Glenn Greenwald
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As the Daily Wire Publicly Negotiated a Debate with Candace Owens, it Secretly Sought -- and Obtained -- a Gag Order Against Her
Due to a prior restraint order against Owens, the much-anticipated Israel debate with Ben Shapiro appears to be off.
May 02, 2024
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Daily Wire co-founder Ben Shapiro (left), and former Daily Wire host Candace Owens (right)

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.

 

 

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September 17, 2024
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Israeli Attack: Self-Defense Or Terrorism; Jordan Chariton On Flint Water Crisis & Gaza's Effect on 2024; PLUS: Hillary's Repressive Dream
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It's Tuesday, September 17. 

Tonight: Israel severely injured more than 4000 people and killed at least 12 today in the suburbs of Beirut, including an eight-year-old girl. Perhaps more notable than the casualty number itself, which is obviously quite high, is the means Israel used to gravely injure and kill so many people, namely the Mossad, somehow intercepted the supply chain used by Hezbollah and others to purchase wireless pagers. After intercepting those devices, Israel apparently installed bombs in thousands of them and then programmed the bombs so that Israel could detonate them remotely all at once, whether in people's pockets, in their hands, or wherever they might be. Earlier today, East Coast time, that is exactly what Israel did, where thousands of mobile pagers and the like instantaneously exploded as people walked in shopping areas, cafes, restaurants, shops, pedestrian-heavy streets, and anywhere else those devices happened to be. This was not on a battlefield. This was in the suburbs of Beirut. 

Israel and its loyal supporters of the U.S. claim – as they always do, no matter what the conduct in question is – that the Israeli attack was not only justified as a means of attacking Hezbollah but was also extremely calibrated to avoid civilian armies because the IDF is the most moral army in the world, they hate killing civilians. 

I suppose one could say that this attack today was, quote, “targeted” by comparing it to the utterly indiscriminate mass bombings and killings that Israel has carried out in Gaza and increasingly the West Bank over the last year, utterly destroying all civilian infrastructure in Gaza, flattening apartment buildings of entire neighborhoods and killing tens of thousands of people, but blowing things up remotely without having any idea where those devices are and knowing full well that many of them are almost certain to be used in many civilian areas is the opposite of targeted bombing. We'll explore the claim of Israel's supporters that this attack was legitimate and targeted self-defense, or whether this is more akin to terrorism, which is clearly what it would be called if carried out by any other nation.

Then: Jordan Chariton has been one of the independent journalists who most uses classic shoe leather investigative journalism and on-the-ground reporting to inform Americans of issues that few others are covering so in depth. For years – going back to the Obama years – Chariton made numerous sustained visits to Flint, Michigan, to cover the years-long poisoning of that community's water supply and the government's apparent utter indifference. He has a new book based on that reporting and titled "We the Poisoned: Exposing the Flint Water Crisis Cover-Up and the Poisoning of 100,000 Americans."  We will talk about that as well as speak to him about the extensive unseen reporting he has been doing this year in Michigan, speaking to the crucial Arab and Muslim voters in that state about how the Biden-Harris administration's full-scale funding and arming of the Israeli war in Gaza may affect their voting decision and, with it, the 2024 election. 

And finally: Hillary Clinton went on Rachel Maddow's MSNBC program last night and I can barely express how challenging and adversarial the interview was. I'm sure you can imagine if you haven't seen it. Hillary, almost in passing, vehemently advocated that Americans whom she believes are spreading disinformation and propaganda should not only be civilly sued by the government but also criminally prosecuted and put in prison. If that dystopic authoritarian vision were ever to be implemented in the U.S. as Hillary wants, the very first people who should be sharing a jail cell are Hillary Clinton and Rachel Maddow, who drowned our country and its political system in one false conspiracy theory after the next: from the Steele Dossier to the secret Alfa Bank server Trump used, to many other demented debunked lies. We'll show you what Hillary said and what the implications would be – though we may not have time because I will be on Jesse Water's Fox show live right after 8 p.m. EST, so if we run out of time, we will do that segment on our Locals platform right after that Fox appearance.

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

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Another Trump Assassination Attempt: What Caused It, and Who Is To Blame?
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It's Monday, September 16. 

Tonight: For the second time in the last two months, Donald Trump was the target of an evidently serious attempted assassination. Unlike last time, the attempted assassin was not able to shoot Trump, but he came within a few hundred yards of him on the former president's golf course, packed with an AK 15 and other armaments. Unlike the first shooter, in Pennsylvania, who was strangely depicted as an utterly apolitical loner with no Internet footprint who simply acted out a mental illness, this shooter, identified as 58-year-old Ryan Wesley Routh, has expressed all sorts of clear political statements over the year, including increasing levels of animosity toward Donald Trump. His principal political project over the last two years has been a fanatical devotion to supporting Ukraine to the point that he went to Ukraine and tried to position himself as some sort of leading American coordinator of foreign volunteer upon foreign volunteer troops and repeatedly pledged that he would die for Ukraine against Russia if necessary. 

