¶1Last Friday, Andrew Wilson and Candace Owens debated the question of who killed Charlie Kirk. And this debate has been seen by over six million people across different channels. And while people might debate the winner of this exchange, the loser is anyone who sat through this dumpster fire thinking they'd see an edifying exchange of ideas. So today on the Council of Trent, I'll be talking about this debate, how debates have gotten dumber, and how some Christians have lost their way in all of this. But to do that, you'll need some background on this controversy.
¶2On September 17th, 2025, one week after Charlie Kirk was assassinated, Candace Owens released an episode on her podcast called Who Ordered the Hit on Charlie Kirk? Where she said some of the evidence for Tyler Robinson being the shooter did not add up or was fabricated. Owen said Kirk's changing views toward Israel may have created powerful enemies, but at this time she did not claim TPUSA, Erica Kirk, Israel, or any other group was specifically involved in Charlie's murder. Then on November 17th, Owen cited an anonymous source saying that Egyptian planes were tracking Erica Kirk. But since the US gives over a billion dollars to the Egyptian government each year, it's not surprising to see their vehicles in our country for servicing.
¶3Erica also pointed out that Candace Owens has been wrong about her past travel itineraries. >> So if you want to go through my flight log, go right ahead. It's very boring. You say I was here on this date. I have a photo on my phone to prove that I actually was in the hospital uh because I was having contractions.
¶4So game on. >> So aside from these details not proving anything, Candace Owens doesn't explain why the Egyptian government would want to kill Charlie Kirk. She just calls it a mystery. Well, until January 2026 when she said this. >> I'm convinced these were Israeli planes.
¶5This is why they're panicking about it. Like obviously like we all know Egypt, the whole thing. They're running stuff through Egypt obviously. But flash back to December where along with the Egyptian plane theory, Owen said the French government was also involved in Charlie Kirk's death. She said of an anonymous source that >> I asserted that the French Foreign Legion, which was a legion and a group that I had never heard about prior to this notification, were involved in Charlie Kirk's assassination.
¶6>> And Owens specifically named billionaire Pierre Falconee as the French connection behind Charlie Kirk's death. But then on December 2nd, Candace Owens posted the following on X. I now can say with full confidence that I believe Charlie Kirk was betrayed by the leadership of Turning Point USA and some of the very people who eulogized him on stage. Yes, I will be naming names and providing evidence for my claims. Then on December 18th, Candace Owens interviewed a man named Mitch who claimed to see US military officials and a woman who looked like Erica Kirk meet at a US military base in Arizona.
¶7Okay, so Egypt or Israel somehow pretending to be Egypt and France and the US government and TPUSA are all involved in Charlie Kirk's murder. And not only that, we're going to get evidence for these claims. Or maybe we won't because here's how Candace Owens responded to Andrew Wilson when he asked her about this evidence in their debate. >> So you think you you with full confidence you think that >> Yeah, I think Israel. >> Yeah, I I I mean the person that gave me that thing that I reported said that uh French Foreign Legion were on the ground that day.
¶8Again, this would be this would be at a professional limitation for me to then go and probe that information that I handed over. I can't do that. I'm not the >> You don't have any positive evidence of that? Okay, I don't you can you just stop? It's It's actually just like annoying to hear you keep saying positive evidence.
¶9I've just ask me what I think and I just tell you yes, I think they are involved claim. >> No, I said here's what here's what I think. >> I have every right to ask you about your claim and if there's positive evidence for your claim statement. I literally just said I think and I am allowed to think. >> Yeah, you're allowed to think.
¶10But you're making a claim. So, I'm asking if you think that Israel and France were involved in the assassination of Charlie Kirk and you say with full confidence, I'm just asking for the evidence or at least walk me through the mindset of why it is that you can think that with evidence. >> I actually don't have to walk you through why I think um I can also I can give you something that I think with full confidence. I think with full confidence that you know you lost the substance of this debate and now you're moving toward things that I have said that I think which I can do. I wouldn't be surprised if Candace Owens source behind all of this was, "I made it up." You see, what Candace Owens does is she throws any fact or theory at the wall like spaghetti to see what will stick.
¶11And her audience eats this up while forgetting all her speculations and never went anywhere. And when someone calls out Owen's speculations, she acts like she never made them in the first place. But even though her claims are absurd, Candace Owens has still retained control over what she says. She isn't randomly spouting nonsense. As a result, she is morally culpable for her words because she's smart enough to not make a specific claim like Erica Kirk murdered Charlie or Erica Kirk was complicit in Charlie's murder.
¶12If Owens did that, then she could be sued for defamation. Owens basically admits this in her debate with Wilson. I I want to just directly ask you is do you actually believe that anybody in TPUSA or Erica Kirk or Erica actually participated had Ford knowledge of or uh facilitated the murder of Charlie Kirk? >> I'm not going to get myself into a legal pickle here. Everything I've said is on my podcast.
