Owens says she was snubbed from Charlie Kirk memorial roster amid donor and White House speculation

Conservative commentator Candace Owens said on her Thursday show that she was not invited to speak on the stage with former President Donald Trump and JD Vance at Charlie Kirk’s memorial in Glendale, Arizona. Owens displayed a Daily Mail email during the program and said she had been asked to comment on the matter, then indicated she had not been included in the speaking roster. “You’re right, you got me,” she told viewers as she began detailing what she described as a broader exclusion. Owens suggested Erika Kirk, the widow of the late Turning Point USA founder, held control over the event planning and hinted that donors might be pressuring outcomes. She claimed she was not involved in the memorial’s arrangements beyond reporting what she had learned.

Turning Point USA publicly shared a roster for the memorial that Owens said she hadn’t been invited to join. The event is slated for Sunday at State Farm Stadium in Glendale, the home venue of the Arizona Cardinals, with a capacity exceeding 63,000. A graphic posted on Turning Point USA’s X account listed a dozen speakers, including President Trump, Vice President JD Vance, Kirk’s widow Erika Kirk, White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, Donald Trump Jr., Tucker Carlson, Stephen Miller, and Sergio Gor. Alex Clark, a Turning Point USA media figure, said on X that more than 85,000 people had registered to attend.

Owens pressed the point that she had not been invited to share the stage with Trump or Vance, and she framed the planning as being controlled by Erika Kirk and certain donors. On air, she asserted that the memorial was being steered by what she described as a White House influence and asserted, without corroboration in this report, that “Trump is controlled by Zionists.” She questioned why she would be invited by anyone in what she described as a “Zionist administration” given the topics she has pursued publicly. The Daily Mail said it had asked Turning Point USA and the White House for comment on Owens’s remarks, but the story notes there was no immediate confirmation.

The remarks come as Owens sought to defend her relationship with Kirk in the wake of public and online speculation about his death earlier this month. Kirk, a prominent conservative commentator and founder of Turning Point USA, was killed last week during a speaking event at Utah Valley University, a development that has prompted extensive coverage and rumor-mongering online. Some theories described in wider coverage suggested Israeli involvement or other external pressure; those claims were publicly rejected by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in multiple statements.

Eric Bolling, a former Fox News host, spoke on a recent episode of the Patrick Bet-David Podcast, saying Kirk had a “quiet break up” with Owens after she grew “too down the rabbit hole” for him. Owens’s spokesman told the Daily Mail that Bolling was lying, and Owens herself characterized the reports of a rift as part of a broader effort to derail investigations into Kirk’s death, describing them on air as part of a “fed operation.”

Kirk’s memorial roster appears to be considerably larger than the five-person figure Owens referenced, and the event organizers have not publicly disclosed changes to the lineup since the initial announcement. The memorial’s Arizona venue and the size of the crowd underscore the scale of the event in the conservative movement’s ecosystem, with organizers highlighting the turnout as a measure of Kirk’s influence and the ongoing reach of Turning Point USA’s network.

The public conversation surrounding Kirk’s death and the memorial has intersected with broader questions about online rumor propagation and political commentary. Netanyahu’s public refutations of death-conspiracy theories related to Israel reflect the intensity of the discourse that has accompanied Kirk’s passing and the attention paid to the actors who have been connected to his work. As the memorial approaches, observers will be watching to see how the roster evolves and whether Owens or others connected to Kirk respond to continuing speculation about the event’s planning and the circumstances surrounding his death.