Candace Owens | This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von #688

Episode Overview

• Comedian Theo Von and investigator Candace Owens (a former employee of Turning Point USA and former host at The Daily Wire, currently pregnant with her 5th child with 3 weeks left in her pregnancy) examine how global power structures, media manipulation, and state-backed narratives operate to control public perception.
• The conversation explores institutional control mechanisms inside Hollywood and finance, ranging from celebrity conservatorships and music publishing disputes to the financial debanking of dissidents.
• Owens details her international defamation lawsuit filed by French President Emmanuel Macron and Brigitte Macron, linking the surrounding geopolitical pressure to the Jeffrey Epstein network and Cold War-style intelligence tactics.
• The episode features an extensive breakdown of the September 10 Charlie Kirk assassination at Utah Valley University (UVU), contrasting the official narrative against a 107-page independent after-action review, security failures, and alternative theories involving munitions contracts.
• Throughout the discussion, producer Trevin assists off-camera with live internet searches while Theo discloses episode sponsors: MoonPay / MoonPay Agents (a crypto platform Theo states is his "go-to place to buy crypto"), Acorns (a saving and investing app with a legal disclaimer noting it is a "paid client endorsement" where "compensation provides an incentive to positively promote Acorns"), and BetterHelp (an online therapy platform Theo describes as a "long-term partner").

