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Welcome back to False Flag! With its major “AmericaFest” conference set to kick off next week, Turning Point USA faces a new urgency to debunk Candace Owens’s conspiracy theories about the murder of its founder, Charlie Kirk.
Unfortunately for them, Owens has shown no sign of flagging. Her theories have increasingly centered on a three-way TPUSA-Israeli-French alliance to betray Kirk, and she has even claimed that she herself is wanted by assassins. (The threat of a hit team didn’t stop Owens from attending the Christmas party for Tucker Carlson’s nicotine-pouch brand.)
Last week, “Charlie Kirk Show” staffer Blake Neff issued a challenge to Owens, inviting her to travel to Phoenix for a December 15 in-person show with Kirk’s friends aimed at debunking her theories.
At first, Owens seemed open to a showdown, saying the only ground rule she needed was “no assassinations.” But since then, Owens has equivocated, claiming she can’t attend the event on TPUSA’s tight deadline because her husband has an unrelated appointment that day.
This might be enough to convince her fans, who fear a French Foreign Legion sniper might ambush her at the taping anyway. But for those outside of Owens’s orbit, it seems like cowardice. If Owens were really convinced a global conspiracy assassinated her best friend—and is now trying to kill her, too!—why would she let her husband’s holiday guests get in the way of her sleuthing?
Owens also said last week she doesn’t care how Republicans do in the midterms if Kirk’s murder is still unresolved, prompting podcaster Tim Pool to moan: “Holy shit, we’re going to lose the midterms!” Clearly, these conspiracy theories are having a real effect on the GOP.
And speaking of having a real effect, it’s thanks to Bulwark+ members that I can follow all this right-wing nonsense so you don’t have to. To support our work, become a Bulwark+ member today:
–Will
The J6 Pipe Bomber Arrest Only Made the Conspiracy Theories Worse
MAGA has had the most predictable response to learning the suspect is an election truther.
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Pipe Bomb Blues
For years, right-wing media outlets have ruminated on the mysterious pipe bomber who planted explosives outside the Democratic and Republican National Committees ahead of January 6th. Was it a deep-state provocateur working for the FBI? Or perhaps a liberal out to ruin Trump’s otherwise legitimate hopes of overturning the election?
Glenn Beck has called the pipe bomber’s identity “the biggest scandal of my lifetime, maybe in the last hundred years.” During his talk-radio days before he became deputy FBI director, even Dan Bongino was convinced something nefarious was afoot. In Bongino’s telling, the FBI knew the pipe-bomber’s identity but were choosing to cover it up because its disclosure would be politically embarrassing. Referring to himself in the third person as “Danny Boobotz,” Bongino declared he had been right about a coverup all along.
“It’s a freakin’ inside job!” Bongino said in early January.
So right-wing media figures should have been relieved on Thursday when the FBI announced the arrest of 30-year-old Brian Cole Jr. as the pipe bomber suspect. Yet the response from conservative media has overwhelmingly been the opposite. They believe that ...
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