When the Conspiracy Theories Come Up Against Actual Evidence

Hello, my friends, and welcome to Friday, July 10, 2026. My calendar says it's National French Fry Day, National Kitten Day, Don't Step On A Bee Day, Clerihew Day, Global Energy Independence Day, World Kebab Day, and Bahamas Independence Day — so go fry some potatoes, adopt a kitten, watch your step around the pollinators, write a four-line insult poem about a public figure, and top it off with a skewer of meat, all while pretending your grid-tied house is "energy independent" because you own a solar phone charger. But wait until after you read this, if you will. That long a list will take all day.

Today in History:

1553: Lady Jane Grey begins her nine-day reign as Queen of England, the shortest in British history, before her execution the following year.

1832: President Andrew Jackson vetoes the re-charter of the Second Bank of the United States, one of his signature moves against the national banking establishment.

1850: Millard Fillmore sworn in as the 13th president after Zachary Taylor's death the previous day.

1890: Wyoming is admitted as the 44th state, becoming the first with full voting rights for women.

1893: Daniel Hale Williams performs one of the world's first successful open-heart surgeries at Provident Hospital in Chicago.

1925: The Scopes "Monkey Trial" begins in Dayton, Tenn., pitting William Jennings Bryan against Clarence Darrow over the teaching of evolution.

1940: The Battle of Britain begins as the German Luftwaffe launches its air campaign against England.

1943: Allied forces land in Sicily, opening the invasion of Axis-controlled Europe.

1962: Telstar 1, the first communications satellite to relay live television and telephone signals across the Atlantic, is launched.

1962: Martin Luther King Jr. is arrested during a demonstration in Albany, Ga.

1973: The Bahamas gains independence from the United Kingdom.

1985: French intelligence agents bomb and sink the Greenpeace ship Rainbow Warrior in Auckland Harbour, New Zealand.

1991: Boris Yeltsin sworn in as the first elected president of Russia.

2003: Volkswagen ends production of the original Beetle after 65 years.

Birthdays today include: Nikola Tesla, inventor and engineer, pioneer of alternating-current electricity; Sofía Vergara, actor (Modern Family); Jessica Simpson, singer (“With You,” “I Wanna Love You Forever”); (Newlyweds: Nick and Jessica); Chiwetel Ejiofor, actor (12 Years a Slave, Dirty Pretty Things, Serenity); Adrian Grenier, actor and director (Entourage); Alice Munro, author (Dear Life, Runaway); Ronnie James Dio heavy metal vocalist (Black Sabbath, Dio, Rainbow); Wyatt Russell, actor (Lodge 49, The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, Overlord); and Jake LaMotta, boxer, former world middleweight champion, and actor (Raging Bull).

If today happens to be your birthday, too, happy birthday — you're sharing the day with a guy who basically invented the modern power grid, so no pressure on your own achievements today.

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I've been following the Charlie Kirk murder case with considerable interest. But almost as fascinating as the evidence itself has been watching one of the loudest proponents of conspiracy theories surrounding the case run headlong into an inconvenient obstacle: actual evidence.

For months, Candace Owens built an elaborate narrative around the idea that Tyler Robinson wasn't simply a lone gunman. She questioned virtually every aspect of the investigation, suggested hidden players were pulling the strings, and invited her audience to connect dots that, more often than not, weren't actually there. The message was clear: Don't trust the official story because there must be a bigger one lurking just out of sight. Owens even raised the possibility that Kirk was killed by his wife. 

I wrote last May, "Whatever you print those pages on — paper, pixels, photons, audio waves — the business model doesn't change. Attract ears and eyeballs. Sell those consumers to advertisers. Keep the lights on."

Of course, one way to attract eyeballs is to stand out. One doesn't need to be truthful to accomplish this, of course. Owens seems to be playing that line to excess. But eventually, the trust aspect goes away when your loudness gets exposed as untruthful click-baiting. 

