Candace Owens doesn’t trust the official story of Charlie Kirk’s murder. Fair enough. But does she distrust her own theories nearly as much?
Owens is still challenging the case against Tyler Robinson, who is charged with murdering Kirk. In a recent three-hour debate, she defended her suspicions about foreign involvement and continued raising questions about the evidence. She has questioned whether Robinson was responsible, raised the possibility that Israel and France were involved, and accused a prominent hedge fund manager of threatening Kirk weeks before his death, an allegation he has denied.
Recommended Stories
Yes, governments lie. Yes, prosecutors make mistakes. Yes, journalists get stories wrong. There are plenty of reasons to question what powerful institutions tell us. But there’s a question that matters just as much as the ones Owens keeps asking: What would convince her she’s wrong?
It’s easy to think of skepticism as refusing to accept the official story. But skepticism also means questioning the alternatives. Once you believe someone is hiding the truth, almost anything can reinforce that suspicion. Evidence supports your theory. Contrary evidence raises questions about who might be misleading you. No evidence? Maybe someone successfully covered it up.
That’s the trap of distrust. Once we decide a source is deceptive, evidence from that source loses its power to correct us. A denial can look like confirmation. Missing evidence can suggest a cover-up. Eventually, the theory becomes difficult to disprove because the people capable of disproving it are the ones we’ve already decided not to trust.
Robinson has pleaded not guilty, and his lawyers are contesting the government’s case in court, where a jury will eventually weigh the evidence. Owens doesn’t have to accept the state’s version of events. Neither does anyone else. But skepticism should apply to competing explanations too.
Owens has moved through suspicions involving a second shooter, foreign governments, and people connected to Kirk and Turning Point USA without publicly producing evidence sufficient to establish any of them. The government’s case deserves scrutiny. So do the theories offered in its place.
This isn’t just about Owens. Distrust can make us feel sophisticated. Accept the official explanation and you risk looking naïve. Reject it, and you can feel like an independent thinker. An unanswered question becomes evidence that something is wrong. A coincidence becomes a clue. But rejecting an official explanation doesn’t make the alternative true. Nor does suspicion necessarily make you harder to fool. Once you’ve decided who is doing the deceiving, you may become less skeptical of anyone offering a different explanation. We can become so worried about being gullible in one direction that we become gullible in the other.
There’s also something satisfying about believing you’ve discovered what everyone else missed. “We don’t know yet” is an unsatisfying answer to a shocking act of violence. A theory offers something uncertainty doesn’t: a coherent story. Social media makes this worse. “I looked into this and I’m still not sure” doesn’t travel nearly as far as “Here’s what they aren’t telling you.” When an audience follows you because it believes you’re uncovering things others have missed, uncertainty isn’t nearly as rewarding as another revelation.
DAVID HARSANYI: EL SAYED’S INSANE CIRCUMCISION ANALOGY
Kirk’s widow, Erika, has publicly asked Owens to stop. Turning Point USA figures have disputed her claims. Their disagreement doesn’t prove Owens wrong. But it should count for something. If every challenge to a theory becomes another reason to believe it, what could ever prove it wrong? Owens has every right to question the case against Robinson. But skeptics have to question their own theories too. If you demand overwhelming evidence from prosecutors while accepting coincidences, unanswered questions, or anonymous sources as reasons to suspect something else happened, you’re applying two different standards.
Experts have sometimes sounded more certain than the facts warranted. But the people who make a living telling us not to trust those institutions shouldn’t get a free pass either. There’s a simple test: What would change your mind? If the answer is nothing, you’re not being skeptical anymore. You’ve just found something else to believe.
