Daily Wire CEO Jeremy Boreing's announcement of Candace Owens' departure from the outlet he and Ben Shapiro founded was understated.
Boreing's follow-up on Monday, which lambasted Owens for allegedly using the refrain “Christ is King,” to shield her from criticism was anything but. According to Boreing, Shapiro and pundits like Mediaite's Isaac Schoor, Owens has used the typically innocuous phrase to justify her slide into overt antisemitism since fighting broke out between Israel and Hamas. (RELATED: The Daily Wire Jettisons Candace Owens)
Observers first took note of Owens' use of the phrase during a social media row with Shapiro shortly after the Oct. 7 Hamas-led attack on Israel.
Those remarks left room for interpretation, though they noticeably come hours after Shapiro criticized Owens opinion on the news out of Israel as “disgraceful” and “ridiculous.”
Owens has expressed criticism towards the United States' involvement in Israel, as well as Israel as a country. During a 2023 episode of her Daily Wire show, she incorrectly claimed that Israel segregates its Muslim population.
Owens responded to Shapiro's initial critique by posting a tweet with a quote from the Beatitudes. “You cannot serve both God and money, she added.
Shapiro scolded Owens, writing on X: “Candace, if you feel that taking money from The Daily Wire somehow comes between you and God, by all means quit.”
Owens responded by accusing Shapiro of “acting unprofessional and emotionally unhinged for weeks now. And we have all had to sit back and allow it and have all tired to exercise exceeding understanding for your raw emotion.”
“But you cross a certain line when you come for scripture and read yourself into it,” she continued. “I will not tolerate it.” (RELATED: Tucker Carlson Takes Explosive Candace Owens, Ben Shapiro Feud Next Level)
A large swath of the MAGA movement is defending Owens' increased use of the phrase “Christ is King,” wondering how anyone could find it to be antisemitic.
“I'm asking this sincerely. I'm a student of life. I'm not that smart. There are many things I do not know. This is a sincere question without snark or sarcasm or trolling. How is saying ‘Christ is King' anti-semetic [sic]? When did this become true? Is it true?” right-wing sports commentator Jason Whitlock asked.
Boreing himself took a stab at answering Whitlock.
“How is saying ‘Christ is King' antisemitic? The same way anything becomes antisemitic – when it is used for the purpose of expressing antisemitism. It's like asking ‘how does a shovel become a murder weapon?' When it is used to murder someone. This isn't hard. A shovel is not innately a murder weapon. Saying ‘Christ is King' is not innately antisemitic. It's all about how a thing is used,” Boreing began.
The conservative media mogul continued, tweeting:
Saying ‘Eat some cornbread' is not racist if I say it to my three-year-old when she is refusing her dinner. If I start saying it as a response to X posts by black commentators I don't like, it has taken on a meaning beyond what is innate. In other words, it is connotatively racist, not denotatively racist. So too ‘Christ is King' may be antisemitic in connotation while not in denotation when it is being used to express antisemitism.
When did this become so?
It has always been so.
Is it so?
Yes. Innately.
Additionally, saying ‘Christ is King' for an evil purpose – like using it as a weapon to express your hatred or disdain for the Jews – is a grave sin. It plainly violates the Third Commandment “Thou shall not carry forth the Name of the Lord thy God in vain.”
Surely if I rape and murder someone – like Hamas did on 10/7! – and all the while I shout at them ‘Christ is King,' – or ‘God is Great!' – we would agree that I have committed three grievous crimes, not two. Rape? Yes. Murder? Yes. But also the great crime of implicating God in the first two crimes.
So one must be cautious how one uses the Name of God. God will not be mocked. Invoking Him in vain self-promotion, or to troll Jews, or to attack your political rivals is to carry forth His Name in vain.
Jesus Christ is King, sure enough. King of Heaven and of Earth. King of Jew and Gentile alike. Yet a bruised reed He will not break, and a faintly burning wick he will not smother. So don't use His Name as a cudgel to bash those in whom the Light of God yet flickers.
If you do, you are a blasphemer and an antisemite and a piece of crap generally, and the fear of the Lord is clearly not in you. It will be, though.
Daily Wire host and international bestselling author Andrew Klavan spoke out about Owens' departure on Friday, reflecting on the first warning sign he had seen.
“When you start saying things like ‘some of those books Hitler burned weren't so bad. You know, I was shocked-‘ this was something Candace actually said, ‘I was surprised to learn that the books Hitler was burning or the Nazis were burning, they weren't good books. They were bad books, they were socialist books,” a bemused Klavan recounted Owens saying. “Burning a book is the act of a a savage, first of all,” he clarified before insisting that Owens' comments on the Nazi's ritualistic destruction of literary works was a “dog whistle.”
“When you retweet a post saying a Jew is drunk on Christian blood, which goes back, as I'm sure you know, to blood libel that, you know, Jews eat Christian children. You know, that's a dog whistle,” Klavan added, referencing a report about Owen liking a tweet about the centuries-old incendiary and false conspiracy. (RELATED: Elon Musk Backed By Jewish Billionaire After Alleged Antisemitic Post)
As Mediaite notes, Klavan reserved his strongest criticism for Owens' attempts to protect herself from scrutiny using scripture:
“The biggest truth that Candace told in that way that I find, again, and this is not personal animus toward her, but I find difficult to excuse this when anybody does it. The truth that hid wickedness that I thought was the most wicked truth to use, was the truth that Christ is King,” argued Klavan.
He continued:
It is almost exactly 20 years Since I acknowledged the kingship of Christ in my life and over the universe as well. It's like two weeks and it will be 20 years since my baptism. It was hard for me to do, it was hard for me to do. I'm a proud man and I want to be king, I want to be in charge of my life, I want to take credit for the good things that happened to me. I want to say, you know, what my opinion is about right and wrong, I don't want to bend the knee to anybody. And people who know me will tell you I don't bend the knee to anybody except Christ the King. And the day I took off my paper crown and bowed my knee before his crown of golden light, I became a true man and a free man, and the joy in my heart has only grown. You know when I did this, by the way, the priest who baptized me said, “You know, Christians won't accept you, you'll still be a Jew.” And I said, “Well, I am, that's my race. I'm a Jew, I'm proud of my race. It's a great race, has done many, many great things, including write the Bible and you know, I am a Jew.” But that hasn't happened at all, Christians have welcomed me with open arms. Except this Christ the King anti-Semitic crowd. Christ is the King and one day every knee will bow and recognize him, because he's not just my king, he's king of the universe. 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 in the Bible. You are quoting Scripture to your purposes, and that to me is specifically wicked.
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