Candace Owens on DailyWire's Collapse: Over 50 Employees Fired as Ben Shapiro's Company Crumbles
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Candace Owens on DailyWire's Collapse: Over 50 Employees Fired as Ben Shapiro's Company Crumbles
Candace Owens addresses the mass layoffs at the DailyWire+, where over 50 employees were terminated in a single wave. She examines what caused the company's dramatic fall from being one of the most promising conservative media outlets in 2023 to what she describes as an overnight collapse comparable to Enron. Owens discusses the role of private equity, strategic missteps, and Ben Shapiro's focus on pursuing former colleagues rather than growing the business. She reveals how YouTube views for Shapiro plummeted 85% in 18 months, from 170 million monthly views to just 22 million, while she built an independent platform that now generates hundreds of millions of views. The article explores whether her departure and subsequent success contributed to DailyWire+'s downfall, and examines the difference between clean corporate exits and what she characterizes as years of legal battles and public attacks.
The DailyWire+ Layoffs: A Bloodbath Nobody Can Spin
It all made sense when phone calls started coming in, emails started coming in regarding the DailyWire+ layoffs, which began on Thursday and continued through Friday. There's some indication they may actually be continuing through today. And it was an absolute bloodbath. Do not allow them to spin it. I'm talking entire departments, big people at the firm, lawyers at the firm, the chief operating officer, the executive vice president, virtually the entire marketing department. The production team has now been reduced to a mere skeleton crew. No one was safe. Even Ben Shapiro's team was not safe from it. Even a director on his team was fired. It was brutal.
I have counted approximately 54 people who lost their jobs from top to bottom. And that's just in this wave because this has been going on as we all know for a while. The writing has been on the wall for a while. It has been very strange, the worst kept secret in media, as they keep having people publish these articles that just defy reality. We were having private conversations like how long can they keep up this charade and keep pretending that this is not happening when everyone can see the numbers, we can see how the public is responding. It's very strange to just sort of live in a delusion.
The Private Equity Factor and the Two-Year Countdown
We knew that they had brought in private equity some time ago in the last two years. I used to work in private equity in these particular types of situations. So I knew what the implications were of bringing in private equity, especially if it's a distressed debt situation. The usual term as it was at the company that I worked at many moons ago is two years. They'll inject cash into your company. They'll float you for about two years as you attempt to turn things around. You fire some people, you restructure a little bit, but you're kind of walking the plank, right? Maybe you fix it, but if you don't, they're going to sell that company and they're going to own a huge chunk of that company that they sell.
Now, I can't assert that that is definitively what the deal terms were for the DailyWire+, but I can say that we're just about now over two years, just over two years removed from my firing and the DailyWire+ has obviously not turned the company around. In fact, I would say they've just kind of cranked up the crazy almost like they were trying to catalyze their own demise.
The Official Statement That Says Nothing
Yes, it was announced on Friday that the mass layoffs took place for which they offered this excuse to Barrett Media. I think Barrett Media was among the first to report the story. It reads: "Today, the DailyWire+ made a difficult decision to restructure the organization, which included layoffs to a number of teams. We are deeply grateful to those impacted. Their contributions were instrumental in building the DailyWire+ into what it is today. The cuts were largely concentrated at our Nashville production office. As the company has invested in new formats, locations, and production models, our footprint there has evolved. Over the last year, we have added production staff in DC, the Northeast, and Florida. This step allows us to focus our resources on an ambitious slate of new entertainment projects that are set to release this year. Additionally, we will continue to invest our editorial team and investigative journalism where we have already added numerous new reporters across the country and established a DC bureau with a seat in the White House briefing room."
That's a lot of words to really say nothing. It's not good what's happening there. Everyone feels it. People that are left certainly feel it. First they shuttered Bent Key, which was obviously massive layoffs that were done. Then they quietly got rid of their sports department. That was the Crain and Company show that they were running. Now they're firing over 50 people in the span of 24 hours and they're claiming it's just restructuring. People in DC also got fired. So, it's not because they're suddenly pivoting and building in DC.
