 "What happened when Erika Kirk and Candace Owens met amid Maga feud")
Erika Kirk and Candace Owens have been feuding for months.
Erika, the widow of slain conservative activist Charlie Kirk, has recently been on a tour promoting her late husband’s final book. She met Owens, the conservative commentator, on Monday.
The two women have been at odds since the assassination of Charlie, the 31-year-old Turning Point USA founder who was shot and killed on September 10 while attending an event at Utah Valley University in Utah.
Erika on Sunday announced that she would be holding a “private, in-person discussion” with Owens. She said that she and Owens “have agreed that public discussions, livestreams, and tweets are on hold until after this meeting.”
But why are they feuding? And what happened during the meet?
Why they are feuding
Owens, a former Turning Point USA member, has been pushing conspiracy theories since Charlie’s death. Owens, who previously accused Brigitte Macron of being a man and was sued for it in court, claimed Harvey Weinstein was wrongly convicted on rape charges, and dismissed the Moon landing as ‘fake and gay’, has been spreading rumours about Charlie’s killing.
Owens, though she has not presented any concrete evidence, has claimed that powerful groups and shadowy figures, and even foreign governments, may be involved in Charlie’s killing. “I do not believe the story we are being told. I think there are too many unanswered questions,” Owens has said.
Owens recently pointed the finger at the French and Israeli governments as those that could have benefited from Charlie’s death. “French Foreign Legionnaires were involved in Charlie Kirk’s assassination,” Owens wrote on X. “They were not the only ones, but they were involved.”
Owens also has hinted that the people around Charlie are acting strangely since the assassination. Nothing “feels right to me about…the way that some of [Charlie’s] employees and friends have been behaving since that assassination,” Owens wrote.
“I can now 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 eulogised him on stage…” Owens wrote on social media earlier in December.
She has also questioned whether the suspect in Kirk’s killing, 22-year-old Tyler Robinson, acted alone. Owens on her podcast also claimed that Kirk, prior to his killing, received messages saying that he would be murdered. However, Erika has disputed this, saying no such messages exist.
Owens previously claimed that Charlie visited her in a dream and told her “he was betrayed.”
“I want you guys to know something. I want to share this with you. You can take it or you can leave it, but Charlie was betrayed,” Owens said on her podcast. She had also alleged there was a federal conspiracy surrounding Charlie’s murder.
“I’ve just spent hours working through this timeline and I am now fully of the belief that this is in fact a federal conspiracy. There is no other explanation,” she wrote. “ They are lying about Charlie Kirk’s assassination.”
Owens also compared Erika to Meghan Markle, who is a much-reviled figure in right-wing media.
“We are dealing with the subject of Erika Kirk and what transpired immediately following Charlie’s assassination,” Owens said. “This is going to be read as Meghan Markle syndrome—where you want privacy when you want it, but you want publicity whenever you want it. And that just doesn’t work.”
Erika hits back
Erika, meanwhile, who has taken over Turning Point USA, has hit back at Owens.“When you go after my family, my Turning Point USA family, my Charlie Kirk Show family, when you go after the people that I love, and you’re making hundreds and thousands of dollars every single episode going after the people that I love because somehow they’re in on this, no,” Erika told Fox News.
At a CBS Town Hall with Barry Weiss, Erika delivered a simple message to Owens: “Stop. That’s it.” “That’s all I have to say. Stop.”
Erika isn’t alone.
Even Owens’ long-term conservative allies seem uncomfortable with her spreading conspiracy theories about Charlie’s death. Conservative commentators like Tim Pool and Dave Rubin have publicly taken Owens to task. “Why does Candace deserve any respect?” Rubin wondered on X.
Meanwhile, Turning Point USA spokesman Andrew Kolvet and Charlie Kirk Show producer Blake Neff have also slammed Owens, with the latter challenging her to appear on Erika’s show.
Ex-Fox News host Tucker Carlson, appearing on the Theo Von podcast, took the authorities to task over the investigation.
“The FBI has this case, and of course the state of Utah. It’s their job to not only find out what happened, but to present it to the public in a way that restores some confidence that you can, like, have justice in this country, that we have functioning law enforcement,” Carlson said. “How can you be mad at Candace Owens or anyone else for filling a vacuum that they left?”
Meanwhile, Carrie Prejean Boller, the controversial former Miss USA runner-up and member of Trump’s Religious Liberty Commission, has repeatedly praised Owens.
“Asking questions doesn’t make you crazy. It makes you a threat to people who are lying,” Boller wrote. “They tried to destroy her because they couldn’t silence the truth. I stand with Candace Owens and her friend Charlie Kirk. Because he said you better keep asking questions because it’s the only thing that keeps you free. Candace is doing that.”
What happened during the meet
According to Owens, the two women met on Monday for four and a half hours. Owens claimed that the meeting should have happened a lot sooner.
“Erika and I had an extremely productive 4 1/2-hour meeting that I think we both feel should have taken place a lot earlier than it did,” Owens said. “We agreed much more than I had anticipated. Of course, we also disagreed on various points and people as well. Most importantly, we were able to share intel and clarify intent.”
Owens said she would do a podcast detailing what happened during the meet the next day, as she was currently drained.
“I will of course have a full rundown for you all tomorrow as I am currently exhausted, but I wanted to quickly let you guys know that absolutely nothing was held back and the immediate result was that tensions were thawed,” Owens added.
She said she questioned Erika on subjects ranging from Egyptian planes to Turning Point USA. She said some of Erika’s answers surprised her and claimed that Turning Point USA was equally surprised by her information.
Erika, taking to X after the meeting, confirmed that she and Owens had a very productive meeting.
“Had a very productive conversation with @RealCandaceO,” Kirk said. “More to come from both of us. Looking forward to AmFest this week. Time to get back to work.”
With inputs from agencies
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