Candace O's "Kitchen Sink" Conspiracy Theory Redefines the Genre

Erica Kirk Will Survive But Will Us Conspiracy Theorists?

Weird thing just happened. I turned to my Wikipedia page to confirm my status as a certified conspiracy theorist. But instead of the decades-old “Jack Cashill is an American author, blogger and conspiracy theorist,” I found, “John Rogers Cashill is an American author and blogger.”

Two possible explanations for my demotion. One is that Grokipedia has pressured Wikipedia into tamping down its obvious left wing bias. The other is that Candace Owens has so elevated the art of the conspiracy theory with her neo-Gothic series, “Bride of Charlie,” that Wikipedia editors have come to see people like me as poseurs.

I earned my Wikipedia certification for my books on TWA Flight 800, Ron Brown, and Barack Obama. More recently, I played a secondary role in exposing the fraud in the trials of George Zimmerman and Derek Chauvin. In every case, I name names. And yet after writing 18 books and thousands of articles, I have never even been threatened with a lawsuit.

Having seen Candace Owens in action, having seen her collect law suits the way others do junk mail, Wikipedia editors had to be thinking, “What kind of conspiracy theorist is Cashill?” And so, alas, they have stripped me of my treasured certification and kicked me out of conspiracy land.

In “Wrinkle in Time,” the first hour of her exposé on Charlie Kirk’s widow, Erica Kirk, Ms. Owens has shown her mastery of what might well be called “kitchen sink” conspiracy theorizing. The designation, of course, comes from the phrase ‘everything but the kitchen sink,” which Google AI defines as an “idiom describing a situation where nearly every possible item or option is included, packed, or tried, except for the kitchen sink itself.”

In Candace’s case, that “everything” includes Jews, Masons, Syrians, Swedes, Las Vegas, Charles Manson, homosexuals, the inevitable MK Ultra, and, unexpectedly, the Marine Corps, which Candace promises will be a recurring feature. All this in the first episode! At episode’s end, Erica is 10 years old, and her parents have just divorced. The fact that Erica lived with both parents until she was ten, Candace tells us, makes a liar out of Erica for claiming she was raised by a single mother—kitchen sink detective work in action.

Although real, MK Ultra has emerged as the fallback explanation for just about everything

Candace’s gambling references put me in mind of a Texan client from my ad days who insisted that the O.J. Simpson murders were all about NFL gambling. Not impossible, I thought, but then he insisted all major conspiracies can be traced back to NFL betting. “Ok,” I said, “we’re in Dallas. JFK?” He looked me straight in the eye and said solemnly, “NFL betting.” He should know, he told me. He used to deliver the newspaper to Lee Harvey Oswald.

Compared to Candace, my client was on solid ground. Those followers waiting for her to prove that Erica had Charlie murdered will be disappointed. True, Candace dangles that possibility, telling listeners, “Nothing the Feds are saying [about the murder] makes any objective sense.” Unfortunately for Candace, the government case does make objective sense. Importantly, the case is being brought by allies of Charlie Kirk who have no political interest in seeing the evidence covered-up or the case misdirected. There will be anomalies—there always are—but those anomalies mean nothing without a foundational logic holding them together.

Bill Clinton had an obvious motive in obscuring the demise of TWA 800 months before the 1996 election just as Obama did with Benghazi debacle months before the 2012 election. Obama had excellent reason to conceal terrorist Bill Ayers’s ample assistance on his memoir once he set his sights on the presidency. Commerce Secretary Ron Brown gave Bill Clinton solid cause to wish him dead when he threatened to expose his illicit China fund raising.

Before accepting a healthy contract to do the Ron Brown book, I told the publishers they had to live with the possibility that the crash of his USAF plane in Croatia was an accident. Stuff happens. They accepted those terms, and I focused on why Brown had been dispatched to broker a deal between the Croatian neo-fascists and the Enron Corporation. Lots of meat there without murder.

It was not until the USAF unexpectedly waived all fees and sent me the 22-volume accident report—I was the first media person to request it—that I began to consider murder a legitimate option. My TWA captain friends who reviewed the technical data showed me how the plane was likely sabotaged. My sources at tbe Armed Forces Institute of Pathology shared the evidence of a likely bullet wound to Brown’s head.

Despite the evidence, I concluded, “Without an autopsy, the prudent reader will accuse Bill or Hillary Clinton of nothing more sinister than dreading the unknown. For fear of what they might have found—in this, the most desperate political season of their lives—the Clintons chose not to look.” This is one case I could not close.

Candace, I suspect, could show us where Jimmy Hoffa is buried. In this case, however, she is less interested in solving the murder than she is in defaming Erica Kirk as a conniving bitch unworthy of her role as CEO of TPUSA. For her thesis, Owens turned to actress/ journalist and fellow kitchen sinker Elizabeth Lane.

“Psychopath” Erica Kirk with Charlie and her two children

Observing Erica from a distance, Lane calls her “dangerous.” Erica worries Lane, “not because she is just ambitious, but because of how calculated and performative her ambition appears to be. I believe she maybe a psychopath.” To her humble credit, Lane begins with a disclaimer, “Everything I say in this post is my opinion” and ends with another, “I’m not claiming this is what happened.” Lane’s nonsense post on X has already netted nearly 10 million views. God help us all.

Observing Lane and Owens from a distance, I sense a female-driven mass hysteria of the sort that has plagued America from the Salem witch trials to the wild outpourings of grief over the death of chronic felon George Floyd. Notes Dr. Robert Bartholomew in Psychology Today, “While it may not be politically correct, there is no denying that mass hysteria is an overwhelmingly female phenomenon.”

What make this paroxysm so “dangerous” to the future of the republic is its potential to divide the right and destroy the extremely effective Turning Point USA, an operation that confirmed its value with its stellar Super Bowl half time show. Lane’s politics I can only guess at, but I do know the Left is enjoying this sideshow immensely.

To me, the attractive and lively Ms. Owens remains a complete mystery, her motives all but unknowable. As a proven saboteur, she would, I think, make a much more interesting subject for an investigative series than the beleaguered Erica Kirk.