Former MAGA figure Candace Owens has come under fire for conspiracy theories, yet carries on relentlessly even as President Donald Trump's base shows signs of fracturing, an analyst said Wednesday.
Salon's Sophia Tesfaye described how right-wing media can't stop Owens, who has continued to tout claims about Charlie Kirk's death and his widow Erika Kirk, most recently in "Bride of Charlie." Owens' YouTube series focuses on her thoughts about Erika Kirk's "lies" and has suggested that she was involved in her husband's murder or "ulterior motives" to take over Turning Point USA, the organization her husband led.
"The conservative media machine is currently discovering, to its evident horror, that it has no idea how to shut one of its biggest creations," Tesfaye wrote. "Candace Owens was handed a megaphone by the late Charlie Kirk, feted by Donald Trump and praised by Focus on the Family as one of 'the many Black giants of the conservative movement.' Now she is being called a vampire and a schizophrenic by the very people who built her platform. And she keeps growing."
"But the real reason right-wing media cannot stop Candace Owens is that they built her," Tesfaye wrote. "And, more importantly, they built the engine that fuels her: the machinery of conspiratorial media, which is immune to the tools that might once have contained it."
Conservative media has a history of inciting outrage and distrust to capture its audience, something Owens has also employed in her own messaging.
"The more outrageous the claim, the greater the engagement," Tesfaye wrote. "The more distrust sowed toward institutions — universities, media, elections, public health, the FBI — the more loyal the audience becomes."
In her personal attacks on Erika Kirk, Owens has shifted the focus not just to Charlie Kirk and his assassination, but also to the current problems facing the MAGA coalition.
"For all its focus on Erika Kirk, 'Bride of Charlie' is not really about her. Nor is it even really about Charlie Kirk," Tesfaye explained. "It is about an identity crisis on the American right — what happens when a media movement decides that the thrill of the conspiracy, the pleasure of the accusation, the dopamine of the 'truth bomb' matters more than the actual truth. Right-wing media cannot stop Candace Owens because they cannot renounce the incentives that made her powerful."
This has given Owens momentum — with no signs of slowing down.
"This tension is not going away," Tesfaye added. "It mirrors broader fractures within MAGA-world over foreign policy, particularly U.S. support for Israel. It reflects a generational shift in how political influence is wielded. Perhaps most ominously, it exposes how readily antisemitic narratives can find purchase in spaces primed to distrust 'globalists' and 'elites.'"