Just five months ago, in April, he begged Joe Biden on Twitter to please win the 2024 elections. Echoing the standard liberal pundit view that, quote, “democracy is on the ballot and Trump is a grave threat to it,” he sounded like anyone on MSNBC does. We'll examine what we know about this attempted assassin of Trump, the reality versus widespread media claims about him. 

And then beyond that: it is very common for Trump supporters to be accused of having incited violence through their political rhetoric. I still remember when Tucker Carlson was widely blamed by consensus for the white nationalist shooter in Buffalo who killed ten African Americans, despite literally no evidence that the shooter even knew who Tucker Carlson was, let alone that he was inspired by anything he said. Moreover, even if he had listened to Tucker Carlson, this theory that that would make somebody expressing political views responsible for the violent acts of those who hear them is extremely dubious, I'd argue even dangerous. 

And yet every time someone acts in the name of a common, identifiable liberal ideology with the goal of attempting violence against someone on the right, the whole dynamic reverses: not only can liberals never stand accused of so-called stochastic terrorism – the theory the protected speech can incite violence, rendering the speaker responsible for the acts of others – but somehow, at least in this case, there is a widespread media narrative that Trump and his rhetoric are to blame for having incited two murder attempts against himself in the last two months and that the only way to solve it is for Trump to lower the temperature and change his rhetoric. We'll examine all of this. When there are two political attempted assassinations of a leading political candidate, and a former president, within the scope of two months, there are a lot of important things to analyze. 

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

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Black Socialists' Mixed Verdict on Acting as Russian Agents; U.S. Seeks to Ban RT Worldwide; Lee Fang on Ukraine Escalation & 2024
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It's Friday, September 13. Friday the 13th, for those of you who care.

Tonight: Hysteria over Russia and the supposed threat it poses to our way of life – the script Democrats invented in 2016 and then thereafter to explain their loss to Donald Trump –continues to fuel assaults on core civil liberties inside the United States. Ironically, it's not Russia, but the fear of it that is destroying our way of life. 

We have frequently covered the case of the U.S.-based African People's Socialist Party, a very small party of leftists led by Black radicals, pretty standard ones, whose leaders are now in their 80s and have spent decades opposing American wars and imperialism and naturally therefore also oppose the NATO war in Ukraine. In late 2023, they were indicted on felony counts of acting as Russian agents, largely for the crime of speaking out and engaging in activism against U.S. involvement in the war in Ukraine because the FBI was able to find trivial, very trivial financial connections to Moscow a few thousand dollars over many years, they allege in an indictment that these Black leftists were acting as agents of Russia when opposing the war in Ukraine and criminally failed to disclose it. A jury in Tampa just yesterday acquitted all four of those defendants on the most serious count, namely that they acted as agents of the Russian government to spread propaganda inside the U.S. but it did convict them on four of the lesser charge of conspiring against the United States with Russia. So, it's a little bit of a confusing verdict, but we'll tell you all about the verdict and its implications. 

Meanwhile, the State Department boasted today of its intense efforts to have RT, the state media outlet of Russia, banned in as many countries as they can, arguing that RT’s mere existence has had the effect of convincing people around the world to question and then oppose the need of the war in Ukraine – can't have that, can't have any information being disseminated that undercuts American and Western policy. 

As always these days, whenever people start reaching conclusions the U.S. government dislikes, they immediately turn to the sources of that dissent and try to silence it. That's become the very normalized way of life now. Even during the Cold War, Americans frequently heard from Soviet leaders and Soviet news media such as Pravda. But in today's world, where values of free access to information and free speech are eroding, not even those minimal rights are guaranteed. The same ones we had during the Cold War. 

Finally: last night, we covered the Biden administration's imminent decision to radically escalate the war in Ukraine by allowing long-range missiles provided to Ukraine by the U.S., by the UK and the EU, to be used to strike deep inside Russia. The Russian government's reaction was clear and predictable and swift because those missiles can only be fired, with native military officials guiding them by satellite, something the Ukrainians cannot do and because the missiles are coming from the UK, in the EU, with the specific intent of using them to strike inside Russia, Russia will regard any such usage as marking the entry of the U.S. and NATO's into this war as direct belligerence against Russia and will treat all of those countries as such. 

My former Intercept colleague, Lee Fang, easily, in my view, one of the best and most intrepid investigative journalists in our country has been examining the very serious risks posed by such escalation in Ukraine. He just published on his Substack, earlier today, a new article entitled “New York Times’ Previous Reporting Undermines its War Escalation Journalism” - warnings about major escalation of war – and potential nuclear war – take a backseat to think tank experts from the defense industry.” We'll speak to Lee about all of that, about the general refusal of the West to even take seriously the threat of nuclear war, about another investigation he did last month on the much greater degree of Israeli influence inside the United States, people being paid by the Israeli government to spread Israeli propaganda and then various issues related to the 2024 election as well. 

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

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