Key Concepts

• Conservatorships, Publishing Rights, and Financial Control: Institutional mechanisms like legal conservatorships and banking access are frequently weaponized against wealthy or outspoken figures. Britney Spears was under a legal conservatorship for 13 years and 9 months (nearly 14 years, from February 1, 2008, to late 2021); in her June 2021 court address, she testified she was taken off medications she had been stable on for 5 years and immediately placed on lithium in late 2018 after objecting to a Las Vegas show—a drug Owens claims "melted her brain." Owens notes she hasn't gotten too deep into the Lou Taylor ("Mormon mafia") conspiracies ("but there's definitely something there"), and recounts a text introduction from Russell Brand to Courtney Love. Hedging with "Allegedly, allegedly, allegedly. I'm recapping a conversation, so the conversation itself is not allegedly," Owens explains Love's claim that a "publishing rights mafia" paints artists like Kurt Cobain and Michael Jackson (who owned the Beatles catalog and fought Sony) as unstable drug addicts to seize their catalogs. Owens argues that even if someone makes $10 million and wants to spend it irresponsibly, conservatorships shouldn't stop them (citing Wendy Williams being locked out of her bank), and notes that Kanye West was "debanked" via letter for his views.
• Political Leverage, the Epstein Network, and Intelligence Honeypots: High-level blackmail and financial donations heavily dictate political action. Owens claims Donald Trump took $300 million from Miriam Adelson (which she calls the price to "buy a presidency"), and both speakers discuss an article headline quoting Pam Bondi stating that "if we prosecute everybody in the Epstein Files, the whole system will collapse" (which Owens paraphrases as crushing the "global economy"). Owens argues the Jeffrey Epstein story is fundamentally French, centering on Ghislaine Maxwell's father, Robert Maxwell, and his partner Jean-Luc Brunel—founder of Karin Models and MC2 Model Management (financially backed by Epstein), who was arrested in Paris in 2020 on charges of raping minors before dying by suicide in La Santé Prison in 2022. When Owens claims Epstein won the lottery/Powerball twice, she asks Trevin to fact-check it, hedging: "Okay, so was that actually misinformation?... Maybe it was Powerball... Maybe it was just once" in Oklahoma. While an AI Overview states there is no credible record of Epstein winning a lottery, a secondary search result shows a March 19, 2026 episode of The Studies Show podcast asking if he won an $85 million Powerball jackpot in 2008, alongside a Tucker Carlson clip claiming he won an approximately $80–$85 million jackpot in New Mexico/Oklahoma. This ties into Cold War "sexpionage" and the Soviet "Sparrow School" depicted in the spy thriller Red Sparrow by former CIA officer Jason Matthews—which Theo initially confuses with an Australian vegan pizza shop in Melbourne, prompting both speakers to laugh and hedge with "allegedly, allegedly" to clarify nothing bad happened at the restaurant.
• The Macron Defamation Lawsuit: Foreign leaders and legal teams can use technicalities in court to suppress journalistic inquiry. French journalist Xavier Poussard investigated Brigitte Macron for 8 years, wrote Becoming Brigitte, had to move his family out of France due to government harassment, and has never been sued by Brigitte Macron for defamation. However, Emmanuel and Brigitte Macron (whom Owens claims is "80-something" years old now) filed a defamation lawsuit against Owens. Owens explains the suit is not actually about whether Brigitte was born a biological male (Jean-Michel Trogneux), but rather technicalities like accusing Owens of "theft" for saying Brigitte stole her brother's identity, and mentioning "MKUltra" 12 times in the complaint after Owens made a single flyaway comment that Brigitte was born around the date MKUltra began. Owens also reveals that Donald Trump personally called her in February 2025 asking her to stop talking about Brigitte Macron and Sergio Gor.
• The Dead Internet Theory, Bot Manipulation, and Digital Smears: Authentic human interaction and reliable search results online are rapidly eroding. The "Dead Internet Theory" posits that the internet is now mostly controlled by automated bots and AI-generated content rather than real people—illustrated by Owens' claim that when Michael Knowles ran an X poll asking "Do you support the Iranian war?", bots manipulated it to show 100% support. Furthermore, bad actors manufacture digital smears, while organic internet rumors spiral into absurdity—such as Theo telling Owens about an online conspiracy claiming she isn't pregnant, but is acting as a "data mule" carrying a government/Russian data center or router in her womb. In June 2025, someone hacked Owens' old college YouTube account from 2008 (a sophomore year journalism project on the Adderall epidemic) and used a photo of her dressed as a police officer to fabricate 6 profiles on Adult FriendFinder claiming she was looking for group sex/lesbian encounters; Owens debunked the fake explicit photos because they lacked her college belly button ring and "trashy tattoo."
• True Crime Psychology, Lockdowns, and Institutional Hypocrisy: Public fascination with true crime and institutional scandals reflects a broader awareness of hidden deception. Discussing an ABC7 News article about former American Idol singer and Ohio music pastor Caleb Flynn (40)—who was convicted of murder on Tuesday for fatally shooting his wife, Ashley Flynn (a 37-year-old schoolteacher and volleyball coach), in February while having an affair and staging a home invasion—Owens explains that women watch true crime to learn social red flags and protect their children, whereas Theo jokes that women secretly respect murderers because "at least it's a guy making a commitment... he said he would come over and he did come over." They also contrast everyday human experiences—like Owens having to attend her own sister's wedding over Zoom during COVID lockdowns, and Theo recounting an "urban Zoom funeral" where attendees beefed over playing different music (Boyz II Men vs. club music) on unmuted microphones—with mega-church hypocrisy. Specifically, they review an NBC News / AI Overview report detailing how on November 10, 2021, plumber Justin Cauley found roughly 500 envelopes containing cash, checks, and money orders hidden in a wall behind a loose toilet at Joel Osteen's Lakewood Church in Houston (which Owens initially recalls as $300,000 in cash); Houston police confirmed serial numbers linked the stash to an unsolved March 2014 burglary of $600,000 (about $200,000 in cash and $400,000 in checks) from the church safe, and Crime Stoppers of Houston awarded Cauley a $20,000 gift.
• The Charlie Kirk Assassination and UVU Independent Review: Official narratives surrounding high-profile political assassinations often conflict with forensic realities and independent security audits. Owens argues the official claim that Charlie Kirk's neck stopped a .30-06 bullet from 150 feet away (which she later states as 150 yards) is physically impossible. Following the September 10 TPUSA event, Utah Valley University (UVU) commissioned an external 107-page after-action review by The Lake Forest Group (founded by G. Michael Verden, a 21-year US Secret Service Special Agent; when asked who owns the group, Owens hedges, "I think it's like Bain Capital actually or something. Not totally positive, though"), law firm Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck, LLP, Robert L. Davis LLC, and Doherty Advisory LLC. Published on September 25, 2026, after a multi-month investigation costing upwards of $440,000 and involving over 70 interviews, site visits, and thousands of pages of records, the report notes the MEAC process began on August 21. According to the report and Owens, TPUSA headquarters insisted on holding the event outdoors in the Fountain Courtyard, insisted on using its own ticketing system, told UVU there would only be 600 people (when 3,000 attended), refused to share ticket numbers with the police chief on September 3, and checked "no" on the form requesting an ambulance on standby—leaving only 2 UVU Emergency Medical Services (EMS) personnel (both EMTs) with trauma packs on site and no staged ambulance to transport Kirk. Owens also points out that the report dedicates 2 pages to debunking claims made by TPUSA security member Brian Harpole (one of 13 security members present, who is currently suing Owens) on the Shawn Ryan Show.
• Alternative Assassination Theories, Munitions Contracts, and Technocratic Warnings: Skepticism of the lone-gunman narrative has fueled alternative investigations into close-range devices and deep-state motives. Owens does not believe suspect Tyler Robinson shot Kirk from the Losee Center rooftop, suggesting his boyfriend/roommate, Lance Twiggs (who received immunity and gave pre-recorded testimony), was much more involved and likely blackmailed into setting Robinson up via staged text messages. They examine the "exploding RØDE mic" theory—which alleges Kirk's wireless microphone transmitter (RØDE Wireless PRO) contained a small explosive or shaped charge—and online theories linking it to Accurate Energetic Systems (AES) in Bucksnort/McEwen, Humphreys County, Tennessee. Per an AI Overview / Perplexity search read by Theo, on September 23, 2025, AES received a $119,894,567 (read by Theo as $120 million) firm-fixed-price contract (Contract W519TC-25-D-0041) from Army Contracting Command, Rock Island, for TNT procurement with estimated completion on September 23, 2030; on October 10, 2025 (about 1 month after Kirk was killed), a deadly explosion destroyed the AES facility, where Owens claims everyone died except for 2 survivors (though she hedges that she has never formally covered the AES explosion on her show because she waits for family members or insiders to come forward). Ultimately, Owens believes Kirk was "taken out by the deep state" due to his "shifting views on Israel" and finds it hard to imagine nobody inside or peripheral to TPUSA knew. The episode concludes by examining technocratic power via a September 29, 2026 Nashville Scene article titled "Peter Thiel Draws Hundreds Downtown for 'Antichrist' Lectures," noting that Thiel—who co-founded PayPal (sold for $1.5 billion), chairs Palantir, and has a net worth north of $10 billion—spoke at a Masonic lodge in Nashville (his 3rd iteration of the series) warning about the existential risk of a "totalitarian one-world government," alongside Owens sharing that when her daughter Louise was 1 week overdue in July, she took 1/4 cup of castor oil (more than the suggested 1 tablespoon) to induce labor and delivered her in 1 push.

