The Candace Owens Debate Was a Disaster for Everyone

Well, we have been told over and over and over again that debate is the way to get to truth, and sometimes that's true. And sometimes watching a debate is like watching two idiots clock each other with pool noodles. On Friday morning, conspiratorial nutcase Candace Owens debated provocateur debate me bro Andrew Wilson over who killed Charlie Kirk. And everyone who watched is now significantly stupider. I'm going to go through some of the details in a second and what it means for debate culture more generally. This is the Ben Shapiro Show. Debate is sometimes useful, and sometimes it's just not useful. It's just not. Now, there are two possible reasons for debate to be useful. First, when you might convince the person you're debating, and second, when you might convince the audience. If neither one of those things is true, you're probably wasting your time. Well, I think it's fair to say a lot of people wasted their time last Friday, which is when there was a debate between Candace Owens and Andrew Wilson over who killed Charlie Kirk. Now, moment of rare agreement. It's never going to happen again between me and true America-hating piece of crap Hassan Piker. Not the attitude Hassan Piker is about to project, but what he says here about what Candace Owens has done to Charlie Kirk's memory and to his family. That part's true. He's celebrating it because, of course, he's a piece of crap. But here's what Hassan Piker had to say about Candace Owens. I 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 dissent. She dropped a grenade on the discourse. So, I'm with her. It's hard. It's hard for me. My brain says, no, it's probably Tyler Robinson, but my heart says, go, Candace, go. Keep cooking. Does that make sense? I can't like her tweets because she blocked me many, many years ago. This is before she became our hero. Many, many years ago, Candace Owens blocked me. I've not been a fan of Candace Owens. I am a fan now. Well, yeah, of course he is because it turns out that Candace Owens has basically turned what would have been a referendum on radical trans rhetoric and what it means for America into a complete mess, a moral hazard, just a disaster area. So, of course, Hassan Piker is super happy. So, this debate was a three-plus-hour debate, which basically was like walking through the halls of a psychotic ward. That's really what it was. And so, we'll go through some of it and try to pull out what is substantive from it. But lots of people watched it, which is the reason we're commenting on it because, again, people are now treating matters of truth as matters of entertainment. And this is the bigger message here, is that when a public begins to treat matters of baseline truth as matters of pure entertainment, pure just distraction, what you end up with is the worst form of political debate and the worst form of human behavior. Truly, it's bad, bad stuff. This thing has 1.5 million views on Patrick Bette David's channel. PBD moderated this, which we really mean that if you watch the thing, he basically sat in the center and looked as though he wanted to be anywhere else except in the middle of this mess. 4.3 million views on Candace's channel and another half million or so on Wilson. So, 6.5 million views on YouTube alone in the first couple of days here. And naturally, everyone who watched it came out with precisely the opinion they had before. Candace's followers are saying that she demolished Wilson and PBD's commenters pointed out how he really couldn't moderate because it was just a mess. And Andrew Wilson's fans are saying that he wrecked her. And both sides are now running clips claiming that their respective side won. None of this is useful. None of this. And what's more, there is a moral problem here when you debate for money over the matter of whether a person who clearly murdered somebody murdered somebody and whether the person who is claiming that the true murderer might in fact be his wife, might in fact be his best friend, might in fact be people who surround him. What you are doing is granting the imprimatur of decency to a debate that is indecent at its heart. Because here is the thing. In order for a proper debate to take place, two preconditions generally have to be met. First, the proposition being debated cannot be inherently retarded. Debating whether the moon is made of cheese is a waste of time. Even if the person who's making the argument sounds very convincing, it's a waste of time because the moon is not made of cheese. And if the person walks with more people believing the moon is made of cheese, more people have been made retarded. Debating who killed Charlie Kirk with a person who says not that there's reasonable doubt, but that it was probably the French Foreign Legion in league with the Israelis, probably in league with Erica Kirk and TPUSA, maybe in league with me, maybe in league with Josh Hammer, maybe in league with Bill Ackman. Who the hell knows? That is inherently retarded because there is literally no evidence pointing to anyone except Tyler Robinson. And you know who says that? His own lawyers, whose job it is to keep him out of jail. And as we'll see in this debate, Candace had no evidence to provide for any contention that she made throughout the debate at all. Second, and far more