From Industry Leader to Collapse: The Enron Comparison
As they attempt to spin this into something else, the broader question is what actually happened to the company? How could it happen so quickly? More importantly, because make no mistake, this is like the equivalent of Enron, right? It's a virtual overnight collapse. In 2023, they were arguably one of the most promising companies, conservative media companies certainly in the game. They were at the top of their game. Everyone was clamoring to work with them, to do projects with them. And now we fast forward to 2026 and generally speaking, again, I'm speaking generally, everyone hates the DailyWire+, right? We just hate the DailyWire+. How is that possible?
Did Candace Owens Destroy the DailyWire+?
There are multiple assessments that are floating around right now. Of course, many people directly associated their demise with the never ceasing war against me, which began with my unnecessarily glorious public firing supplemented by a staggering claim that Christ is King is anti-semitic. People were going, "Hey, that's God will not be mocked." It's a strong start to say Christ is King is problematic and we've got the money to make that fetch. So yeah, that's the chatter. Is it, does it have to do with me?
One commentator said: "Candace Owens cooked you, Ben. She made you look like, well, the little that you are. She straight up publicly humiliated you and you allowed her to let you destroy the entire media organization that you built. A lot of people are stating that Candace Owens is, you know, she has, she's a massive independent commentator, public figure, and this only happened, her success only happened after the DailyWire+. She's probably feeling really good right now. I'm going to be honest. If I was Candace Owens, I'd be feeling pretty damn good right now. Django Unchained, dude. She's like Django killing everybody in the big house and then blowing it up. Kind of what it was because she was there. She worked there. She was one of their probably one of the top shows and then she just exploded the whole house on her way out. Kind of epic. Can't lie. I'm going to glaze Candace Owens a little bit. I don't agree with everything that she's up to, but you know, if she brings down the DailyWire+, then she's a patriot."
So, people are crediting me, but do I actually deserve that credit? Have I been focusing my attention on the DailyWire+ throughout this show?
The Business Analysis: A Billion-Dollar Bet That Failed
Taking a look at a more, I guess you could say, the business side of affairs, this account, this user Akash Gupta, wrote this on X, and I thought it was worth reading. He wrote: "The DailyWire+ is the case study of why personality-driven media companies cannot compound. At peak in late 2023, Shapiro's YouTube alone pulled 170 million monthly views. DailyWire+ Plus subscriptions, a Nashville studio operation, Bent Key streaming, an e-commerce arm with razors and chocolates and cigars. The company was running a billion-dollar conservative Disney bet.
"Then they made the studio bet bigger. Pendragon Cycle, an Arthurian fantasy series of the kind that has bankrupted larger production houses. Bentkey trying to compete with Disney for kids' attention. DailyWire+ Plus chasing Netflix, running a newsroom, a film studio, a children's streaming platform, and a private label consumer goods business simultaneously requires either limitless capital or extraordinary discipline.
"Some of it worked. Matt Walsh's Am I Racist was the top-grossing documentary of 2024, but most of it didn't. In March of 2024, they parted ways with Candace Owens. She walked into the open market and built a show that competes with theirs. Today, she has 5.5 million YouTube subscribers and added 10.9 million followers across platforms since January of 2025, generating roughly 805 million views in that window. DailyWire+ converted its biggest distribution asset into its largest competitor.
"Early 2025, co-founder Jeremy Boreing stepped down as co-CEO and launched a solo podcast outside of the company that he co-founded. Bent Key was shuttered the same year. Entire team cut. Then the audience math hit Shapiro himself. 170 million monthly YouTube views in late 2023 to roughly 22 million in early 2026. An 85% collapse in 18 months. Another 60,000 subscribers gone in the last 90 days alone. Layoffedge.com estimates cumulative workforce reduction above 60% over the past year.
"Tucker Carlson left Fox in 2023. He kept his audience. He runs his shop with a fraction of the headcount. Megyn Kelly's network drew 138 million YouTube views in February alone. The personalities figured out that they don't need the platform, but the platform discovered the opposite. DailyWire+ built a billion-dollar valuation on names that can walk, take their audience with them, and run a competing show from a laptop the next morning. 170 million views down to 22 million. The company kept the overhead, but the audience left with the people."
I thought that was a very fair assessment and looking at the commentary regarding me plus reading his business look at it, I actually think it's a combination of both of those assessments.
