Audio only:
In this episode Trent discusses the recent debate on Charlie Kirk’s murder between Candace Owens and Andrew Wilson and the sad state of modern debates.
Previous Episode on Debates: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hs6z7asjta4
Should Christians “Trust the Science”?: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gO9I4KTBO14
Transgender Terrorism: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xJjtOc5Iclo
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TRANSCRIPT
Last Friday Andrew Wilson and Candace Owens debated the question of who killed Charlie Kirk and it’s been seen now by over six million people across different channels. And while people might debate the winner of this exchange the loser is anyone who sat through this dumpster fire thinking they’d see an edifying exchange of ideas.
So today on the Counsel of Trent I’ll be talking about this debate, how debates have gotten dumber, and how some Christians have lost their way in all of this.
But to do that, you’ll need some background on this controversy.
On September 17, 2025, one week after Charlie Kirk was assassinated, Owens released an episode called “Who Ordered The Hit On Charlie Kirk?” where she said some of the evidence for Tyler Robinson being the shooter did not add up or was fabricated. Owens said Kirk’s changing views toward Israel may have created powerful enemies, but she did not claim TPUSA, Erika Kirk, Israel, or any other group was involved in Charlie’s murder.
Then on November 17th Owens cited an anonymous source saying that Egyptian planes were tracking Erika Kirk but since the U.S. gives over a billion dollars to the Egyptian government each year, it’s not surprising to see their vehicles in our country for servicing. Erika also pointed out that Owens has been wrong about her past travel itineraries:
[00:01:14-00:01:25] ERIKA KIRK
So, if you want to go through my flight log, go right ahead. It is very boring. You say I was here on this date. I have a photo in my phone to prove that I actually was in the hospital because I was having contractions.
Source: Extended: A Town Hall with Erika Kirk, source 00:32:29.7-00:32:40.8
But aside from these details not proving anything, Candace doesn’t explain why the Egyptian government would want to kill Charlie Kirk. She just calls it a mystery. Well, until January 2026 when she said:
[00:01:38-00:01:46] CANDACE OWENS
It’s interesting how many are Palestinian, which is like—I’m convinced these were Israeli planes. This is why they’re panicking about it. Obviously, like, we all know Egypt—the whole thing—they’re running stuff through Egypt, obviously.
Source: Candace x Bassem Youssef, source approx. 01:09:20.3-01:09:28.2
But flashback to December where, along with the Egyptian plane theory, Owens said the French government was also involved in Kirk’s death. She said of an anonymous source that
[00:01:56-00:02:06] CANDACE OWENS
And I am saying allegedly because until I can physically see with my own eyes inside of these accounts and verify the transfer of that payment, it’s, of course, alleged. The amount is alleged.
Source: Charlie Kirk and Brigitte’s Legionnaires, source approx. 00:05:09.1-00:05:18.7
And Owens specifically named billionaire Pierre Falcone as the French connection behind Charlie’s death.
But then on December 2nd Owens posted the following on X, “I now can say with full confidence that I believe Charlie Kirk was betrayed by the leadership of Turning Point USA and some of the very people who eulogized him on stage. Yes I will be naming names and providing evidence for my claims.”
And on December 18th Owens interviewed a man named Mitch who claimed to see U.S. military officials and a woman who looked like Erika Kirk meet at a base in Arizona.
Okay so Egypt, or Israel somehow pretending to be Egypt and France and the U.S. government and TPUSA are all involved in Charlie Kirk’s murder. And, not only that, we’re going to get *evidence* for these claims. Or maybe we won’t because here’s how Owens responded to Andrew Wilson when he asked her about this in the debate.
[00:03:06-00:04:15] CURRENT DEBATE CLIP
[Exact word-for-word dialogue could not be reliably recovered from available captions. In this exchange, Andrew Wilson presses Candace Owens to defend or substantiate the claims she had made involving Egypt, France, Israel, Turning Point USA, and Erika Kirk. Owens disputes Wilson’s characterization of her claims and resists accepting the burden he assigns to her.]
