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Jan. 29, 2026 - Lionel Nation
26:44
Candace Owens Shatters the Performance Art Fraud of Erika Kirk
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Time Text
Leaked TPUSA Horror 00:03:03
I listened with absolute shock, incredulity, amazement, horror at this episode of Candace.
It was called Leaked TPUSA Audio.
And it was Erica.
And I'm trying not to make this sound like I'm being overly personal with my feelings, but I've got to tell you something.
I cannot tell you how annoying, just, and let me just say it, how annoying this grating, childish, immature, cheerleader, giggly giggle box.
It's like one of those Zoom call horror shows.
Okay, guys, guys.
Here's a drinking game.
Every time, and I know people say it, but if you go through the guys, okay, guys, I was like, so guys, I was like, it was insane.
This is a woman who lost her husband a couple of weeks ago who acts like she's like she's in HR, like she's running up.
I don't know what it is.
And I don't care if people are upset about it.
It doesn't really matter.
It's my opinion.
I can't believe the shallowness, the absolute millimeter depth of this woman.
It is like nothing I've ever even heard.
Nothing.
I can't believe it.
It's performance performative.
It's an act.
Not only that, it's an act that shouldn't be able to be performed after your husband was slaughtered, gunned down like a dog for the world to see.
And your children don't have a father.
And you're purported, the man you love, your husband, is dead.
And she's talking about, I wish I, I hope I didn't miss the breakfast.
I mean, just, you've got it, you've got to hear this.
You've got to hear this.
Dear God.
And she doesn't even know it.
She doesn't know it.
That's the part that's amazing.
I'll bet you if you sat her right down, Erica would say, what do you want?
I'm a team player.
No, you're not supposed to be acting like this.
You were supposed to believe if you had a human, a soul, you're supposed to be just unable to do this corporate stuff for that.
Most people would still cry every time they say their husband's name.
Grief vs. Corporate Masks 00:15:25
So what Candace did was she framed this episode as kind of like a cleanup operation on the story.
The public thinks it knows.
And as I told you, she opens by saying her audience already understands, already understands clearly why people in the media world and its allies are angry with her.
Well, of course, they're angry with her for a variety of reasons.
Not only because she's willing to question the official narrative, because you never do that.
You're supposed to follow orders.
She doesn't follow the narrative around Charlie's life and his death, but because she is now digging into the power transition that followed.
And you are going to see, wait till you see her trending on social media like the worst thing, like some human form of syphilis.
She's going to be just this anathema.
She's going to be this cur, this heretain.
They're going to, my God, they're going to vilify her like you can't believe.
And her core premise is very, very simple.
And she has said this repeatedly.
If an organization, if any organization depends on public goodwill and donor money and contributions, and if it reportedly raised an enormous, enormous amount of money after its founder's assassination, then the public is entitled to basic, simple transparency about who was running it and why.
You got a problem with that?
It's axiomatic.
It's obvious.
She treats that not as gossip, not as cruelty, not as some mean girl bit, but not as an obsession, but as kind of a baseline accountability and responsibility, both to her viewers and her legacy as a friend and the like.
In her view, and Candace's view, the strangest thing is not that people want answers.
Of course not.
The strangest thing is that so many gatekeepers in the press class want to ask the questions at all.
That's the part that is the most amazing.
That is the most amazing thing.
That's it.
The strangest thing, again, is not that people want answers.
The weirdest, oddest, strangest, ghoulish thing is that so few gatekeepers, so few in the press around here want to ask the questions in the first place.
I mean, I've seen this my whole life.
You know, I'm kind of used to it.
So she explains to the audience that she's planning a multi-part investigation into Erica Kirk's background.
I don't know if I can take this.
I mean, I swear to God, itch.
I'm letting this personality type I've run into my whole life from time to time.
And I'll be saying, oh my God.
Call it what you want.
Everybody has one in every corporation.
It's the old, well, you know, but I'll just leave it at that.
All right.
But I know what I'm talking about.
And if I told you, you would agree with me.
All right.
Anyway, they're going to be looking into her background and into the internal dynamics of the organization, especially with a lot of people who are on board who are sending Candace some dynamite stuff.
And they're looking at the organization ever since Charlie's death.
