On April 5, Candace Owens publicly invited her former Daily Wire colleague Ben Shapiro to a debate about "Israel and the current definition of antisemitism." It was Owens' criticisms of U.S. financing of Israel, and her criticisms of Israel's war in Gaza, that caused her departure from the Daily Wire two weeks earlier.

Both Shapiro and Daily Wire CEO Jeremy Boreing responded by saying they would like to arrange the debate requested by Owens. That night, Shapiro appeared to accept her offer, writing on X: "Sure, Candace. I texted you on February 29th offering this very thing." The Daily Wire co-founder added: "Let's do it on my show this Monday at 5pm at our studios in Nashville; 90 minutes, live-streamed."

After Owens objected to the format and timing, she and Boreing exchanged several tweets in which they appeared to be negotiating, and then agreeing to, the terms and format for the debate. Owens had suggested the debate be moderated by Joe Rogan or Lex Fridman. Shaprio said he wanted no moderator. They ultimately agreed to the terms, with Boreing offering a series of conditions, including a no-moderator debate, and with Owens publicly accepting. 

Two weeks later, many readers of both Shapiro and Owens noticed, and complained, that the debate had not yet happened. On April 24, Owens addressed those inquiries by explaining that the Daily Wire had yet to propose dates, while reiterating her strong desire to ensure the debate happened.

But the debate was never going to happen. That is because the Daily Wire -- in secret and unbeknownst to its readers -- sought a gag order to be placed on Owens after she had called for a debate. They did this under the cover of secrecy, before a private arbitrator, at exactly the same time that they were claiming in public that they wanted this debate and were even negotiating the terms with her. To this date, the Daily Wire has not informed its readers, seeking to understand why the much-anticipated debate had not yet happened, that they had sought and obtained a gag order against Owens.

When seeking a gag order to be imposed on Owens, the Daily Wire accused her of violating the non-disparagement clause of her agreement with the company. To substantiate this accusation, the company specifically cited Owens' initial tweet requesting a debate with Shapiro as proof of this disparagement, along with concerns she voiced that Shapiro appeared to be violating the confidentiality agreement between them by publicly maligning Owens's views to explain her departure from the company. While the company claimed before the arbitrator that it did not object in principle to a "healthy debate," it urged the imposition of a gag order on Owens by claiming that the way she requested the debate constituted disparagement of Shapiro and the site.

To justify the gag order it wanted, the company also cited various criticisms of the Daily Wire and Shapiro on X that Owens had "liked." This proceeding took place as part of an exchange of legal threats between the parties after the public agreement to debate about Israel was solidified. Those threats arose from the fact that various Daily Wire executives and hosts, in both public and private, were castigating Owens as an anti-Semite. On March 22, Daily Wire host Andrew Klaven published a one-hour video that hurled multiple accusations, including anti-Semitism, at Owens. The Daily Wire cited Owens' response to that video -- her defense of herself from those multiple accusations -- as further proof that she needed to be gagged.

The initial tweet from Owens not only requested a debate, but also included a video from the popular comedian Andrew Schulz, who had mocked the Daily Wire for firing Owens over disagreements regarding Israel, and specifically mocked Shapiro for his willingness to debate only undergraduate students. The tweet underneath Owens's original debate request included a summary of Schulz's mockery of Shapiro which stated: Schulz now "realizes Ben Shapiro is only good at debating college liberals & can’t win debates against serious competition." 

After the prior restraint hearing sought by the Daily Wire and Shapiro, the arbitrator sided with them and against Owens. The arbitrator agreed with the Daily Wire that Owens' call to debate Shapiro, and her follow-up negotiations of the debate, constituted "disparagement" of the company and Shapiro. The company argued that any further attempt by Owens to debate, as well her suggesting that the debate would expose the Daily Wire's real "priorities," constituted criticisms of the site and of Shapiro, criticisms that the arbitrator concluded Owens was barred from expressing under her contract with the company.