Source: Candace Owens vs. Andrew Wilson: The Charlie Kirk Debate, source approx. 02:28:21.1-02:30:21.2
I wouldn’t be surprised if Owens’s source behind all of this was “I made it up.”
What Candace Owens does is she throws any theory at the wall like spaghetti to see what will stick. And her audience devours this rotten spaghetti while forgetting all her speculations that never went anywhere. And when someone calls out Owens’s speculations, she acts like she never made them.
But even though her claims are absurd, Candace Owens has still retained control over what she says, she isn’t randomly spouting nonsense. As a result, she is morally culpable for her words because she’s smart enough to not make a specific claim like “Erika Kirk murdered Charlie” or was complicit in his murder. If Owens did that, then she could be sued for defamation. Owens admits as much in her debate with Wilson:
[00:05:04-00:06:03] CURRENT DEBATE CLIP
[Exact word-for-word dialogue could not be reliably recovered from available captions. The exchange concerns the distinction between explicitly accusing Erika Kirk of complicity and publicly stating suspicions or opinions in a way intended to avoid a direct, actionable allegation. Owens acknowledges the legal significance of phrasing claims as opinion or questions rather than direct accusations.]
Source: Candace Owens vs. Andrew Wilson: The Charlie Kirk Debate, source approx. 02:42:32.3-02:45:10.3
But in previous episodes of her podcast Owens walks right up to the line of that accusation and says stuff like this:
[00:06:10-00:06:15] CANDACE OWENS
All right, you guys. Straight to jail. Straight to jail. For questioning, at least.
Source: Here’s Why It’s Time for the Police to Question Erika Kirk, source approx. 00:01.6-00:06.5
[00:06:15-00:06:19] CANDACE OWENS
Erika Kirk should be dragged into a police precinct for questioning.
Source: Here’s Why It’s Time for the Police to Question Erika Kirk, source approx. 00:01:11.3-00:01:15.7
[00:06:19-00:06:24] CANDACE OWENS
It was—they were just there, in Maine, having dinner with Tucker. I remember this.
Source: REVEALED! Trump Scolded Charlie Kirk Over Epstein, source approx. 00:28:58.1-00:29:00.3
[00:06:24-00:06:25] CANDACE OWENS
She is, like, hardcore on the anti-Israel train.
Source: Same source, approx. 00:29:35.1-00:29:36.3
[00:06:25-00:06:26] CANDACE OWENS
That’s a psychopath.
Source: Same source, approx. 00:30:22.9-00:30:24.4
[00:06:24-00:06:29] CANDACE OWENS
Okay? That’s a black widow, my friend. You will get bit.
Source: Secret Service Admits There Was No Threat, source approx. 00:18:55.8-00:19:00.7
[00:06:29-00:06:37] TIKTOK CREATOR
After Charlie Kirk had passed away, we started seeing these articles pop up, which made me dig into Erika Kirk, and I found the Romanian Angels stuff.
Source: Embedded clip in Here’s Why It’s Time for the Police to Question Erika Kirk, source approx. 00:26:50.2-00:26:58.7
[00:06:37-00:06:57] CANDACE OWENS
Someone once commented beneath this show that if the situations were reversed and there were this many verifiable lies that Charlie told regarding the murder or assassination of his wife, Charlie would be in prison awaiting trial. And I actually agree with that assessment. We are way beyond coincidence. This is now a full-blown conspiracy.
Source: Here’s Why It’s Time for the Police to Question Erika Kirk, source approx. 00:00:28.6-00:00:48.4
[00:06:57-00:07:09] CANDACE OWENS
I’m at the point right now—I want Erika to just drop a book, like If I Did It, you know, like O.J. did. If I Did It by Erika Kirk. I think that would move more copies than the book about Shabbat.
Source: Secret Service Admits There Was No Threat, source approx. 00:23:31.6-00:23:43.3
Yeah, calling a woman a Black Widow and comparing her to OJ Simpson is not what you say about someone who merely says another person like Tyler Robinson is guilty. It’s an indirect way of saying that specific woman is complicit in murder.
