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 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, April 30. 

Tonight: For months, Democrats were accusing House speaker Mike Johnson of being all the things Democrats always call people whom they dislike; a racist, a fascist, a religious fanatic, a pro-Kremlin asset, etc., etc. But then, Speaker Johnson began radically reversing many of his longstanding views to become the most valuable tool or the most reliable ally of the Biden White House and the U.S. security state. And now, for understandable reasons—I don't blame them—Congressional Democrats speak of Mike Johnson not with scorn, but with affection. And now, in response to a motion by Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, of Georgia, and Thomas Massie, of Kentucky, one that's designed to exploit the thin majority that Republicans have in the House and will attempt to remove Mike Johnson from his speakership, similar to the way they did Kevin McCarthy before him, House Democrats today, led by their minority leader, Hakeem Jeffries, of New York, announced that they would protect Mike Johnson and keep him as speaker by giving him all the votes he needs to remain. That Johnson has become such a popular and useful fellow among Democrats and the intelligence agencies in the Biden White House, speaks volumes about how Washington works and how easily it exploits those like him, who are desperate to cling to any modicum of power. We'll tell you about the latest with this bizarre spectacle and examine all of its implications. 

Then: The intrepid independent journalist Lee Fang has a new article today on how the gutting of the American industrial base is one of the reasons the U.S. is bizarrely incapable of keeping up with the Russians when trying to arm Ukraine. We'll speak to him about his latest report, as well as the genuinely disturbing trend of so many Republicans and conservatives embracing the very censorship and safetyism theories they long claim to loathe, all to restrict free speech and the right of protest in the United States to protect the foreign country called Israel. 

Finally, Doctor Jill Stein, an actual medical doctor, not a doctor Jill Biden type of doctor, is running for president again this year on the Green Party ticket. She's the only Jewish candidate running of the major presidential candidates. Earlier this week, she was arrested along with dozens of students at Washington University in Saint Louis while protesting against the Israeli war in Gaza and U.S. support for it. Doctor Stein will be here to talk about all of that, as well as the other primary issues driving her presidential campaign and how she sees the 2024 election. 

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

Good evening. It's Monday, April 29. 

Tonight: When Russian activist Alexei Navalny died in a Russian prison in February, it was asserted over and over by the U.S. media and U.S. politicians that Russian President Vladimir Putin had ordered him murdered but did not mean that metaphorically—that because Putin presides over a country where dissidents are in prison, unlike the United States, it meant that he bore ultimate moral responsibility for his death. No, they meant it literally. They were asserting that Navalny died because Putin ordered his murder. 

As we reviewed at the time, none of those claims made sense. Navalny died just days after Tucker Carlson interviewed Putin in his first interview with a Western journalist in more than two years and right as the $60 billion package that Biden had requested for Ukraine appeared to be permanently stalled in the GOP-led House. Why would Vladimir Putin, in the midst of all of that, order Alexei Navalny killed while he was already incommunicado in prison? And why would he then hand the West a major propaganda weapon to use against him? But none of those questions mattered. In fact, it was claimed that only Kremlin propagandists would even ask them. 

As we have seen ever since Russia became Public Enemy Number 1 in the United States when Democrats blamed that country for Hillary Clinton's 2016 loss, the U.S. government and its corporate media servants assert anything and everything about Putin without the slightest regard for whether it's true, and even more so, regardless of whether the claim even makes basic sense. That's because, again, nobody can question any claims about that country, the world's largest nuclear power, without instantly being maligned as a Kremlin apologist or a Kremlin asset. That Putin ordered Navalny’s murder was treated as an unquestionable fact by the U.S. corporate media.  

As it turns out, this claim was completely fabricated. The Wall Street Journal reported late last week that even the U.S. intelligence community now admits there is no evidence of Putin's involvement in Navalny’s death. This hoax, just the latest in a long line designed to manipulate the American public into drowning in anti-Russia animus and even wanting war with them, was exposed as Ukraine continues to retreat and Russia continues to expand its control of that country in that war that is still ongoing.

Thanks to House Speaker Mike Johnson, who spent years claiming he was opposed to more aid to Ukraine until he completely changed his mind and united with the Biden White House as he did on several other issues, the U.S. is now sending another $60 billion to a war that even Ukrainians are increasingly recognizing is futile and are refusing to fight in it. The propaganda served its purpose, though, of having the U.S. prolong this war, but the steep price being paid by Ukraine and by the American people continues to grow. 

Then: Each year, the White House press corps gets dressed up in gowns and other finery to attend a gaudy, sleazy, ostentatious gala at the White House that would embarrass Marie-Antoinette. They embarrassingly hobnob and pose with celebrities and with the White House, including the president, the person who they supposedly cover so adversarial, all while they showered themselves with praise and various awards. The primary function of this spectacle is that it reveals the true role of the U.S. press corps. They are eager members of the royal court, courtiers of it. This year was no different, and we will show you the lowlights that were particularly revealing about our current press corps. 

Finally: we have an update on the report we did last Thursday night regarding the nationwide crackdown on free speech and political protest all over college campuses in the United States, all to shield Israel from criticism and activism against its war. Columbia University today warned students that unless they immediately cease protesting the war in Gaza at the encampment that they created, they will be formally suspended from the school starting today and subject to arrest by the New York Police Department. All this despite there being no reports of any physical violence or physical assault that emanate from that campus. We will tell you about the latest in analyzing implications.

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