The arbitrator thus imposed a gag order of prior restraint on Owens. Among other things, the order banned Owens from saying or doing anything in the future which could tarnish or harm the reputation of the Daily Wire and/or Ben Shapiro. Given that the Daily Wire had argued, and the arbitrator agreed, that Owens' offers to debate Shapiro about Israel and anti-semitism were themselves "disparaging," the Daily Wire has ensured that the debate with Owens that they publicly claimed to want could not, in fact, take place. Any such debate would be in conflict with the gag order they obtained on Owens from expressing any criticisms of the site or of Shapiro.

When asked for comment to be included this story, Owens replied: I "wish I could comment on this but I can’t." She added: "can neither confirm nor deny."

Boreing said: "your story is inaccurate to the point of being false," though he did not specify a single inaccuracy, nor did he deny that the Daily Wire had sought and obtained a gag order on Owens at the same time they were publicly posturing as wanting a debate with her. The confirmation we obtained of all these facts is indisputable. Boreing added: "I’m sure you can appreciate how fraught a high profile break-up like this is. For that reason, we are trying to resolve our issues with Candace privately."

It certainly seems true that the Daily Wire is attempting to achieve all of this "privately." Nonetheless, Ben Shapiro has constructed his very lucrative media brand and persona based on his supposed superiority in debating, a reputation cultivated largely as a result of numerous appearances at undergraduate schools around the country where he intrepidly engages with students who are often in their teens or early twenties. Both Shapiro and the Daily Wire have also predicated their collective media brand on an eagerness to engage in free and open debate with anyone, and to vehemently oppose any efforts to silence people, especially those in media, from expressing their political views.

It was the imperatives of this media branding that presumably led the Daily Wire and Shapiro to publicly agree to a debate with Owens over Israel and anti-semitism in the first place. Indeed, when it became apparent early after the start of Israel's war in Gaza that Owens had major differences with Shapiro, Boering responded to calls from Israel supporters for Owens to be fired by proclaiming in November: 

[E]ven if we could, we would not fire Candace because of another thing we have in common - a desire not to regulate the speech of our hosts, even when we disagree with them. Candace is paid to give her opinion, not mine or Ben’s. Unless those opinions run afoul of the law or she violates the terms of her contract in some way, her job is secure and she is welcome at Daily Wire.

But a mere four months later, Owens, despite being of one of the company's most popular hosts, was out. The company had concluded that her increasingly vocal criticisms of Israel, opposition to U.S. financing of it, and her views on anti-semitism were incompatible with the Daily Wire's policies.

All of those issues would likely have been the subject of the public debate that Owens sought, and that the Daily Wire claimed to want. Instead, the Daily Wire has succeeded in obtaining a gag order that, on its face, prevents Owens, in advance, from questioning or criticizing both the Daily Wire or Shapiro in any way.

Become a Supporter

Watch the full episode here: 

Podcast: Apple - Spotify 

Rumble App: Apple - Google

Good evening. It's Tuesday, May 7.

Tonight: If I had to pick the most direct and explicit legislative abridgment over the last decade of core constitutional rights, it would likely be the wildly expanded definition of, “anti-Semitism” that was just incorporated into federal anti-discrimination law last week. We examined that bill in detail. But a close second—perhaps even the top threat to core constitutional rights—would be the extraordinary, forced sale and/or banning of TikTok that President Biden signed into law last month. The likelihood that TikTok's corporate parent can divest themselves in accordance with the law and the period set is extremely low, which means that this app voluntarily—voluntarily—used by more than 150 million Americans will be banned—and that would take place in January of 2025, conveniently set right after the presidential election to ensure nobody is held accountable for this visible assault on free speech.

In a federal court earlier today, both TikTok and its parent company ByteDance filed suit against the Biden administration, arguing at length why this bill constitutes a grave and glaring violation of the First Amendment, free speech rights of American citizens, as well as the 14th amendment and other secondary arguments. 

There have been all kinds of fearmongering generated about TikTok to justify its banning—this fear campaign is always the foundation of any authoritarian act, you have to put the population enough fear to make them agree to anything that is being done in the name of protecting them from this new threat—but so much of these fear campaigns, and certainly this one, are based on exaggerations or outright fabrications and the arguments made by TikTok today, along with other reporting relating to it that we've covered before vividly demonstrates why this is. We'll tell you about this constitutional challenge and what its implications are. 