And she also says that, Candace says that the blowback to the plan, you know, the instant scolding, the moral panic, the how dare you even look reaction only makes her more convinced and more determined and more focused and more aware that there's something worth examining.
I mean, this goes without showing.
Tell me what I can't talk about and I'll show you the truth.
And her argument is that you can't build a movement that preaches truth-telling and veracity and personal virtue and courage and then demands silence when the person at the top, the big kahuna, becomes controversial.
It is morally and intellectually reprehensible.
And she rejects the idea that a founder spouse can simply just inherit the leadership role because here's the thing, because supporters repeat that Charlie would have wanted it.
I don't know where that comes from.
But that's her story.
She says that logic wouldn't even work under old monarchies, this is according to Candace.
when, never mind, in a moderate nonprofit where leadership credibility matters, something of this nature.
Can you imagine Leia Coco or I'm trying to think or Tim Cook or Steve Jobs?
I want my wife to, now granted, it's a different organization, but the theories are the same.
See, in her telling, people are being instructed to accept a succession as if it is a royal decree, as if it came on high.
And she is openly mocking that expectation.
And this is just, I mean, I'll tell you, if I was a big donor to TPUSA, I'd be asking, why is she doing this again?
Listen to her run a meeting.
Listen to her.
Don't take it from me.
Listen to her.
And ask yourself, does this woman know what she's doing with anything?
I mean, she sounds like your little sister.
Sorry.
Hate to be that way.
Look, remember, you walked into this.
I'm a cheerleader.
Hey, guys, this cutesy bullshit.
It's just, I swear to you, it is so sacrine, so anodyne.
It's hard to even stand it.
But from there, I guess she grounds, this is Candace, she grounds the episode kind of in a specific piece of material that she says she obtained from former employees.
And it is fascinating, which is a recording of a, I guess, an internal corporate Zoom call.
And if you've ever been through one of those before, but it's an internal Zoom call that took place shortly after Charlie's memorial.
And she gives the date Monday, September the 22nd.
Now, think about that.
This is what, 12 days?
And she emphasizes timing, timing as the central issue.
Her point, dear friend, is not merely that the call exists.
It's when it exists.
It's the timing.
She repeatedly stresses that it is less than two weeks after Charlie's death, close to the funeral and the memorial events.
And she wants the audience, and I'm going to say this very carefully, to hold that timeline in their heads.
Because she believes, and I think correctly so, that the tone and the content of the call cannot be evaluated, cannot be evaluated, can looked at, analyzed, without remembering how fresh the loss was.
You got to listen to it for yourself.
Listen.
She's almost giddy.
It's cheerleaderish and hey guys.
And hey, it's always that team leader who, I swear, I don't know.
First of all, I don't know what happened to the English language with all this.
Guys, you think somebody with all that CIH running would be able to speak a little bit better?
But I digress.
Now, her first major concern is the energy she says is captured in that recording.
And this is obvious.
She says it's upbeat, it's cheerful, it's giddy, it's businesslike.
And moreover, she says it's what made her uncomfortable and me as well.
Listen to it.
Just ask yourself this.
She tells the audience that she tells the audience that Erica begins with praise for staff performance at the memorial.
Okay, thank you.
By the way, these same staff people who some were shown the door, allegedly, gotta say allegedly.
She mentions enormous attendance numbers and mentions media outreach and mentions voting registrations and all this kind of stuff, which is terrific.
And then she mentions merch numbers and I mean goes down the list and celebrates the execution of the event as something like a historic triumph.
Good, good going guys, great guys.
Candace's critique is not that those accomplishments are not worthy or are not there or not extant or not meaningless.
Her critique is that the call sounds like kind of like a victory lap or something.
It's weird at a moment, at a moment when the organization and its people should still be raw, paralyzed.
It's business as usual.
And she highlights little phrases she finds jarring, especially Erica using blunt language about Charlie being dead, paired with laughter and kind of a bright tone.
I mean, it is weird.
Candace's interpretation is that the words and the emotional posture don't match.
And she further argues that most normal people can sense that mismatch.
And she then zooms in on a section of the call.
This is very interesting.
Where Erica thanks teams and asks employees to put personal conflicts aside.