What Owens does through hours of programming is to create guilt by association and insinuation. She just throws a bunch of scary sounding facts at the screen hoping some of them will stick and the sheer number of claims overwhelms those trying to process her argument. This allows her to make money off the claim that Erika was involved in Charlie’s murder while protecting herself from being sued since she never explicitly makes that claim and only spews a bunch of unrelated facts. Moreover, as a self-identified Catholic, Candace Owens should be ashamed of herself. Paragraph 2479 of the Catechism says:
Detraction and calumny destroy the reputation and honor of one’s neighbor. Honor is the social witness given to human dignity, and everyone enjoys a natural right to the honor of his name and reputation and to respect. Thus, detraction and calumny offend against the virtues of justice and charity.
And paragraph 2477 says:
Respect for the reputation of persons forbids every attitude and word likely to cause them unjust injury.277 He becomes guilty: – of rash judgment who, even tacitly, assumes as true, without sufficient foundation, the moral fault of a neighbor; – of detraction who, without objectively valid reason, discloses another’s faults and failings to persons who did not know them;278 – of calumny who, by remarks contrary to the truth, harms the reputation of others and gives occasion for false judgments concerning them.
I’m sure Candace Owens would love to take legal action against a hypothetical podcaster who might say, for example, “I think Candace Owens murdered Charlie Kirk so she could make millions of dollars promoting this conspiracy about him”. and I doubt she would buy the excuse, from this hypothetical podcaster, if he said, “Well I’m allowed to think aren’t I?”
This is why normal people will find all of this absolutely infuriating and so I understand why someone like Andrew Wilson would want to debate and expose Candace Owens. But here’s the problem, as I noted in my previous episode on how debates became dumb, modern debates are no longer about rigorously presenting evidence for an unbiased audience to consider.
Instead, modern debates are just about trying to get a gotcha moment that you can spam all over the Internet. Owens herself has done this with one moment where Andrew did not know the exact nature of the charges against Tyler Robinson.
I hate this tactic and I’ve seen it in many recent debates. For example, Ethan Muse recently debated Luke Hanson on whether the Book of Mormon has demonic origins and Muse brought up damning evidences of Joseph Smith’s involvement with the occult.
But instead of evaluating all the evidence in that debate, many Mormons have only clung to one clip where Ethan admitted he had not read the entire Book of Mormon as a way to dismiss his arguments. But unless Luke could show there was a part of the Book of Mormon Ethan hadn’t read that invalidated his argument, this fact is irrelevant to the strength of Ethan’s arguments. For example, both I and Mormons would agree the founder of Seventh Day Adventism, Ellen G White, isn’t a prophet and we don’t have to read all 100,000 pages of what she wrote to reach that conclusion.
These debates also don’t encourage the pursuit of truth. One problem is that the format only works for people who genuinely want the truth. I’ve had many long-form discussions without a moderator that achieved that goal. But if two people are just in debate me mode, then you need established rebuttal rounds so that the evidence can be properly examined.
In the Owens/Wilson debate a lot of the time was instead wasted changing the subject and quibbling over terms.
This is why you also need a clear resolution and only one resolution to debate, which is why Wilson took on a heavy burden by saying there is overwhelming evidence Tyler Robinson is guilty since Wilson doesn’t have access to all the prosecution’s evidence. The debate should really just be about Candace’s claims that certain actors like Israel or TPUSA were involved in Charlie Kirk’s death but as you saw Candace refuses to defend those claims.
Another problem with these kinds of free-form debates is that they are just opportunities for grandstanding and trying to win by exuding the most confidence, not the best argument. Even when someone is shown to be wrong, they can get out of it if they have a clever insult:
[00:12:10-00:12:20] CURRENT DEBATE CLIP
[Exact dialogue could not be reliably recovered. Owens challenges Wilson on his knowledge of the formal charge or charges against Tyler Robinson, then uses his inability to state the precise charge as a debate “gotcha.”]
Source: Candace Owens vs. Andrew Wilson: The Charlie Kirk Debate, source approx. 00:52:40.1-00:52:49.9
And this is behavior Wilson himself has engaged in so he’s getting a taste of his own medicine
[00:12:26-00:12:32] ANDREW WILSON
Charlie, I just think, honestly, you’re too stupid to understand them—which is true.
