On March 22, 2024, Jeremy Boreing announced that the “Daily Wire and Candace Owens have ended their relationship.” That same day, Andrew Klavan built his show around his thoughts concerning Candace Owens and her departure, and by day’s end “Christ is King” was trending.
Candace Owens has been one of The Daily Wire’s top talents since 2020. Owens used to be a liberal. In 2015 she was blogging about the “bat-shit-crazy antics of the Republican Tea Party”, and in 2016 she launched SocialAutopsy.com, a website that sought to expose Internet bullies by doxing people and violating their privacy. She faced resistance from conservatives and progressives, and blamed progressives for doxing her. Candace Owens became a convert to conservatism in 2017 when she realized “that liberals were actually the racists. Liberals were actually the trolls.” Following her political conversion, she made waves with her harsh criticism of BLM and her promotion of BLEXIT (a portmanteau of the words “black” and “exit”, which urges people of color to leave the Democratic Party). She also became friends with Kanye West after he tweeted in April 2018, “I love the way Candace Owens thinks.” She tweeted back, “I’m freaking out. @kanywest …please take a meeting with me. I tell every single person that everything that I have been inspired to do, was written in your music. I am my own biggest fan because you made it okay. I need you to help wake up the black community.”
Her departure from The Daily Wire isn’t surprising. In the wake of October 7th and the Israel-Hamas War, Owens found herself in the crosshairs of The Daily Wire’s co-founder, Ben Shapiro. In a speech Shapiro called Owens’ response to the war “disgraceful”, and Owens retort appeared to come by way of a tweet that read, “Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God. Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness' sake: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake. No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money.” She followed that tweet with another that simply read, “Christ is King.”
Shapiro tweeted back, “Candace, if you feel that taking money from The Daily Wire somehow comes between you and God, by all means quit.”
On the day that Jeremy Boreing announced that they were parting ways with Candace Owens, Andrew Klavan devoted his show to discussing her departure. To insert a bit of levity, Klavan read a tweet that said, “Candace Owens is gone, so now Andrew Klavan is the only black woman at The Daily Wire”. Klavan joked that this was “obviously true, so I feel a certain responsibility to talk about this”.
Racially Jewish, Klavan converted to Christianity when he was fifty, and in 2016 he published The Great Good Thing: A Secular Jew Comes to Faith in Christ. Being both racially Jewish and a late-convert to Christianity, Klavan brought a unique perspective to a quarrel that has both political and religious dimensions.
Regarding Owens’ departure, and the reaction that would occur, Klavan warned that it was “going to be an absolute crap storm, obviously.”
And he wasn’t wrong.
The episode is titled “Because Christ Really is King”, and Klavan affirmed that this really is his belief. He expressed his support for Jeremy Boreing and the decision he had made, saying that in the wake of the decision “I personally felt a weight taken off my shoulders and I’m grateful to him”.
While many have interpreted Candace Owens departure as an act of censorship by The Daily Wire, Klavan dismisses that allegation, affirming that he is “a free speech advocate”, and emphasizing that The Daily Wire didn’t “cancel” Owens. However, The Daily Wire stands for certain things, and apparently Owens had come into conflict with at least one of the things The Daily Wire stands for – its opposition to “race hatred”.
Klavan sees “race hatred” as spreading a “smear of hate” over the “nuanced, difficult, detailed things that you have to think about”. He points out that “people can use truth to mask wickedness”, and offers up the example of the Devil quoting scripture when he came to tempt Jesus, speaking truth to mask evil.
The War in Gaza represents a nuanced issue that is poorly understood by people on both sides of the conflict, resulting in many blanket judgments and condemnations. Some people seem to think any criticism of Israel is an expression of anti-Semitism, while others don’t recognize that criticism of Israel – even when valid - often masks anti-Semitism.
Klavan’s perspective is that Candace Owens was promoting anti-Semitism. First there was Owens’ defense of her friend, Ye (Kanye West), who was expressing anti-Semitism well before the October 7th attack. Then there are the “dog whistles” that Klavan sees as deeply problematic.
In politics, “dog whistles” involve coded or suggestive language that hides its intention, allowing one to convey controversial messages on issues without provoking controversy. Klavan thinks Owens has been using them – either wittingly or unwittingly.
The first dog whistle Klavan identifies was Owens’ suggestion that a lot of the books that Nazis burned in the 1930s were bad books that probably needed to be burned. The second was Owen’s decision to retweet a post saying a Jew was drunk on Christian blood. Klavan said, “When you start to refer in this kind-of clever way to certain groups in Hollywood corrupting Blacks and killing Michael Jackson … you’re messing with us, and no one is fooled except those people who want to pretend to be fooled because they hate the Jews.”