Come on, guys.
For the team.
Candace says that Erica frames it as a perspective shift.
You know, life is short.
Relationships matter.
Your husband's dead.
Let's bury old drama and move forward.
Okay?
Okay, guys.
Okay, guys?
Guys.
And Candace's reaction is that the directness might be understandable in private grief, but in a corporate setting, so soon after the death, it feels like a performance, like an act, and off.
Weird.
She suggests that, and this is really important, that even if someone is trying to be strong, there's a difference between strength and stagecraft and acting.
She keeps returning to the same question.
Does this feel like grief or does it feel like management?
You got to hear this.
And the best part is, I keep telling you, Erica doesn't understand it.
She wouldn't know what we were talking about.
Now, her second major concern is what she calls pressure.
Not necessarily explicit threats, but social pressure created by a leader's posture.
See, Candace describes Erica acknowledging staff exhaustion, long working days, heavy demands, taxing demands around the memorial.
And Erica, in Candace's retelling, lists supportive resources, counselors, pastors, therapy dogs, meals, and even flights for spouses so employees would not grieve alone.
Okay, so Candace doesn't dispute those supports, could be beneficial.
What bothers her is how that segment transitions into messaging about work continuing at full speed.
And how time off is framed as, well, there's something employees can use if they must, but only by using paid time off they have already earned.
Wow.
Wow.
We're going to have lunches for you.
We'll have massages.
We'll have pet therapy, but don't think about taking time off.
Whew.
Wow.
Candace argues that this kind of creates the subtle but very powerful message.
The leader is charging ahead.
So anyone who needs time to process the whole death thing may feel weak or disloyal or out of step.
All right, so where it goes.
And she says, former employees described that exact feeling to her.
They felt like, if his wife is fine, who am I to struggle, right?
She frames this as kind of emotionally manipulative, even if it's not consciously designed that way.
I mean, this is well thought out.
And the key part of the argument is that grief is real and that people do cope differently, of course, but that phrase can also kind of become a shield used to shut down common sense.
You got to watch this.
Candace pushes back hard at what she calls the everybody grieves differently defense.
Not because she thinks grief is identical for everyone.
That's not the point.
Don't miss the point.
But because she thinks that some reactions are so discordant, so odd that the public is being asked to deny its own instincts.
And she uses an analogy from modern art, the idea that people can be pressured to call anything art if they are told that meaning is purely subjective.
So in her framing, the same thing is happening here.
The audience is being told, in essence, to accept something that feels wrong, that feels odd, because the approved slogan is, grief comes in waves.
Candace is essentially saying, you can attempt to explain it away, but you can't force people to stop noticing what they notice.
Oh, you've got to listen to this.
There's also the subject of bringing into account the way the organization, as she understands it, has treated employees and dissent since the transition.
The transition.
Her third major concern is a pattern of internal paranoia and abrupt firing.
She claims that some staff members who worked extreme hours, I mean, like something, 20 hours or so they said, around the memorial were later terminated without clear reasons, according to them and according to Candice, with explanations like, we're going in a different direction.
You know, I hate that one.
And Candace contrasts that with public messaging.
She says supporters were given, that the group is a family.
You know, that questioning leadership is disloyal.
That unity is sacred.
Family Connections Matter 00:04:43
What's it going to be?
She argues that firing people without clear explanations after demanding intense sacrifice doesn't look much like family.
It looks like control.
It looks like sending a message.
And she says this is the pattern.
This is the part of why she believes the whole of the recording business matters.
Because it offers a glimpse, you've got to hear for yourself into management culture, not just public stage moments.
But even this, you can tell Erica's performing.
She's playing, you know, CEO.
Now from there, she introduces a separate kind of thread that she treats as investigative context, not proven fact.
She says her interest, her interest in Charlie's earlier life and his schooling has expanded, partly due to online researchers who send her tips.
She also repeats the idea that Charlie attended a school for gifted children.
And she frames this as part of kind of a broader speculation that gifted programs can attract the attention from power structures, put it that way.
She uses dramatic language, calling it an X-Men school in a kind of a rhetorical way.