The Difference Between Clean Exits and Stalker Behavior
What Akash is missing, he brings up Tucker Carlson and Megyn Kelly, yes they are indeed more successful than they were when they were on cable news, they are successful in their own right, but their exits did not destroy Fox News. Their exits, despite the fact that they are doing better, did not destroy Fox News. This means that DailyWire+ is unique. They are unique. They are set apart from those examples.
I left PragerU. I left Turning Point USA. Neither one of those companies were destroyed by my exit. In fact, we were all friends when I left. I went on to work with Turning Point all the way through until this year, actually, contractually. And same with PragerU. We would still do things together. I was still close with Marissa, very close with Marissa. So, what makes those companies, what is it that makes those companies different? I think what makes them different is that they didn't stalk their departed talent. They just let them go and they never mentioned them again.
Tucker Carlson did not then face two years of arbitration and fights and gag orders with Fox News being chased for every penny. They didn't try to stop his next move. They weren't navigating and having hit pieces written about them. They truly wanted to just turn the page, meaning they're a real business. They are a real business. They want to keep it corporate. Goodbye. The public didn't like how they dealt with it. I didn't like how they dealt with it, but actually in retrospect, it was clean.
The Psychopathic Decisions That Destroyed the Company
Now compare that to the DailyWire+. Think about the positively erratic and dare I say deranged decisions that the company made just over the last few months, last six months. They brought back my social channels to mock me. This is unbelievable. It's beyond psychopathic to do something like this. Two years after you fire someone, they also attempted, in case you forgot, they attempted to create an entire show dedicated to making fun of this show. Remember In the No, where you had that girl that was like standing on the couch like a Nickelodeon girl like making fun of me and it was weird and it was cringe and also beyond the realm of being stalked by a former employer. Strange. You don't keep someone's socials and go, "Haha, I own your name and likeness and I can do this." You have to pause and really consider how unusual that was.
Now, that was a mere months removed from the end of their last legal action against me, too. So, there's never been a stop in my life of the DailyWire+ chasing me. If this was an ex-boyfriend, everyone would say that I was in need of a restraining order. Like I said, they wear the mask of "this is all court. We just really want to go after her because of that like she liked that. It was disparaging."
Ben Shapiro's Tunnel Vision and the Path of Destruction
So you cannot discount the fact that Ben Shapiro, who is considered, and this is sad for the other people on the platform, he is considered the face of the company, and he developed tunnel vision. He bet the company on destroying me. I didn't want to fight with them. I wanted to peace out. I wish Andrew Kolvet never made the Christ is King video. You would have never heard from me. We could never speak about each other ever again. But they were plotting. They wanted to be destructive.
I mean, just take a listen to him and the many battles that he is fighting. Nobody knows why. The people that he should be uniting with and being friends with that he's taking stabs at. Here are examples from just these last few months:
"So, here's the thing. Theo Vaughn is a low IQ conspiracist. He has himself routinely propped up Candace Owens. He's lent credence to her insanity. Theo Vaughn is basically just a Bernie Sanders leftist who does not like the censorious impulses of the left and engages in all the same conspiracy theories and of course is good friends with Candace Owens and all the rest of it. And yes, Erika Kirk absolutely should sue the living hell out of Candace Owens for this sort of stuff."
"Well, Michael, I'll just ask you straight up. Is Candace Owens doing something evil by attacking Erika Kirk?"
"I think that it's wrong to attack Erika Kirk."
"Well, no. Say the sentence with her name in it."
"I'm not going to dance like a puppet for the podcast. I think that what Candace is doing right now is evil. It is evil what she is doing right now."
"My position is it's really none of my business."
"Why is it none of your business? I mean you comment on these things for a living."
"I'm not mother of the internet."
"But if this were on the left and somebody were accusing Charlie Kirk, of his wife having murdered him, I assume that you would be talking about it."
"The issue here is not just that Megyn Kelly has some questionable principles and has been programming directly into the Groyper, right? It is that she remains a coward. Remember, this is still the woman who says she is friends with Candace Owens. So, no, Tucker Carlson, it is not an excuse to go silent on Candace's targeting of TPUSA or to mirror her lines of questioning because you love Candace personally. The same holds true of Megyn Kelly."
I mean, it's just not normal, right? It's just not normal to go after Theo. Everybody loves Theo. He's just a person that everybody loves, but he just goes, "Theo Vaughn is friends with Candace Owens and I therefore hate him and I want to destroy him and every person has to want to destroy her and join this team." You can't have those sorts of people in the boardroom. Your company will eventually destroy itself.
