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Since Charlie Kirk’s killing, the rightwing podcast sphere has been in overdrive: eulogizing, grieving, praying, appointing blame and calling for retribution. Kirk’s podcast, The Charlie Kirk Show, now No 1 on the podcast charts, has had a rotating cast of hosts including Tucker Carlson, Glenn Beck, and JD Vance, who used his appearance to announce a crackdown on “far-left” groups, promising to “dismantle” them in Kirk’s name.
“Manosphere” mainstay Joe Rogan was initially quiet on the Kirk shooting, releasing pre-recorded episodes while he was away elk hunting. On Tuesday he began challenging the official narrative of the killing, but has been more focused on the practicalities of the weapon used and the getaway than exploring the motivations of the killer, perhaps because Kirk was too much of an explicit rightwing partisan to chime with Rogan’s libertarianism.
With Rogan steering clear of Kirk’s politics, other rightwing figures in the podcast space are pushing their own narratives and conspiracy theories about Kirk’s death and shooting up the podcast charts as they do so – chief among them Candace Owens, who is now No 2 on Spotify’s trending podcast chart, just behind Kirk’s podcast.
Owens has spent the past week using her podcast to cast doubt that Kirk’s killing was the action of a sole shooter. (Tyler Robinson, 22, is facing charges of aggravated murder and felony discharge of a firearm, among others, in the death of Kirk.) This week she published podcasts titled: “Charlie Kirk Suspect Charged. Something Isn’t Right…”, “Who Ordered The Hit On Charlie Kirk?” and “They Are Lying About Charlie Kirk.”
But Owens is not convinced by the Donald Trump-led conspiracy that the organised left is to be blamed for Kirk’s killing. Instead, she is pushing a an alternate theory that Kirk’s death is part of a large global conspiracy with Israel at the centre. She is not alone in believing there is an Israeli plot behind Kirk’s murder – a number of far-right influencers including Ian Carroll and Jackson Hinkle have suggested that Israel may have played a role, so much so that Benjamin Netanyahu has issued two separate denials of his involvement.
To understand her conspiracy, you have to be very acquainted with a network of rightwing groups and podcasts that all reference each other. Essentially Owens believes that Kirk was wavering on his support for Israel, and had invited Carlson and Dave Smith – rightwingers who do not support the war in Gaza, to Turning Point USA events, where they took to the lectern to challenge the war and the influence of Israeli funding on US politics. She claimed Kirk told her that he was being threatened by the Israeli government and by Bill Ackman – the pro-Israel, pro-Trump hedge fund manager.
Owens provides no conclusive evidence about these threats, instead leveraging her close friendship with Kirk to suggest she understands a deeper truth about the threats he was facing. In 2017 Kirk hired Owens at Turning Point USA as a “director of urban engagement”, after claims the rightwing organization had issues with racism. Owens was forced to resign from the group in 2019 (after saying Adolf Hitler would have been “fine” if he had focused on domestic politics) but the pair remained close; this week she described him as a “brother”. Her podcasts on his killing feel pained and unrestrained – as you might expect from someone who had just seen their friend assassinated.
Owens is careful not say that Israel killed Kirk – but she uses implication and association to keep alive the idea that Netanyahu may be involved: “I’m not trying to mutter darkly or imply anything … but I think it’s important to say that out loud because it’s a fact, and there are many liars out there trying, Bibi Netanyahu, No 1 among them, shamefully, who are trying to distort the truth, a truth that I know and can prove,” she said.
These allegations are being taken seriously enough to have warranted rebuttals from Ackman and Netanyahu. Ackman posted cordial text messages between himself and Kirk as evidence that he never threatened him, adding: “at no time have I ever threatened Charlie Kirk, Turning Point or anyone associated with him.” Netanyahu has made two separate statements denying the “insane”, “false” and “outrageous” rumors that Israel was involved in Kirk’s death.
Much of Owens’s theorizing repeats a mix of anti-Zionist and antisemitic sentiment. In her podcasts she talks about the “Zionist-controlled publications”, that “Joseph Goebbels has nothing on the Zionists in America and the propaganda that they have pushed” and that Sigmund Freud, not Goebbels, is the “real father of modern propaganda”. Others are going further, including Carroll, the podcaster who is telling his 1.3 million followers on X that he thinks Israel is responsible for the death of Kirk. Carroll has previously been a guest on Owens’s and Rogan’s shows.
At Kirk’s funeral, Carlson more subtly invoked the idea of Jewish involvement. He compared Kirk’s death to the death of Jesus, which he blamed on “a bunch of guys sitting around eating hummus, thinking about: ‘What do we do about this guy telling the truth about us? We must make him stop talking.’” He was widely condemned by Jewish groups for doing so, including by a rabbi in Kirk’s home state of Arizona who called it “bigoted blood libel”.
“Carlson is very polished in that sense,” says Derek Beres, co-host of the Conspirituality podcast and expert in conspiracies and media literacy. “He’ll say the thing without saying the thing so he gets an out. That was straight up blood libel.”
What is notable about the way the right are responding to Kirk’s death is the opportunism – initially Laura Loomer tried to blame “a trans terror cell”, then Steve Bannon suggested “there’s a vast conspiracy … potentially involving the Chinese Communist party,” while Trump and Vance went after the left. They kept floating targets hoping that one will stick.
In a moment where Israel’s genocide in Gaza is leading to more open public criticism of Zionism – Owens is capitalising. She continually refers to “Zionists” controlling the media and Kirk’s speech while he was alive.
“One thing about Candace is that she’s an opportunist – at every stage. She started off on the left, and since then she’s figured out different ways of getting attention. I don’t find any moral centre in her. There’s no consistency, it’s about whatever is going to get eyeballs on ‘me’,” says Beres. He says most rightwing podcasters are “vultures” trying to have their piece of Kirk’s legacy.
“Everything I’ve seen over the last two weeks has been disgusting – the level of merch, the recruitment drives – all of it is craven opportunism. Turning Point USA are continuing Kirk’s scheduled college tour with all these people – Megyn Kelly, Tucker Carlson, Vivek Ramaswamy, Alex Clark – and they are all trying to cosplay Kirk to keep it going. Every one of them is going to look for their own angle.”
The second Trump presidency has brought waves of constant disinformation and a new era of conspiracy making it hard to trust any source including the government. Add in the history of political assassinations in the US and abroad, which is ripe with plots and government contract killings, and this is a particularly exploitable moment for conspiracy theorists. Many people on the left and right find the text messages sent between Robinson, the Kirk shooting suspect, and his roommate, and subsequently released by prosecutors in Utah, suspicious. Owens has claimed the messages are “so federally written” and that these are “obnoxious messages that someone strung together”, that there is a “federal level of corruption and conspiracy involved in this murder”.
Even Beres says he is keeping his mind open. “I don’t know how the guy spoke or how he wrote,” he says. “That said, the idea that I’d trust an agency run by Kash Patel and Dan Bongino is absurd. I don’t trust any of that information, there’s no reason to. Between Trump’s ear and this kid coming out of nowhere I can’t say I’m 100% certain there isn’t something going on. When you’re in an accelerationist, shock-doctrine environment, the whole point is you can’t really trust any of the information coming out.”