¶13I I think I think firmly that >> if I was the investigating officers, I would I would seat them all and I would ask questions. I would at this base. >> How would it be the case that even if Erica Kirk did believe that Tyler Robinson was 100% responsible for the death of Charlie Kirk, let's just say she believed it with every fiber of her being, believed all the evidence, because she did. She just actually did. Would it then follow that somehow she's complicit in his death?
¶14>> I didn't say implicit in death. You added those two words. >> Okay. What's she complicit in? >> Yes.
¶15So sewing this narrative that Tyler Robinson is guilty. >> But in previous episodes of her podcast, Candace Owens walks right up to the line of that accusation and says stuff like this. >> Straight to jail. Straight to jail for questioning. At least Erica Erica Kirk should be dragged into a police precinct for questioning.
¶16Like I said, it convinces me that Erica is a psychopath. That's a psychopath. Erica's a psychopath. And I want to say to JD Vant, you better wake up fast, okay? That's a black widow, my friend.
¶17>> So, I've kept digging because in every homicide investigation, a potential suspect is the spouse. Especially when they have so much to gain, right? If the situations were reversed and there were this many verifiable lies that Charlie told regarding the murder or assassination of his wife, Charlie would be in prison awaiting trial. And I actually agree with that assessment. We are way beyond coincidence.
¶18This is now a full-blown conspiracy. I'm at the point right now I I want Erica to just drop a book like If I Did Do It, you know, like OJ did. If I did do it by Erica Kirk, I think that would that would move more copies than the book about Shabbat. >> Yeah. Calling a woman a black widow and comparing her to OJ Simpson is not what you say about someone who merely says another person like Tyler Robinson is guilty.
¶19It's an indirect way of saying that a specific woman is complicit in murder. What Owens does through hours of programming is to create guilt by association and insinuation. She just throws a bunch of scary sounding facts at the screen, hoping some of them will stick, and that the sheer number of these claims overwhelms those who are trying to process her argument. This allows her to make money off the claim that Erica was involved in Charlie's murder while protecting herself from being sued because she never explicitly makes that claim and only spews a bunch of unrelated facts. Moreover, as a self-identified Catholic, Candace Owen should be ashamed of herself.
¶20Paragraph 2479 of the catechism says, "Detraction and calumny destroy the reputation and honor of one's neighbor. Honor is the social witness given to human dignity, and everyone enjoys a natural right to the honor of his name and reputation into respect. Thus, detraction and calumny offend against the virtues of justice and charity." In paragraph 2477 says, "Respect for the reputation of persons forbids every attitude and word likely to cause them unjust injury. He becomes guilty of rash judgment who even tacitly assumes as true without sufficient foundation the moral fault of a neighbor of detraction who without objectively valid reason discloses another's faults and failings to persons who did not know them of calumny who by remarks contrary to the truth harms the reputation of others and gives occasion for false judgments concerning them I'm sure Candace Owens would condemn a hypothetical podcaster for the same reasons listed here in the catechism and maybe even take legal action against a hypothetical podcaster who said something like, "I think Candace Owens murdered Charlie Kirk so she could make millions of dollars promoting this conspiracy about him." And I doubt Candace Owens would buy the excuse from this hypothetical podcaster if he were to say, "Well, I'm allowed to think, aren't I?" This is why normal people will find all of this absolutely infuriating. And so I understand why someone like Andrew Wilson would want to debate and expose Candace Owens.
¶21But here's the problem. As I noted in my previous episode on how debates became dumb, modern debates are no longer about rigorously presenting evidence for an unbiased audience to consider. Instead, modern debates are just about trying to get a gotcha moment that you can spam all over the internet. Owens herself has done this with one moment from the debate where Andrew did not know the exact nature of the criminal charges against Heather Robinson. I hate this tactic and I've seen it in many recent debates.
¶22For example, Ethan Muse recently debated Luke Hansen on whether the Book of Mormon has demonic origins and Muse brought up damning evidences of Joseph Smith's involvement with the occult. But instead of wrestling with all of the evidence in that debate, many Mormons have only clung to one clip where Ethan admitted he had not read the entire Book of Mormon as a way to dismiss all of his arguments. But unless Luke could show there was a part of the Book of Mormon Ethan had not read that invalidated his argument, this fact alone is irrelevant to the strength of Ethan's arguments about Joseph Smith. For example, both I and Mormons would agree that the founder of 7th Day Adventism, Ellen G. White, is not a prophet.