Then: The moral panic that the U.S. government is deliberately cultivating on a bipartisan basis in the United States to justify all of these repressive measures that American Jews now face—an epidemic of violent bigotry, even a second Holocaust—continues to be pushed by leaders of both parties. Both President Biden and Speaker Mike Johnson gave very similar speeches over the last 48 hours with this theme at the Holocaust Memorial, namely, that the anti-war protests on American campuses are merely disguised movements of radical Islam or Sharia law, and, above all, an attempt to bring another Holocaust against Jews to the United States. That's no exaggeration. Johnson's speech today, in particular, is so riddled with obvious falsehoods and hoaxes, though so is Biden, that both are worth examining. 

Finally, the British journalist and writer Johann Hari has written some of the most consequential books over the last decade, including “Chasing the Scream,” which revolutionized how addiction is understood; “Lost Connections,” which explores the root spiritual causes of growing mental health pathologies in the West, and “Stolen Focus”, on how modern society is destroying our ability to concentrate. Johann has a new book out entitled “Magic Pill - The Extraordinary Benefits and Disturbing Risks of the New Weight Loss Drugs”, including Ozempic, which, among other things, interviews a wide range of scientists and physicians to understand both the safety, the efficacy and the dangers of the Ozempic craze and similar drugs. 

For now, welcome to a new episode of System Update, starting right now. 

Watch the full episode here: 

Podcast: Apple - Spotify 

Rumble App: Apple - Google

It's Monday, May 6. 

Tonight: The war in Ukraine, like the war in Gaza, drags on and on and on. And while there is no progress on the battlefield except for some moderate gains by Russian forces over the last several months, the serious risks from this war, which involve the world's largest nuclear power, continue to grow. Over the past weeks, several Western leaders, becoming increasingly desperate about the obvious futility of their war aims, are now explicitly threatening to deploy NATO or other Western armies into Ukraine to fight against Russia. As a predictable and obvious response, Russia announced this week that they were scheduling tasks for the use of tactical nuclear weapons, the kind of radiological bombs that are intended for the battlefield. Whenever countries involved in war begin explicitly musing about the use of nuclear weapons, and worse, when they begin accompanying those statements with actual nuclear tests, it is inherently a gravely dangerous situation. Yet for whatever reasons, the war fanatics and both parties in the U.S. and the leading liberal parties throughout the West continue to scoff at and trifle with this grave risk to humanity. We'll examine the latest events and what is driving them.

Then: Israel's army, as it has long vowed to do, invaded Raffa, where over 1 million Gazan refugees have been living as the only place in Gaza where they can go. Despite the fact that Joe Biden several months ago warned Israel against doing so, calling it a red line, now we'll show you what the latest is there. 

But as all of that is happening, on Friday night, we devoted our program to examining the similarities between the post 9/11 climate in the U.S., driven by expansive and reckless terrorism discourse. Everything was terrorism and a terrorist, and that justified everything and the increasingly similar climate emerging in the U.S. to protest or punish and silence. The protesters marching against the Israeli war in Gaza last week saw the approval in the house of one of the most extreme legislative assaults on free speech in years, the incorporation of a radically expanded definition of anti-Semitism into federal anti-discrimination law, an expanded definition that includes a wide range of obviously valid and constitutionally protected opinions about the actions of the State of Israel and the actions of various Jewish individuals. Since that program, just three days ago, the threats posed to the core civil liberties of the United States in order to shield Israel from criticism and activism have only intensified. And we'll show you why and how. 

Finally: Batya Unger-Sargon is a friend of our program. She was one of the pro-Israel supporters we had on our show after October 7. We had her on twice, in fact, to present both sides of the Israel debate and allow our viewers to hear each view subjected to debate and critical scrutiny so they could make up their minds. Tonight, we'll talk to her again, this time about her new book entitled “Second Class: How the Elites Betrayed America's Working Men and Women,” which uses numerous interviews with members of the American working class to understand how and why they, in their belief systems, are being systematically excluded from elite American liberal institutions. Some of her findings are ones you'd likely predict, others are not, and we'll also use the opportunity to discuss some of the controversies in the U.S. over the last several weeks involving free speech, campus protests and the Israeli war in Gaza. 

For now, welcome to a new episode of System Update, starting right now.