importantly, when we're talking about preconditions to successful debate, participants in the debate must have some baseline respect for the truth and the fact. You can't have a proper debate with somebody who doesn't give a crap about the facts. If you are debating, for example, welfare reform, and one of the participants says welfare does not exist because the earth does not exist, there is no possible way to debate the proposition with that person. If every time you cite a statistic, the person says numbers aren't real, there's no way to actually debate that. If you pretend the facts don't exist or that the facts don't matter or that you can just hand wave them away, there's no way to actually win that debate or even have a debate with that kind of person. A person who refuses to even make clear his or her own positions, like runs away when asked about it and hides behind some sort of semantic game, that's not a debate, it's just stupidity. And so we should make the point here that no one in America gives less of a crap about facts than Candace Owens. That person does not exist. All right, coming up, we'll get into the incomplete list of Candace Owens conspiracies. Again, we are all becoming stupider, including your 12-year-old, if they get an iPhone. Okay, they might survive getting an iPhone, maybe not, I don't know. Somehow humanity made it thousands of years without giving every seventh grader unlimited access to an iPhone. But eventually our kids grow up. At some point, your kids will become adults. And that raises the next important parenting question. How long do you plan to keep paying for your kid's phone? Back to school season might be the perfect time to finally kick the college kids off the family phone plan in the most loving way possible. Of course, introduce them to Pure Talk. Right now, you can switch to any Pure Talk plan, even unlimited, for just 15 bucks a month for your first three months. You're not sacrificing quality to save money. Pure Talk has earned strong marks from consumer reports with great ratings for value and customer satisfaction. They're also veteran-led and committed to supporting America's military veterans. So you're choosing a company whose values actually mean something. Your kids are going to learn independence eventually. You might as well start with that phone bill right now. You can switch to Pure Talk and get any plan, including unlimited, for just 15 bucks a month for your first three months. No contract required. Simply go to puretalk.com slash Shapiro to claim this offer. Again, that's puretalk.com slash Shapiro. Here is a really, really, really incomplete list of the theories that Candace Owens has spouted without any facts to support them, as an account called AG Hamilton has pointed out on X. Here's a massively incomplete list. The list is much longer. Israel was involved in 9-11. The earth might be flat. It is absurd to believe dinosaurs roamed the earth and were killed by an asteroid. Emmanuel Macron's wife is secretly a man. The Holocaust is either fake or severely exaggerated. The crimes of the Allies in World War II and post-World War II were worse than anything the Nazis did. The U.S. dropped the bomb on Nagasaki to target Christians. A secret cabal of Hollywood Jews is behind the death of Michael Jackson and people around him. Ataturk was a secret Jew. Stalin was a secret Jew. A secret cabal of Jews has been kidnapping, raping, and killing Christian children on Passover. That's just traditional medieval blood libels, actually. And the list goes on and on and on and on. So again, Candace is completely divorced from the truth, nor does she even care about the truth. And in fact, when asked for evidence for any of her propositions, she ran like hell from that obvious question. So at one point, Andrew Wilson asked Candace Owens for positive evidence for any of the suppositions that she was making. And she looks, frankly, bored with the question. So you think you with full confidence, you think that France and Israel. Yeah. I mean, the person that gave me that thing that I reported said that French Foreign Legion were on the ground that day. Again, 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 United States government. But you don't have any positive evidence of that, right? Can you just stop? It's actually just like annoying to hear you keep saying positive evidence. Just ask me what I think. I'll just tell you. Yes, I think they know. I said, here's what here's what I think. I have every right to ask you about your claim. I literally just said, I think, and I am allowed to think you're allowed to think you have positive evidence. I have tons of positive evidence that I'm allowed to think. I agree. You're allowed to say, OK, so he's disputing whether or not I'm asking. What is your issue with this? I think that Israel is involved. Are you smart for having heard this? Was it a great debate had by all? Was the truth approached at its closest point? Patrick, Bet David looks like he wants to dig a hole and crawl into it. My goodness, I love that Candace Owens has now been reduced in that clip to Michelle Foucaulian deconstructionism. It's really impressive. I think that I am positive that Israel and the French did it. And Andrew Wilson's like, do you have evidence for that proposition? I do have much evidence for the proposition