People like Tucker Carlson seemed to have been on board with this wild theory-spreading, though Carlson, particularly, seemed to be more careful about choosing his words. As a result, how on-board with Owens that Carlson has been depends on how narrowly you define the phrase. Yes, it can be fairly stated that Carlson gave airtime to those theories, though it’s also true that he never specifically spouted those theories himself, far as I can determine. He has, of course, been walking a fine line, though, even going so far, about a year ago, as to stand up in Miami and suggest that Jeffry Epstein was working for Israeli intelligence..

Owens, meanwhile, makes no such distinction. She has been considerably more direct and sustained in arguing that the official account of Charlie Kirk's murder is false. Over months of coverage, she has repeatedly suggested that Tyler Robinson was not simply the lone perpetrator and has promoted the idea of a broader conspiracy. Often, the involvement of Israel is implied.

Then the preliminary hearing started. She’s now finding out the hard way that reality has a way of ruining a perfectly good conspiracy theory.

A courtroom doesn't care how many views a podcast gets. It doesn't reward dramatic pauses or ominous music. It doesn't accept "people are saying" as evidence. Witnesses testify under oath. Documents have to be authenticated. Text messages have to be produced. Defense attorneys get to challenge every piece of it, and prosecutors have to back up every assertion.

That's a much tougher environment than social media.

To be clear, this isn't the trial. The prosecution hasn't proved its case beyond a reasonable doubt, and Robinson remains entitled to every constitutional protection our justice system provides. The defense may yet expose weaknesses in the state's case.

Instead of shadowy masterminds, prosecutors have presented surveillance footage, forensic evidence, text messages, a handwritten note, Discord communications, testimony from Lance Twiggs, and Robinson's own reported admissions after the shooting. Whether every piece ultimately survives trial is a question for a jury. What matters right now is that the evidence points in a direction that is dramatically less mysterious than Owens insisted it would. I can’t help but wonder if that isn’t at least part of what the judge in this case has in mind by stretching this prelim out as long as he has.

I once held both Owens and Carlson in some esteem. That train left the station about a year ago.

That's the problem with conspiracy theories. They thrive in the gaps before evidence emerges. Every unanswered question becomes "proof" of a cover-up. Every missing detail becomes evidence that someone is hiding something. But once real evidence starts filling those gaps, the theory either adapts or collapses.

Too often, the conspiracy simply grows new branches. Every contradiction becomes further evidence of the conspiracy itself. Every witness is compromised. Every document is fabricated. Every setback merely proves how deep the cover-up goes. At that point, you're no longer following the evidence. You're defending a belief system.

The Charlie Kirk case should be a cautionary tale — not just about political violence, but about the modern cottage industry built around feeding audiences exactly what they want to hear. It's profitable to tell people they're seeing what no one else can see. It's much less profitable to admit that the facts turned out to be more ordinary than the conspiracy.

Courtrooms are merciless that way. They don't care about your audience. They don't care about your brand or how many viewers your podcast has. And they have a tendency to expose people who confused speculation with reporting and wishful thinking with evidence.

Recommended: Remember Andrew Gillum? The Democrats' Next Obama Just Got Arrested Again.

Final point: I suspect that the judge is stretching this stuff out in the prelims because he sees a need to shut down the conspiracy pushing. The reason for that is, as the Fox guest, FBI Agent James Galiano, points out, this thing, barring unforseens, won’t be going to trial until late 2027 or 2028. With the weight of the evidence, it's quite possible that a plea change will occur, in an effort to get the death penalty off the table. 

The Judge's apparent desire to put the grifters out of our misery, given that timeline and possible plea deal, is understandable and probably wise.

Thought for the day: “Reality continues to ruin my life.” ― Bill Watterson, The Complete Calvin and Hobbes

VIP members: What do YOU think? Let's hear from you. 

Take care, my friends. Your job today is to survive until the weekend. I'll see you Saturday, morning.

Editor’s Note: The radical Left will stop at nothing to enact their radical gun control agenda and strip us of our Second Amendment rights.

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