“The truth that hid wickedness that I thought was the most wicked truth to use was the truth that Christ is King”, Klavan exclaimed, implying that this phrase is also a “dog whistle”.
Klavan said, “It is almost exactly twenty years since I acknowledged the Kingship of Christ in my life”. Some people had warned Klavan that he would not be accepted by Christians because he’s racially Jewish, but Klavan said “Christians have welcomed me with open arms - except this Christ the King anti-Semitic crowd.”
The anti-Semitic crowd Klavan is talking about includes Groypers like Nick Fuentes, a well-known white nationalist, far-right political commentator. Later in the episode, Klavan refers to Fuentes specifically, taking issue with Fuentes’ claim that “the Jew’s religion is based on rejecting Christ.”
One does not require six degrees of separation to link Candace Owens to Nick Fuentes. Owens and Ye are friends, and Owens defended Ye when he was being called out for his anti-Semitism. Fuentes and Ye are friends, and when Donald Trump agreed to have Ye over for dinner at Mar-a-Lago in November 2022, Ye brought three friends along, Nick Fuentes included. Trump received a lot a criticism for that, though he posted to Truth Social that he knew nothing about Ye’s intention of bringing Fuentes, and he didn’t know Fuentes. Many prominent Groypers openly supported Ye’s 2022-23 short-lived presidential campaign.
Klavan declared, “Christ is the King … but when you use that phrase to mean that God has abandoned his Chosen People, the Jews, through whom He came into this world incarnate, and that He’s broken his promises, his covenant, with the Jews, you are quoting scripture like Satan does … you are quoting scripture to your purposes, and that to me is specifically wicked.”
Klavan then spends 90 seconds presenting thoughts so complex that they’ll have to be the subject of a separate article, but in reference to other Daily Wire talents – Ben Shapiro and Jordan Peterson - Klavan says, “When you spit Christ the King at them … that just doesn’t sit with me in the least.”
A lot of commentators weighed in on the suggestion that “Christ is King” was a dog whistle, and much of what I saw dismissed the suggestion as absurd. I’m not sure if these commentators really grasped the nuance of what Klavan was saying, or the way the phrase has been used.
Phrases can convey meanings that often go beyond the words themselves. Subtext gets read into them. The phrase “Black Lives Matter” is a perfect example of this. No sensible person would argue against the literal meaning of this phrase, yet the words represent a broader movement and message that many can dispute or refute. The founders of Black Lives Matter were Marxists trained to sell Marxism to the masses, and they used a slogan that no one could object to in order to shield themselves from criticism. When people started using the phrase “All Lives Matter”, BLM activists argued that this similarly unobjectionable phrase was racist because it took away from their message. The slogan “Love is Love”, popularized by LGBTQ+ activists, literally says nothing, yet it conveys a lot through subtext. Sometimes one has to understand the context behind a phrase in order to appreciate the message that it sends. “Let’s Go Brandon” is a prime example of this.
Groypers and others have been blasting the phrase “Christ is King” at Jews as a sort of taunt, and when Jews take offense, that offense gets labelled as prejudice. A lot of people are insisting that there isn’t anything wrong with the phrase because they don’t see how the phrase is being used, or by whom. Andrew Tate has used the phrase in a recent post. Sneako has done likewise. Both men are Muslims highly critical and dismissive of Christianity. When these men say “Christ is King”, they means something other than what the phrase literally conveys.
Klavan’s central contention is that “Jew hatred is Christ hatred in disguise”.
Returning to the parting of ways, Klavan states, “So when Jeremy Boreing, a Christian man, has to sign a check – a big check – to pay someone to talk about Hitler wasn’t so bad in burning books, or a Jew is choking on Christian blood, or Christ is King, when Jeremy Boreing has to sign that check he’s doing something that he cannot abide”. He adds, “This level of hatred of Jews is a hatred of God – a hatred of Christ.”
Klavan then explains, “When I, who have given my life to Christ, who have bowed to Christ as I have bowed to nothing else on this planet, who bends the knee to Christ the King, and I come onto this outlet … this outlet that I love … and I know that such things are being said under the aegis of The Daily Wire, it has to end. It has to stop.”
Then Klavan exclaims, “If Candace wants to say those things about the Jews, about Hitler, no matter how she dodges and weaves, she has to leave The Daily Wire. She has to leave for one reason above every other … because Christ is King.”
Rob Bogunovic serves as
the editor at The Rubicon
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