Ep. 2034 - My Response To The Candace/Andrew Wilson Debate Invite Over Charlie Kirk’s Murder

**Michael Knowles** (0:00)
As I mentioned on the last show, I woke up Friday morning to the news that I had been invited to moderate a debate on the murder of my friend Charlie Kirk between Andrew Wilson and Candace Owens. Andrew had suggested me as moderator, and Candace accepted, and then they started arranging the details of the debate. There was just one person they forgot to ask. From what I've gathered, the debate apparently involves big money, hundreds of thousands of dollars raised as prize money or something. I'm actually not totally sure what the purpose of the money is. I think I'm even being offered a cut. In any case, after giving it serious consideration over the weekend, I will be declining the invitation. The whole internet seems to think this debate will be must-see content, and I'm sure it will be. I bet it will get zillions of views. That is, in fact, why I'm declining.
I'm gratified that the debaters think I have the right temperament to moderate. I try to be judicious, not get too emotional, not call people names, and so on. But in many ways, I'm probably the single worst person to moderate this debate, because for 10 or 11 months now, I have been very possibly the only person on the internet who has consistently maintained that our friend's murder should not be used for podcast content. On the debate matter itself, I've said many times I think the evidence is pretty clear that Tyler Robinson murdered Charlie, but that fact alone would not preclude me from moderating. Everyone has opinions doesn't mean you can't be fair. The bigger issue is that even if I didn't think Tyler Robinson murdered Charlie, I am certainly convinced that the guilt for Charlie's murder should be adjudicated with gravity and sobriety in a court of law, rather than in an ouroboros of endless, not to mention lucrative podcasts. The only silver lining in the storm cloud of Charlie's murder was the brief unity it brought to the right. You might recall it was very brief. The right came together as leftists at every level of politics revealed their rot and cruelty by justifying and celebrating Charlie's murder, in some cases before his body was even cold.
Soon after, however, a cottage industry sprung up of Charlie murder content. Candace, of course, launched her series on the subject, which I've said many times from the beginning I thought was wrong and I wish you wouldn't do it. But it got lots of views. People found it very interesting. Then all sorts of other podcasters started doing their own shows, full-length shows, weeks of shows, months of shows, about how much they hated Candace's shows about Charlie's murder. And those podcasts got lots of views too.
The other group of podcasters justification was that they wanted to debunk Candace's theories, to get people to stop watching her shows. Many of them, I suspect, had very good intentions. But I said at the time that I thought it was a bad idea, that it would be counterproductive, that we should state our opinions, of course, tell the truth as we see it, but that to obsess over every theory and speculation and provocation not only would not work, but in fact would do more harm than good to everyone and everything other than the view counts and bottom lines of the various podcasters. I predicted that this issue would only be resolved in a court of law, that opinions would only be changed by the prosecution and the defense, the sort of thing we began to see in the pretrial hearing last month, that all the rest of it was noise at best and at worst a very dark form of entertainment. Basically everyone ignored my opinion and many people harshly criticized me for suggesting it. But here we are 11 months later and despite innumerable podcasts on the subject, the matter has not been resolved. The rancor has gotten worse. The appetite for the Charlie murder industry is higher than ever. So this debate will be the Super Bowl of Charlie murder content. Millions of people will watch it, lots of money will be made, lots of opinions will be put forward. And I strongly suspect that this too will fail to put the matter to rest. Lots of very fine people, people I quite like and admire, friends of mine, think this debate is a good idea. I am in the distinct minority of people who have consistently held that all of this chatter is not doing any good whatsoever. Everyone else on all sides of the subject seems to think that we're just one podcast away from settling it. So, because of that, I'm sure Andrew and Candice will have no trouble finding a suitable moderator, probably several, who holds a different view of the genre than I do. However, since I was briefly roped into all of this, I would like to make a couple proposals before I end my involuntary involvement. First, I understand there's a lot of money on the line in this debate. I don't know the exact number or even how it's supposed to be distributed, if it's a split among the debaters and the moderator, or if it's a prize for the winner, or if there will even be a declared winner. I don't know. What I propose, though, is that every penny of the prize money, as well as the video monetization revenue from however many platforms this is streamed on and re-streamed on, probably hundreds of them, goes to Charlie's kids.