Quotes

• At 0:05:54 - "I personally just feel like that's a big decision to make for your kid... strangers knowing a lot about your children and being able to recognize them and know them, I feel like that's a lot for us." - Candace explaining why she refuses to put her children's faces on social media.
• At 0:10:14 - "She [Britney Spears] probably never needed to go into the conservatorship and then she never really came out of it because they were force-drugging her. You can't come back from lithium. Like they burned her brain, like it melted her brain with lithium." - Candace discussing the permanent neurological toll of Britney Spears' nearly 14-year conservatorship.
• At 0:13:47 - "She [Courtney Love] was basically explaining to me that there was sort of a mafia that when they want your publishing rights, they'll go after you. They never want people to like have their own publishing rights. That's what Michael Jackson was fighting Sony." - Candace recounting her conversation with Courtney Love about how the music industry targets artists who own valuable catalogs.
• At 0:17:11 - "Genuinely, if you make 10 million dollars and you want to irresponsibly spend it all, that's actually kind of your right. You don't need to put somebody in a conservatorship. You have a right to go broke." - Candace arguing for personal financial autonomy against the abuse of legal conservatorships.
• At 0:18:24 - "Going local for everything is better. I 10 out of 10 would recommend everyone goes local for their food, for their banking, knowing who these people are as human beings, I think really matters." - Candace sharing her primary strategy for insulating one's family from corporate debanking and compromised supply chains.
• At 0:20:34 - "Now it's even scarier because you can get canceled for doing the right thing. Like they can dip your social credit score for doing the right thing, like speaking up about Gaza, and then suddenly you can't play the stadium." - Candace describing how modern institutional cancellation penalizes moral dissent.
• At 0:33:03 - "We're just kind of getting to a point now where we know they're lying, you know what I'm saying? And they're still doing it. So we just go, where is this going to go? We know you're full of it, we know you're lying." - Candace reflecting on the collapse of public trust in mainstream media and government narratives.
• At 0:42:38 - "I think what happened was the Epstein files. Yeah, I mean look, he [Trump] took 300 million from Miriam Adelson. At least now we know how much it costs to buy a presidency." - Candace discussing major campaign donations and political leverage.
• At 0:43:51 - "That was kind of the wildest part of the Brigitte lawsuit was I said one flyaway comment of Brigitte Macron was born at the beginning of a date that MKUltra became a program, and they mentioned it like 12 times in the lawsuit." - Candace highlighting the bizarre fixations inside the defamation complaint filed against her by the Macrons.
• At 0:45:41 - "I think this is the first time in world history that a sitting president of a country has sued any media person in another country. It's just weird. It would be very strange if like Vladimir Putin sued you." - Candace emphasizing the unprecedented nature of French President Emmanuel Macron suing an American commentator.
• At 0:49:50 - "Well, he [Donald Trump] told me to stop talking about Brigitte. He called me in February of 2025. Yeah, because I was doing a whole series on potential Mossad ties and all this stuff, and I got a phone call from him asking me to just stop talking about Brigitte and Sergio Gor." - Candace revealing direct political intervention attempting to halt her reporting on Brigitte Macron.
• At 0:50:17 - "The Epstein story is a France story. Like Ghislaine Maxwell, it was a French family. And we were getting into like the house of Maxwell and her father, Robert Maxwell, being the central piece. It's deep, and then you realize that his partner was Jean-Luc Brunel, it was the modeling agency, so it was all French." - Candace connecting the Epstein trafficking network to French modeling agencies and Robert Maxwell.
• At 1:02:20 - "I think the majority of people are normal, but the people who have power are eccentric pedophiles... They want to make us think that they're the majority, but they're actually not the majority." - Candace contrasting the values of everyday citizens with the corruption of ruling elites.
• At 1:15:14 - "Google is no longer giving you every answer, it's like telling you what the answer needs to be. As soon as you answer—you can't even trust the first answer on Google, you actually should just dismiss the first answer on Google." - Candace critiquing algorithmic manipulation and AI-curated search results.
• At 1:20:17 - "Joel Osteen, a plumber went to go fix a toilet at his mega-church, and he like accidentally hit a wall and found 300,000 dollars cash behind a toilet. And then Joel Osteen comes out and he's like, 'Oh, there it is!'" - Candace recounting the Lakewood Church cash discovery before Theo reads the official police report linking 500 envelopes to a $600,000 burglary.
• At 1:27:55 - "My lawsuit is not about whether or not Brigitte Macron is a man. They always, and that's what they do, is they try to win these cases on a technicality. Like she's suing me, like I said, for mentioning MKUltra, for saying that she stole her brother's identity." - Candace clarifying the legal strategy behind the Macrons' defamation suit.
• At 1:32:01 - "If we're talking about just the facts of the [Charlie Kirk] case, the thing that everything fell apart instantly was when they said that his neck stopped a .30-06 bullet. That's so crazy that we shouldn't be required to have to argue it." - Candace explaining the primary ballistic discrepancy that caused her to reject the official Charlie Kirk assassination narrative.
• At 1:38:00 - "Headquarters [Turning Point USA] basically filled out the form, they told them there was only going to be 600 people, and they ticked 'no' on needing an ambulance. So every single security measure... you guys were the authors of it." - Candace citing the 107-page UVU independent review to show TPUSA headquarters' responsibility for event security and medical staging.
• At 1:53:24 - "I do not believe Tyler Robinson killed Charlie Kirk... He's not the person on the rooftop. Nobody shot Charlie from the rooftop of Losee is where I'm at. And so I look into alternative theories of whether or not Charlie was hit closer by, whether or not it was on him and something explosive went off." - Candace summarizing her rejection of the lone-gunman rooftop theory in favor of close-range or explosive alternatives.
• At 2:02:33 - "I think Charlie was taken out by the deep state and it was because of his shifting views on Israel. That's my opinion... It's hard for me to imagine a scenario where no one in that organization [TPUSA] knew, or peripheral to the organization knew." - Candace stating her ultimate theory on the motive and internal complicity behind Charlie Kirk's assassination.