that I think that thing. This would be the place where you should say that's not what I'm asking. I'm asking, is there any evidence for the proposition that Israel and France did the thing? Not is there evidence for the idea that you think that thing like this is nonsensical. What are we doing here? What in the actual hell? I mean, I can say right now, I think with 100 percent certainty, I think with 100 percent certainty that Candace Owens is whoring herself on the side of the road. Now, if somebody says to me, do you have any evidence for that proposition? And my response is, well, I mean, I have lots of evidence that I think it I have tons of evidence that I think it she would properly sue me because, again, I have no evidence for that proposition that she is whoring herself on the side of the road. I assume, in fact, she is not whoring herself on the side of the road because there is no evidence. But this is like that's an amazing statement. So she can. So to get this straight in a Mott and Bailey argument, that is where you make a bad argument and then you kind of hide back in a more secure argument. So her bad argument is that Israel and France are behind the Kirk assassination. That is her Mott. And when it's attacked, she moves back to the Bailey and the Bailey is I said, I think a thing. How dare you question me thinking a thing? This is semantic game playing. It's just it's you are dumber if you believe this. And apparently a lot of people on the Internet who are really, really, really dumb. I mean, truly dumb. This would not pass the smell test in like a high school debate class, a junior high debate class. This would not pass the smell test in any debate in third grade. But again, Candace was asked about justifying her facts here. And here here is the support that she has for her for her factual assertions. So I think what's happened is I've actually built up a rapport with my audience that it's not vibes and dreams. And that's why they keep watching my content, because I like, for example, when I just the other day released the content of the shooter on the roof doing the lateral crawl, then they're going, I don't think these are just vibes. It seems like cancer sources are legit. So I've proven myself in the market. Yeah, I'm not sure that that would legitimize your sources as being legitimate when it comes to the idea that, oh, they all believe that there's a conspiracy going on, which is actually what your claim is now. Yeah, I mean, obviously, Andrew Wilson is correct about this. I love her defense of her a factual claims is my audience vibes with me. Well, you know, there are lots of audience that vibe with leaders. It happens all the time. For example, cult leader Jim Jones, his audience was totally vibing with him, totally vibing with him. I mean, they were willing to they believed him. It was growing the movement. It was it was really solid. They vibed with him so strongly, they were willing to believe the idea that if they drank the Kool-Aid and they would bring about the eschaton and then they drank the Kool-Aid and they all died because he had poisoned it. So I'm pretty sure that people believing you is not good evidence. The thing you're saying is true. In fact, I'm pretty well assured that these two things are completely different propositions. People believe all sorts of people who lie to them. It happens all the time. But again, this is Candace Ishtik. You know, you walk down the supplement aisle at the grocery store, half the ingredient labels appear to have been written for someone with a Ph.D. in chemistry. I don't have time for this. Neither do you. Simplicity is a feature. It's good. It's nice. And this is one of the things I appreciate about balance of nature. Our whole health system is built around 47 ingredients, real whole fruits, veggies, spices, fibers. We're talking about recognizable ingredients like apple, broccoli, ginger and turmeric. Balance of nature doesn't isolate or extract individual parts and attempt to recreate nature. There's a tailored vacuum cold process designed to help stabilize the naturally occurring phytonutrients in their real whole food ingredients. It's an approach I appreciate. Take something complicated and make it practical enough to actually use every day. Three fruits, capsules, three veggies, capsules, two scoops of fiber and spice. That is the whole health system routine. You've heard me talk about the balance of nature system and you haven't tried it yet. Now you have a great reason. Go to balance of nature dot com today and receive an additional 10 percent off when you subscribe to any of their subscriptions. Just use promo code Shapiro plus use code Shapiro and balance of nature will send you a free guiltless snack with your order as balance of nature dot com promo code Shapiro. So here is Candace going off on Erica Kirk. This is again, this is why this debate is not just stupid. It's immoral because granting credibility to Candace Owens to spew this kind of crap about Erica Kirk is just it's disgusting. I'm sorry it is. Clowns can be clowns. That's that's their prerogative. But but granting moral credibility to this sort of trash is really disgusting. And so I asked her directly, her lawyer directly, the phones in between us. I'm like, wait, so just so I'm clear, you haven't seen anything that the public