¶23And we don't have to read all 100,000 pages of what White wrote to reach that conclusion. The other problem with modern debates is that they tend to lack structure. They try to be more like a free flowing conversation, as was the case in the Owens Wilson debate. But when they're set up like that with people who are operating in debate me mode, then you're not able to get at the truth because people end up changing positions or getting out of issues or quibbling over terms. That's what Wilson and Owens did in the beginning of their debate.
¶24And a lot of it ended up being a bunch of wasted time. That's why a proper debate in this environment needs things like rebuttal rounds so that the audience can properly examine the evidence that's in question and not waste time changing the subject. So you need proper format and also a clear resolution. That's why you need one resolution to debate. And so in this debate between Candace Owens and Andrew Wilson, it was unfortunate there were multiple resolutions.
¶25And Wilson took on a heavy burden by saying there is overwhelming evidence Tyler Robinson is guilty because Wilson doesn't have access to all the prosecution's evidence. The debate should have just really been about Candace Owen's claims that certain actors like Israel or TPUSA were involved in Charlie Kirk's death. But as you saw, Candace refuses to defend those claims. Another problem with these kinds of free form debates as well is that they're just opportunities for grandstanding and trying to win by exuding the most confidence, not the best argument. Even when someone is shown to be wrong, they can get out of it if they just have a clever insult.
¶26>> Describe how this actually links in to Robinson being a psy. >> Okay, I just described that for you, so I'm not I can explain it to you, but I can't understand it for you, so I'm going to move on from that. And this is behavior that Wilson himself has engaged in. So, it's somewhat fitting that he's getting a taste of his own medicine. >> I will never be able to convince you of my worldview.
¶27Charlie, I just think honestly you're too stupid to understand them. >> This kind of behavior is probably the worst thing about modern debate culture, which people now call blood sport debate. And I hope people will push back on it because it just makes everyone stupider and wastes everybody's time. You can see that in Jay Dyer's recent debate against five Protestants where he resorts to insulting his opponents to score points with the audience. >> Pope St.
¶28Leo said the same thing. He said the same thing. >> So, thank you. So, your popes also teach your stupid heresies. So, popes contradict.
¶29>> Okay. You believe the same thing cuz they you did your patriarchs not sign off on calcidon. >> Did they sign off on Post Leo's tome and his letters? Did they sign off on it? Okay.
¶30Look, >> did it happen? He doesn't want to respond. >> Did they sign off on Pope Leo? Did they sign up? >> I know you got to look through your tool, bro.
¶31But that's all you got, dude. You got to back up some homies. Homies, back me up, bro. >> Jay, did Jay, >> you're what? >> He's Asian.
¶32He's Asian. >> So, did they sign off his letters? >> No more homies, bro. >> Did they sign off his letters? Did they sign his letters?
¶33>> Pope, excuse me, Patriarch Anatolia said the full force of confirming the acts were according to Pope St. L. I could see why he retired and came back after >> all that is a bunch of low levels. >> I find that when people get aggressive and snarky in debates, as Candace Owens did in her debate with Wilson, it's because they realize they're in a bind and they want to distract the audience. In my dialogue with Kelly Powers recently, you could see him become increasingly belligerent the more my questions forced him in uncomfortable positions.
¶34And I do think also that Andrew was underprepared for this debate and he chose not to use his more aggressive debate tactics to compensate for that. But it's also a difficult situation in general because Owens has been pushing this conspiracy theory for over a year and Wilson didn't have a lot of time to prepare. And given that there are so many what about this or isn't this weird non-facts that a person can throw into a debate, it makes debating issues like this a non-starter. This is why in my previous episode on debates, I said I will not debate fringe positions like flat earth theory or moonlanding denial. That's because to do that, you have to spend months researching nonsense arguments.
¶35And even if you know how to answer all of them, in the actual debate, your opponent can just throw out a few dozen explain this challenges. And if you fail to address even a single one of them, he'll say that he won. Now, debates are great for engaging value questions or for helping people investigate the big questions of life, but they aren't good at proving particular cases that involve many pieces of evidence that need to be examined. This is why legal trials aren't decided by which lawyer gave the most based speech in court. They're decided by a long deliberation over all of the available evidence.
¶36So, trying to replicate that in a few hours on a podcast is a waste of time. And along with wasting your time, agreeing to debate a fringe topic gives that topic legitimacy it doesn't deserve, and it gives its advocates the attention they desperately crave. That's why I believe Candace Owens won this debate, even if she lost the argument. Several people online have run the debate through AI models, and nearly all of them say Andrew Wilson had the better arguments. But Candace Owens now has more legitimacy with her base.
