kirk experienced doubt, Owens says that Kirk was invited to Israel by Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu, the Prime Minister of Israel, and was offered a substantial amount of money. Kirk said no to the money, and Owens sheds light on exactly what this “invite to Israel” meant.
When she started to question Israel herself a few years back, Owens says she was met with pressure to change her mind. She says that being invited to Israel wasn’t a friendly invitation; they weren’t saying, “We can educate you because you’re my friend,” but rather, it felt like they were saying, “This is your last chance.”
After Owens’ video made its rounds, rumors began to spread that Netanyahu had a hand in his death, and the prime minister responded. In the video, Netanyahu stated that the lie is “insane, false, and outrageous.” He said Kirk loved Israel and the Jewish people, stating that he had written this in a letter to Netanyahu. He also claimed that they were good friends, and they even had plans for Kirk to visit Israel.
Owens addresses this claim, saying instead that Kirk did not like Netanyahu and that the letter he is referencing is severely misleading. She follows this claim with a video of Tucker Carlson, another close friend of Kirk, voicing the truth on the actual relationship between Netanyahu and Kirk.
According to Carlson’s video, Kirk told many people around him that he felt like Netanyahu was a “destructive force.”
“[Kirk] was appalled by what was happening in Gaza. He was, above all, resentful that he believed Netanyahu was using the United States to prosecute his wars for the benefit of his country, and [Kirk] resented it,” Carlson said. “He certainly expressed that to me and a lot of other people.”
Owen points out that Netanyahu’s statement makes Kirk look like he “died” for Israel. She brought this up alongside President Donald Trump’s unusual X post, where he wrote, “Everybody loved Charlie!” accompanied by what appears to be an AI-generated picture of Kirk and Trump touching faces with an Israeli and American flag in the background.
Owens also reported in a TikTok video that just 48 hours before he was assassinated, Kirk informed people at Turning Point USA that he had “no choice but to abandon the pro-Israel cause outright.” In the video, Kirk explicitly says that he refused to be “bullied anymore by the Jewish donors.”
Additionally, in one of Kirk’s last podcast videos, he revealed that Israel has been on the brink of a civil war for the last nine months and that Netanyahu was redefining the Israeli constitution. In a room that begins to rise in tension, Kirk said that this is the “closest thing to the Holocaust any of us have lived through.”
“I got to be careful the way I say this — they’re going to try to ethically cleanse Gaza,” Kirk said. “I mean that, and I don’t use the term lightly. They’re talking about basically removing 2.5 million people from there.”
As of October, Owens is continuing to report news on the investigation into Kirk’s assassination. She is currently examining Kirk’s medical records, as well as the camera angles when the assassination occurred.
Although some may consider Owens a divisive figure, in the wake of Kirk’s death and the debates it reignited, she represents something dignified in modern politics: the ability to question her own political group. We are entering an era where political loyalties are being tested, and some conservatives, like Carlson and Owens, are beginning to redefine their relationship to Israel.
While Owens’ past controversies cannot be ignored, her voice represents a sign of the times — a reminder that clarity can sometimes come from the most unexpected places, and that the most radical act we can take is to listen.