Source: Responding to Andrew Wilson’s Criticisms of Me, source approx. 00:04:57.9-00:05:04.0
This is one of the worst things about modern debate culture, which they call bloodsport debate, and I hope people will push back on it because it just makes everyone stupider and makes debates a waste of time. You can see that in Jay Dyer’s recent debate against five Protestants where he resorts to insulting his opponents to score points with the audience.
[00:12:53-00:13:45] JAY DYER DEBATE CLIP
[The source dialogue is a rapid, overlapping exchange in which Jay Dyer repeatedly insults and talks over several Protestant and Catholic opponents. A dependable word-for-word caption source for this exact excerpt was not available, so the passage is left marked rather than reconstructed.]
Source: 1 Eastern Orthodox vs. 5 Protestants and Catholics (Heated), source approx. 01:24:01.1-01:24:53.3
I find that when people get aggressive and snarky in debates, like when Candace did with Wilson, it’s because they realize they’re in a bind and they want to distract the audience. In my dialogue with Kelly Powers you could see him increasingly become belligerent the more my questions forced him into uncomfortable positions.
I do think Andrew was underprepared for this debate and he chose not to use his more aggressive debate tactics to compensate for that. But it’s also a difficult situation in general because Owens has been pushing this conspiracy for over a year and Wilson did not have a lot of time to prepare. And given there are so many “what about this” or “isn’t this weird” non facts a person can throw into the debate, it makes debating issues like this a non-starter.
This is why in my previous episode on debates, I said I won’t debate fringe positions like flat earth theory or moon landing denial. That’s because to do that you have to spend months researching nonsense arguments and, even if you know how to answer all of them, in the actual debate your opponent can just throw out a few dozen “explain this” challenges and if you fail to address any of them then he’ll say he won.
Debates are great for engaging value questions or helping people investigate the big questions of life. But they aren’t good at proving particular cases that involve many pieces of evidence to examine. This is why trials aren’t decided by which lawyer gave the most based speech in court, but by a long deliberation over all the evidence, so trying to replicate that in a podcast debate is a waste of time.
And along with wasting your time, agreeing to debate a fringe topic gives it legitimacy and gives its advocates the attention they desperately crave. That’s why I believe Candace Owens won this debate even if she lost the argument. Several posters have run the debate through AI models and nearly all of them say Wilson had the better arguments. But Candace now has more legitimacy with her base, may have added a few converts to her camp and is allegedly $300,000 richer after Wilson apparently paid her that amount to agree to the debate.
But even if Andrew also won, as moderator Patrick Bet David claims, the real loser here is Erika Kirk. She is still mourning the death of her husband and has to put up with millions of people treating her like a villain, some of whom are so unhinged they might kill her and make her children orphans.
This is why I cannot understand how a Christian could support Candace Owens by regularly watching her show. Doing that gives Owens ad revenue that allows her to engage in sins like rash judgment. In addition, Owens is causing millions of people to imitate her “vibes based” epistemology where they think they can just know what’s true based on hunches rather than evidence. It’s why one of Owens’ catch phrases is we don’t know know, but we know:
[00:16:46-00:16:59] CANDACE OWENS
Something’s not right. I know it’s not right. Okay? We don’t know know, but we know. You know? We don’t know know, but we know. And soon, we’re going to know know.
Source: They Are Lying About Tyler Robinson, corresponding source segment
But if Candace Owens were correct, then why isn’t Tyler Robinson’s defense team using her arguments? Instead, they admit their client killed Kirk and are trying to say he didn’t try to hurt anyone else to spare him the death penalty.
If things like the text messages where Robinson basically confesses were fake, as Owens alleges, then why wouldn’t the defense show this is fake by introducing Robinson’s actual phone records? This is like how moon landing conspiracies make no sense because the Soviets had every motivation and ability to disprove it if it didn’t happen.
And if the defense team is also part of the conspiracy, for *reasons*, then why doesn’t Owens use the millions of dollars she’s made from pushing this conspiracy to fund her own legal dream team to exonerate Robinson and bring the true perpetrators to justice?