Fighting With Dying Corporate Breath
Now, if the employees found out on Friday that the company could no longer afford to sustain them, then we can reasonably assume that Ben, who's a part owner of the company, knew months ahead. And so, what you're looking at there is that with his dying corporate breath, what he wanted was to come after me. That is not to say that people turned away from him because people don't like political beef. It's not like there's tons of political beef. I have political beef with people. People actually have proven they have a high appetite for back and forth drama. Left versus right, women versus men, whatever it is, whatever the prevailing narrative is of the day.
Nobody minded when Trump would attack Marco Rubio or Ron DeSantis. I've had personal and legal spats with people like Kim Klacik just as one example. People do expect figureheads to clash. What they don't expect and what people have proven that they have no appetite for is perfidy, right? Treachery, deceit, betrayal against your own.
Peter Versus Judas: The Moral Offense
Ben trying to destroy me, trying to destroy Megyn Kelly, that means trying to destroy a former colleague and someone like Megyn Kelly who he said was his friend. That is perfidious. There's no other way to say that. Ben seeking to publicly humiliate Michael Knowles, "say her name," there is something about that that makes the public naturally recoil because it demonstrates that you have no honor. You have no dignity. You have no loyalty.
They can forgive you demanding COVID shots, right? "Get the vaccine, dopes." They can forgive you once leading the never Trump movement, but they cannot forgive you treating people that are supposed to be close to you in that manner. To use a biblical analogy, Peter thrice denied Jesus. But Peter was not Judas. We are naturally as human beings averse to the spirit of Judas. And that is what Ben Shapiro demonstrates, right? That he will break bread with people as he plots against them. That is a moral offense to which we cannot rally behind. People do not like his nature.
You can spend years trying to destroy someone behind the scenes like Ben did to Charlie Kirk and then just flip on a dime as soon as he dies, slither into a studio and throw a million dollars trying to purchase his legacy. It is spiritually repulsive. That is what the public cannot bear about the DailyWire+. Money seems to be everything to Ben.
The Family Connection to the Lawsuit
That explains why after working behind the scenes to encourage and in front of the scenes, as you saw, to encourage Erika Kirk to sue me, he likely landed upon Brian Harpole. Because I do not find this to be a coincidence. On the last page of the lawsuit against me, his brother-in-law is listed, Jacob William Roth. Who knew? I did not know he was a part of this firm. I think he has been married to Ben's sister since 2018. Are we to believe that this is just a happy coincidence?
The Cancer That Spreads
Ben is so destructive, mark my words right here, he is so destructive and he has such tunnel vision that this path of hatred that he has now been embarked on for three years is going to now destroy the lives of those who are agreeing to partake in this game with him. He is going to infect them with this similarly unnecessary obsession with me and they will inevitably find that their own lives are destroyed. It will lead to their own similar exposure and their demise because that's how cancer works.
The world is now awake. The DailyWire+ with Ben at the helm represents the side of people that are trying to sort of put us back to sleep and it is a losing battle. It is not going to work.
The Only Path Forward: Shutter and Sell
So my best advice to them, which they of course will not follow, you can always count on DailyWire+ to do the wrong thing. My best advice would be for them to shutter and sell the tech stack. You cannot rehabilitate hatred. You cannot rehabilitate the way you are viewed on the world stage. You cannot rehabilitate Ben's anger and his tunnel vision. People see the DailyWire+ and they see Ben and they don't want to support that. They don't want to support someone who tells them that they're evil and stupid and wrong for listening and supporting Theo Vaughn while he unflinchingly hosts Benjamin Netanyahu on his platform while he cheers on a genocide.
That's his main issue. His main issue is Israel. That's what he turns on everybody over, our support for Israel. Well, support for Israel is down all across the country. Does this mean that every Zionist has their empire collapsing? No, absolutely not. Fox News is still a thing. Fox News is still pulling in viewers. But it's the manner in which he goes about it. It's too disturbing. People don't want to look on. They don't want to root it on. If I'm the private equity, I'm selling the computers. I'm selling everything that they have there that can be sold. And I'm just saying the company's got to go.
