Charlie Kirk’s Worst Fear Comes True as Candace Owens Deepens MAGA Rift

A year has passed since my friend Charlie Kirk was brutally killed while doing what he cared about most: speaking directly with Americans in service of the country he loved.

Even then, I understood why Kirk believed his work mattered — reaching citizens who felt alienated, unheard or abandoned. In the aftermath of his death, I have come to see that mission as even more urgent.

On September 10, 2025, at Utah Valley University, Kirk was engaging supporters and opponents alike with the calm discipline that defined his public appearances. He treated no subject as forbidden and no viewpoint as unworthy of a response. His focus was on challenging ideas rather than attacking individuals, relying on reason and argument instead of raw emotion.

In that sense, Kirk resembled Socrates in ancient Athens: a man who asked difficult questions, tested accepted beliefs and, like the philosopher before him, paid the ultimate price.

Kirk was allegedly murdered by Tyler Robinson, whom critics have described as a radicalized young leftist with a chaotic private life. Robinson, prosecutors say, was in a relationship with a transgender individual when he opened fire — at the very moment Kirk was answering a question from the audience about what he called the scourge of transgender violence.

The bitter irony of that moment is hard to overstate. Yet the wave of conspiracy theories that followed the killing may be the deepest insult to Kirk’s memory.

Only weeks after my friend’s death — a friend I had spoken with the night before he was killed and with whom I had been in daily contact — I became the target of accusations more grotesque than anything I could have imagined.

A podcaster began spreading vile, completely baseless claims suggesting I was somehow involved in the murder of my friend. Private group-chat messages between Kirk, me and others were ripped from context and used to fuel suspicion where none was warranted.

Shame on you, Candace Owens.

It didn’t take long for someone to single me out.

In October, a follower of Owens on X was arrested and charged for issuing online death threats against me and a few other conservative commentators. There was one common denominator among the targeted: We are all Jewish and/or publicly supportive of Israel.

Yet another disgraceful response to Kirk’s killing has been the worst onslaught of conspiratorial right-wing antisemitism in American history. That Kirk was the leading Christian Zionist of his generation was, of course, lost on the pitchfork-wielding internet mob.

In reality, he cherished the ecumenical Jewish-Christian biblical alliance and greatly valued the US-Israel geopolitical alliance. In private, he referred to Christianity, Judaism, the United States and Israel as the ‘four pillars’ on which the modern West was built. It’s no wonder that we were friends.

But it is not only Jews who have found themselves on the wrong end of the conspiracists’ bile.

No one has been slandered more than Erika Kirk, Charlie’s widow. The wicked claims against her are not worth repeating.

Since then, the madness has only ratcheted up. Crackpot, revisionist historians now appear regularly on the world’s largest podcasts, conservatives-in-name-only traffic in ancient hatreds and sincere commentators are increasingly drowned out.

There has been a breakdown in the ability of many on the Right to distinguish between fact and fiction, truth and lie, right and wrong.

What’s happened? It seems to me that too many reacted to a slew of genuine betrayals by American elites – the Russiagate hoax, America’s scandalous response to the Covid pandemic, the censorship of Hunter Biden’s laptop, the prosecutions of President Trump, and more – by concluding that, actually, we can’t believe anything we are told.

Everything ‘they’ tell us is a lie.

Into this vacuum have crawled opportunistic ghouls who are willing to sacrifice credibility for clicks. But there is nothing good down that rabbit hole, only suffering and immiseration, the very toxic mentality that Kirk fought against so passionately.

Kirk believed that anyone could pull himself up by their bootstraps. Anyone can go to the gym, to the library, eat healthier, study harder and ask the pretty girl out on a date. But in his absence, the message from charlatans isn’t self-help. It’s victimhood.

The question now is what is to be done about this reaction to Kirk’s death, which is so antithetical to his life.

Unfortunately, it seems we cannot look to some of America’s so-called conservative leaders to lead the way. Just last week, Vice President JD Vance was asked about his relationship with Tucker Carlson, one of the leading purveyors of conspiratorial filth circulating online.

‘Tucker is a friend, despite the fact that we disagree on a number of things,’ the Vice President said. ‘I’m not going to play the game where I throw friends under the bus because I have political disagreements with them. I think that is a terrible place for the United States to go. And if you have a disagreement with somebody politically, even over a deeply held issue, you should still be friends with that person, because the whole republic depends on people of different perspectives being able to talk to one another.’

If this were a matter of ‘political disagreement’, I may agree. But it is not. If Carlson were just some ‘friend’ of the Vice President’s, I may let it pass. But he isn’t.

America’s conservatives cannot abandon the work of discerning right from wrong. 

More leaders of crucial conservative institutions, including the major think tanks, must come out and clearly explain that unhinged conspiracies destroy movements – and nations.

Charlie Kirk is a martyr for free speech and honest debate. His true friends and allies must continue to champion his cause.

On this one-year anniversary, there can be no greater tribute to his memory.

Rest in peace, friend.