The answer is because she has no evidence that would survive in a court of law, only wild claims from anonymous sources. And as I noted in a previous episode linked below: this disregard for evidence and critical thinking has led to her saying insane stuff like that she can’t say with confidence if the earth is round or that dinosaurs are fake and gay.
[00:18:18-00:18:26] CANDACE OWENS
Listen, I’m not a flat-earther. I’m not a round-earther. Actually, what I am is somebody who has left the cult of science.
Source: Should Christians Trust the Science?, source approx. 00:03:56.1-00:04:04.5
CUT TO:
[00:18:26-00:19:04] CANDACE OWENS
But then, because I got into—and very much subscribe and believe and know to be true—that there is a Christ conspiracy that’s happening right now, which is the intentional removal of Christ because they want people not to believe in God but instead to believe in humans. Well, that is what evolutionary theory was about, because rather than making human beings believe that they had a Creator, there was no concept of a dinosaur until 1850. That’s very recent, right? That’s the first time they were like, ‘We actually think that there were these reptiles that were roaming the planet.’ And then within that same decade they were like, ‘Dinosaur bones!’ And they started finding them everywhere. I’m like, ‘Okay, so nobody found this, and then suddenly there’s entire museums?’ And in China they have actually been caught manufacturing dinosaur bones many times over. And it is the case that dinosaur bones, for whatever reason, are always just found by the paleontologists. Like, it’s not like you and me walking outside and like, ‘Hey, a dinosaur bone!’ Or by somebody who’s related to a paleontologist. It’s very strange.
Source: Candace Owens on Government Experiments, Eminem Diss, and Fake Dinosaurs, source approx. 00:31:17.9-00:31:55.9
As Christians we are called to be witnesses to the truth. 2 Timothy 4 says, “For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own likings, 4 and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander into myths. 5 As for you, always be steady, endure suffering, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry.”
It seems like a lot of Christians who could be doing so much good for the kingdom have been sucked into a social media blackhole where the only thing they want to read about is gossip and conspiracy theories.
When I think of epic debates involving Christians with millions of views I think of the 2009 debate where William Lane Craig absolutely thrashed new atheist Christopher Hitchens on the question of God’s existence.
But what are we doing 12 years later? Americans are less religious now than they were in 2009 and instead of promoting debates where we help people come to know the answers to life’s most important questions, the debates getting millions of views are on stupid conspiracy theories.
That’s why I want to continue engaging non-religious critics along with Christians from different denominations. It’s also why I will keep debating important moral issues like abortion or transgender ideology even though Candace Owens has singlehandedly kneecapped our ability to showcase the ideology of the radical Left given that Robinson objected to Charlie Kirk’s political views which impacted his transgender lover. This echoes other acts of transgender terrorism I’ve covered in previous episodes.
But we aren’t talking about any of that and even liberals like Hasan Piker are grateful that Owens has made that possible
[00:20:49-00:21:11] HASAN PIKER CLIP
[Exact word-for-word dialogue could not be reliably recovered from the embedded source file. The excerpt is Hasan Piker reacting approvingly to the fact that Owens’s framing has redirected attention away from the alleged shooter’s political views and transgender partner and toward conspiracy claims about other actors.]
Source: Embedded source filename truncated in Premiere metadata as HASANP~1.MP4
So yeah, ultimately this debate was bad if it helped to legitimize her whackadoodle methods and advertise her to a larger audience. And it was good if it helped people see Candace Owens is not someone whose reasoning should be trusted and encourages Christians to objectively examine evidence and not slot everything into vibes-based conspiracy hunches.
Finally, I want you to know that I’m donating the ad revenue from today’s episode to a charity in Erika’s name because I have no interest in profiting off the drama related to her husband’s murder.
Instead, I hope today’s episode will encourage all of us to critically examine evidence so that, as Ephesians 4:14-15 says, “we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the cunning of men, by their craftiness in deceitful wiles. 15 Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ”
Thank you all for watching and I hope you have a very blessed day