¶37She may have added a few converts to her camp. And she is allegedly $300,000 richer after Andrew Wilson apparently paid her that amount to agree to the debate. But even if Andrew also won, as moderator Patrick Bet David claims, the real loser in all this is Erica Kirk. She is still mourning the death of her husband and has to put up with millions of people treating her like a villain, some of whom are so unhinged they might kill her and make her children orphans. This is why I cannot understand how a Christian could support Candace Owens by regularly watching her show.
¶38Doing that gives Owens ad revenue that allows her to engage in sins like rash judgment. In addition, Owens is causing millions of people to imitate her vibes-based epistemology where they think they can just know what's true based on hunches rather than evidence. It's why one of Owen's catchphrases is, "We don't know, but we know >> something's not right. I know it's not right." Okay. Uh, we don't know now, but we know, you know, we don't know, but we know.
¶39And soon we're going to know now. And that's all I'm going to say about that. >> But if Candace Owens were correct, then why isn't Tyler Robinson's defense team using her arguments? Instead, they admit their client killed Charlie Kirk, and they're trying to spare him the death penalty by arguing that he did not try to hurt anyone else. If things like the text messages where Robinson basically confesses were fake, as Owens alleges, then why wouldn't Robinson's defense team show that they're fake by introducing Robinson's actual phone records?
¶40This is like how moonlanding conspiracies make no sense because the Soviet Union had every motivation and ability to disprove the moonlanding if it didn't actually happen. And if Robinson's defense team is not using Candace's brilliant arguments because they're also part of the conspiracy for reasons, then why doesn't Candace Owens use the enormous amount of money she's made pushing this conspiracy to fund her own legal dream team to exonerate Robinson and bring the true perpetrators to justice? The answer is because she has no evidence that would survive in a court of law, only wild claims from anonymous sources. And as I noted in a previous episode linked below, this disregard for evidence and critical thinking has led Candace Owens to say absolutely insane stuff like that she can't be confident if the Earth is round or her claim that dinosaurs are fake and gay. >> I'm not a flatearther.
¶41I'm not a round earther. Actually, what I am is I am somebody who has left the cult of science. >> You don't believe dinosaurs are real. >> So, this is a funny one. This is one of the ones where I'm like, gut, I'm not kidding.
¶42this conversation happened and it was so funny. Um, I was just walking with Savannah, my manager, cuz we do like these little evening walks and I just looked up to her and I was like, >> dinosaurs? That seems pretty fake and gay. She's like, she's Savannah's from Tennessee. She's like, I've never believed in dinosaurs.
¶43Like, literally, this is everyone thinks there's like some conspiracy behind it. I was like, that was how it started. And I was like, "What on earth, you?" I'm like, "It's funny because people will literally say they don't believe in God, but then tell them my dinosaurs aren't real and they fall apart." Like, I'm like, "Okay, so they're just roaming the planet." >> As Christians, we are called to be witnesses to the truth. 2 Timothy 4 says, "For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears, they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own likings and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander into myths. As for you, always be steady, endure suffering, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry.
¶44It's unfortunate that a lot of Christians who could be doing so much good for the kingdom have been sucked into a social media black hole where the only thing they want to read about is gossip and conspiracy theories. When I think of epic debates involving Christians that had millions of views, I think of the 2009 debate where William Lane Craig absolutely thrashed new atheist Christopher Hitchens on the question of God's existence. But what are we doing 12 years later? Americans are less religious now than they were in 2009. And instead of promoting debates where we help people come to know the answers to life's most important questions, the debates that are getting millions of views are ones on stupid conspiracy theories.
¶45That's why I want to continue engaging non-religious critics along with Christians from different denominations. It's also why I will keep debating important moral issues like abortion or transgender ideology. Even though Candace Owens has single-handedly kneecapped our ability to showcase the ideology of the radical left, given that Robinson objected to Charlie Kirk's political views, which impacted his transgender lover, this echoes other acts of transgender terrorism that I've covered in previous episodes. But we aren't talking about any of that. And even liberals like Cassan are grateful that Candace Owens has made that possible.
¶46I can't speak out against this queen because this is a queen that successfully and single-handedly undermined the Republican initiative to martyrize Charlie Kirk and use that example to crack down on political disscent. So yeah, ultimately this debate was bad if it helped to legitimize Candace Owens wackadoodle methods and advertise her to a larger audience. And it was good if it helped people to see Candace Owens is not someone whose reasoning should be trusted and encourages Christians to objectively examine evidence and not slot everything into vibes based conspiracy hunches. Finally, I want you to know that I'm donating the ad revenue from today's episode to a charity in Erica's name because I have no interest in profiting off the drama related to her husband's murder. Instead, I hope today's episode will encourage all of us to critically examine evidence so that as Ephesians 4:14-15 says, we may no longer be children tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the cunning of men, by their craftiness and deceitful ws.
¶47Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ. Thank you all so much for watching, and I hope you have a very blessed day.