National Review editor slams MAGA influencer: Fictional lawyer 'schizophrenic high on crack'

Far-right conspiracy theorist Candace Owens continues to double down on her attacks on Erika Kirk, leader of Turning Point USA and widow of the MAGA youth group's late founder Charlie Kirk. Owens, who served as TPUSA's communications director from 2017-2019 before working for radio host Dennis Prager's PragerU and Ben Shapiro's The Daily Wire (which fired her for comments Shapiro considered antisemitic), is claiming, without evidence, that Erika Kirk was somehow involved in her husband's murder.

Owens has plenty of critics, who range from liberals and progressives to right-wing Never Trump conservatives. Yet within the MAGA movement, she still enjoys a large following — which, according to conservative National Review Editor-In-Chief Rich Lowry, is a big part of the problem.

In a scathing op-ed published on February 27, Lowry laments that promoting ugly and baseless conspiracy theories isn't decreasing the size of her audience.

"Joe McCarthy was famously undone by the rhetorical questions at a 1954 congressional hearing, 'Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?,'" Lowry argues. "If the same queries were directed to Candace Owens at such a forum, she'd sail on unperturbed — since she has no idea what 'decency' means. The conspiratorial podcaster has embarked on an investigative series on Erika Kirk, the widow of Charlie Kirk. In this context, 'investigative series' means a loosely stitched together collection of sewerish falsehoods and innuendo smearing Erika Kirk. ... And what is more demented than portraying the wife of the victim of a shocking assassination as a black widow?"

The National Review editor-in-chief continues, "Whereas most have seen in Erika Kirk a Christian woman bearing up under an intolerable burden and stunningly forgiving the alleged murderer of her husband, Owens purports to see Clytemnestra, the mythical Greek figure who betrayed her husband, Agamemnon, upon his return from the Trojan War."

Owens is describing her anti-Erika Kirk series as "Bride of Charlie," a play on "The Bride of Frankenstein." And she is calling for Kirk's widow to "be dragged into a police precinct for questioning."

"As a so-called investigator," Lowry argues, "Candace Owens is like Perry Mason if the fictional attorney had been a schizophrenic high on crack…. It is a symptom of our time that such malevolent buffoonery is rewarded with a huge audience. It is impossible to discredit Owens because she is not in the credibility business to begin with. In the attention economy, denunciations are just as useful as praise, especially if a media figure is posing as a brave truth-teller — so brave that, in this case, she's willing to drag through the mud a mother of two who saw her beloved husband murdered less than six months ago. It's not just that decency is not necessary in the Candace Owens business model; it would be an obstacle."

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