hasn't seen. And he says no. So I'm going back in my head and I'm going, OK, so why is Erica saying with such a degree of certainty that she was sent out to convince the public and people bit, by the way, I remember even Megyn Kelly was like, you know, let's wait. She's going to have access to things. I did think she had access to things that we didn't have. Why express that confidence to the public as opposed to just being like, we don't know yet. I feel confident he's probably he's involved. I don't understand how would any of this make her complicit in what I've already told you. She was she's complicit in trying to fool the public into thinking this is some open and shut. How is she trying to fool the public into this? If she believes like, don't look anywhere else that that Tyler Robinson killed Kirk. If she believes that, how would that be complicit in anything? I do. Are you saying that you think she doesn't believe it? I don't believe that at that stage, she sat down with Barry Weiss, that that's what she believes now. Right. So she's claiming again, Candace demands that everybody give her the benefit of the doubt that she believes what she believes. But she's claiming that Erica Kirk overtly lies, that Erica has serious doubts as to whether Tyler Robinson killed Charlie. And she's just doing this. What for the and giggles of it? It's really insane. It's truly, truly insane stuff. Crazy. OK, well, the thing about Andrew Wilson that's kind of funny is that Andrew Wilson, of course, is not politically like minded with me in a wide variety of ways, for example. But at least he has the brains to understand what Candace is doing is wrong and stupid. So here he was pointing out that is so Candace basically said that the only people who are OK with Erica having become CEO of TPUSA are either feminists or Zionists. And Andrew Wilson's like, well, I'm not I'm neither of those things. And I don't think it was suspicious per se. For you, though, to say that anybody's that came out of your mouth. No, that was you. You brought up girl boss. Girl boss came out of your mouth. Yeah, I'm just I'm telling you that you brought up this idea that I'm defending some feminist nonsense. I'm not. I'm pointing out that they're there. By the way, she's not qualified. There's always objective over his company. There's always objective outliers to each situation. In fact, it's the exception that proves the rule. And the interesting thing here is like, I'm still just as critical of feminism inside of TPUSA as I've always been. And I'm just as critical of any pro-Zionist position as I've ever been. None of that's ever changed. It's all just nonsense. It's nonsense wrapped in stupidity, wrapped in idiocy, wrapped in semantic jargon. It's so silly. It's also silly. It's also silly. So the clip, all this looks very bad for Candace, right? There's only one clip that looks good for Candace. That one clip is where Candace asks Andrew Wilson to list off the charges, and Candace has memorized the charges, and it gets awkward. Can you tell me one? Then let's do the counter. You can really. Yeah, no, this is a great. No, no, no. You just got to ask me, play clips out of context, put me in the hot seat. So please just answer the question. This is fair. Name all seven since you've been following the case. OK, sure. You name one. Yeah, you name all seven. I'm happy to do that. But can you name one? I think he's I think he's been charged with murder. That's actually incorrect. OK, great. Now name all seven. He doesn't even. This is like name all seven. And you name all seven. I can't do it. Sure. You don't have to do it now. Do it. I'll count them. Go ahead. You don't have to put your fingers up. I can name them. Yeah, sure. Name them. The first charge is aggravated murder because that's what carries a death sentence. So murder. No. OK, and then she proceeds to name all seven. First rule of debate, by the way, don't ask questions you don't know the answers to. But again, the fact that she has memorized the charges doesn't demonstrate that anything she says about the charges is true, obviously. But this is the stupidity. This is it's all performative. It's all performative. At no point is truth approached. Truth is a far, far distant object in this debate. No one cares about it. It doesn't matter. People who agree with Andrew Wilson agreed with him before. People who disagree with Andrew Wilson disagree with him after. People who love Candace will agree with anything she says. The reason this is important is, again, because there is this thing that has gone around in sort of debate culture online, which is when you get two people in a room, the conversation is always useful. And here's my proposition. Nope. My proposition is very often the answer is no. And you probably wasted three plus hours watching that thing if you feel like you came away better informed in any way, shape or form. By the way, if you are curious about the markets on various arrest chances, apparently eight point five percent of people think that Candace Owens is going to be arrested this year. I disagree, by the way. She's not going to be arrested because, as said earlier, there's no evidence for the idea that she's whoring herself on the street corner. So I don't think that's going to happen. 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