Takeaways

• Transition your personal and business finances from major national banks to local community banks to protect yourself against ideological "debanking."
• Source your meat and produce directly from local American farmers you know personally rather than relying on opaque, globalized food supply chains (which Owens assumes, based on her "vibe" without having looked into it, could introduce "more parasites or something" when importing beef from Argentina).
• Keep your children's faces, names, and personal milestones off social media to protect their privacy and prevent strangers from recognizing them in public.
• Dismiss or critically verify the first AI-generated answer on Google, looking instead to secondary sources and independent documents to bypass algorithmic narrative curation.
• Account for bot manipulation when evaluating online political polls and social media consensus, recognizing that automated networks can manufacture 100% artificial agreement.
• Read primary source documents and independent after-action audits—such as the 107-page UVU review—rather than relying on media appearances by compromised security personnel.
• Audit event security and medical protocols personally if you are a public figure, ensuring accurate crowd estimates are shared with local police and an ambulance is staged on site.
• Watch for legal technicalities in high-profile defamation lawsuits, recognizing that plaintiffs often sue over peripheral phrasing (like "theft" of an identity) to avoid discovery on the central allegation.
• Retain control over your intellectual property and publishing rights, and view sudden media smear campaigns against independent artists or creators regarding their mental stability with skepticism.
• Wait for corroborated insider or family testimony before formally reporting on suspicious industrial disasters or unverified conspiracy links.
• Verify viral claims in real time using multiple search queries—just as the hosts fact-checked the Epstein lottery rumors—and openly hedge or correct the record when evidence is weak.
• Evaluate the motives of tech billionaires and defense contractors by tracking their financial footprint and public lectures, such as Palantir chair Peter Thiel's warnings on one-world governance or massive Army munitions contracts.