And she brings up the Truman Show idea, again, which is a perfect analogy, kind of a metaphor, meaning she suspects that the public story of Charlie's rise might not be the full story.
When does that ever happen?
And this is where the episode becomes a collage of timelines and origin stories and connections.
It's fascinating.
Candace revisits the calmly cited story of Turning Point USA's founding.
The older figure who saw Charlie speak approached him and encouraged him to start an organization.
There's always that story.
And Candace emphasizes one line from that story that says, I don't know you.
And she questions whether that origin story is as spontaneous as it is presented.
But she notes the military ties, geographic overlaps, and relationships among adults around educational programs.
You see, there's a description here of receiving tips.
She received tips suggesting that some key figures knew each other earlier than the public narrative even implies.
And that these relationships may have involved a business network, perhaps that blended evangelical culture with sales and corporate growth.
It's been done before.
It's nothing out of the ordinary.
And she describes learning about a company associated with nutritional products and the Salesforce culture.
And moreover, there's a suggestion that this company had unusually prominent connections to major government programs.
It's a fascinating piece.
And she frames this as suspicious, implying that it could be a vehicle for influence or money flow or social engineering, and blending that further with her skepticism about major public narratives like the moon landing.
I like that.
And she references Operation Paperclip as the historical backbone for why she distrusts official stories.
Now, let me stop right there.
Let me ask you something.
If you don't know the origins of these reference pieces, then don't bother talking about it.
Because if you understood what she's talking about, if you understand about how stories and narratives become accepted, then it means nothing.
But paperclip in particular is one that we all know.
Then she presents this not as a tightly sourced case, but as a kind of intuition-driven investigation.
The kind where patterns repeat and military links pop up.
And people who claim moral authority seem curiously tied to power networks.
Isn't that something?
And there's multiple points and multiple points during the particular piece.
She tells her audience that she needs more information, names and family links and background details as these hypotheses grow.
Emphasizing her belief that a person's family history and connections matter.
That you should know who someone's people are, so to speak.
Family History Matters 00:03:29
Who raised them?
Who shaped them?
What networks and organizations they came from.
And she invites tips and research, and she praises the speed of online investigators, who, by the way, are marvelous.
Move over, Mike Wallace.
I mean, you've got teams of people who are brilliant, natural journalists, people who compile information outside of traditional press channels.
Oh, it's incredible.
And then comes the highlights of another parallel thread involving a variety of messaging issues, which I will allow you to go back and review.
It is so thorough.
I marvel at this young lady's ability to go through so much, cover so many issues in this almost seamless, beautiful, narrative, conversational, yet thorough voice.
It's almost like a closing argument.
It's beautiful.
So, listen.
Tell me what you think.
Listen to the voice of Erica.
Listen to it.
Tell me in the comment section.
Are you as shocked as I was?
Or do you say this is exactly what I thought you would have said?
I'm shocked.
I really think people are human.
That when somebody dies so violently and in a public way that they're sometimes frozen in place.
All right.
I'm curious.
Thank you and thank you for your thoroughness.
Your comments, my God.
They are so beauteous.
Thank you for this.
Thank you.
I also want to thank you for being so kind and following my wife's channel at Lynn's Warriors.
You know, I have other engagements and ventures on terrestrial radio, on WABC.
And every Wednesday night, last night we have Warrior Wednesday, which we talk about all the various goings on involving a lawsuit, whether digital platforms can be addictive.
Also, the notion of defakes and how kids are being affected by an AMAI-driven predation force that we never knew as kids.
Nobody ever knew this.
So please follow her for her depth and insight at Lynn's Warriors.
I thank you for that.
Also, like this video, subscribe to the channel.
You know, 70% of the people who watch this don't subscribe.
I don't know what this is.
We need your support.
We need these numbers.
I need to show the world, listen, this is important.
This is critical.
Because we have hit a nerve.
This story fascinates me.
I am fascinated.
The multiplicity of the issues, the warrens of issues, the derivative nature of it is phenomenal.
So please watch it, enjoy it, and accept my absolute thanks for your support and for being interested in something which is so important.
You'll never see this on mainstream media because, first of all, they don't have the intellectual firepower or the ability to focus on something long enough.
So thank you, my friends.
Have a great and a glorious day.
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