If you’ve never heard of Aaron Rupar, you’re lucky in that you likely haven’t seen his deceptive work firsthand. Rupar is a far-left “journalist” whose stock in trade is sharing misleading clips on social media, particularly on X. More often than not, the clips are edited to leave out what happened before or after the segment you see, which would have provided proper context.
At the moment, he has 1 million followers on X, where he has built a reputation for sharing misleading information designed to enrage the left and attack the right.
Aaron Rupar is so notorious for doing this that Urban Dictionary has actually turned Rupar’s last name into a verb. So when someone says to you, “You’ve been Rupared,” what they’re saying is that you’re a shameless spreader of falsehoods who withholds critical information that would provide proper context.
Another person whose name has become a verb is Hillary Clinton. If someone says, “Watch what you write on PJ Media or you’ll be Hillaried,” well, umm, ahhh, maybe it means nothing, on second thought. I just want to say I am not suicidal.
But there is one person who is just asking for her name to become a verb, and based on what I’ve seen of her, she’d probably love it if it happened, even in the most negative context. I’m talking about Candace Owens.
Candace viciously mocks Erika:
— Jackie Chea ⚖️ (@Fair_and_Biased) April 17, 2026
“People online- they’re just saying that they want me to die! I’m just so overwhelmed, Mr. Vice President…*Dab, dab, dab – no tears*…I just don’t want my kids to be an orphan, Mr. Vice President!”
This is coming from the woman who has CAUSED… pic.twitter.com/uvHhu5U3eP
Since Charlie Kirk died, Owens has demonstrated a willingness to go lower than anyone in public life today, and that’s saying something. Keep in mind, Owens owes her whole career to Kirk, and she’s chosen to use his death and exploit his memory and family for internet clout. My colleagues Scott Pinsker and Eric Florack have written at length about Owens and how she’s taken her place in the shamelessness hall of fame.
More specifically, Owens has regularly taken to her own podcast to spin tales and to target Erika Kirk and others with some of the most malicious and baseless conspiracy theories. She’s thrown in no small amount of anti-Israel and anti-Jew rhetoric as well.
Erika Kirk just CALLED OUT Candace Owens…
— Graham Allen (@GrahamAllen) April 29, 2026
“Every morning I wake up to another headline lying about me. I have comedians dressing up in whiteface, I have people saying I'm not fit to be CEO, & I have Candace Owens claiming that I murdered my husband.” pic.twitter.com/kn0UYtLOh0
I can’t presume to know what Owens is thinking, so I can’t tell how much of this is what she actually believes or how much of it is mercenary. Eric described this situation quite succinctly:
Wounded pride. A quick profit off a scandal she manufactured herself, gift-wrapped as a some kind of righteous crusade. The moment her sniper shots at Erika Kirk drew blood, she was hooked. That dopamine hit works like any other addictive drug: it doesn't just own her now, it drives her. So does the podcast money. I refuse to be polite at this point, and pretend that what we are seeing is anything else.
Make no mistake: Owens built the corner she's standing in, brick by brick, and now she can't find the door — assuming she ever wanted to find it. Scott (Pinsker) nails it in his piece: ‘As long as accusing Erika of being a murdering, unloving, uncaring, evil widow drives clicks and views, the more it'll happen.’
That playbook Owens is running now should sound familiar — Democrats have run it since the day Trump declared his candidacy for the presidency in 2015. Same tactics, same cynicism. The question is whether Owens even sees the parallel, Eric wrote.
Over the years, Candace Owens has demonstrated that nobody and nothing is off-limits to her. Anything and everything can be targeted, isolated, and destroyed, all to draw attention to Owens. It’s her world. You’re just living in it.
When The Daily Wire hired her in 2021, I wondered how long it would last, but I never suspected that the way it actually ended would be how it ended. While The Daily Wire is a business first and foremost, and clicks and shares are its lifeblood, the founders and leaders of that conservative media organization have long known that you have to mean it. You can’t just pretend to be conservative; you have to be one to your core. That’s as critical to their business model as anything else.
And so, when they hired Owens, I saw the attraction. She brought a massive young, and largely female audience to an organization that had not tapped into any of that demographic in large numbers. But in the process, I could see they were bringing on someone who clearly was not a serious thinker.
Early on, The Daily Wire would have these group episodes where Ben Shapiro, Matt Walsh, Michael Knowles, Andrew Klavan, and Jeremy Boreing would engage in fast-moving, somewhat lighthearted conversations about serious topics of the day. To be part of something like that, you need to be fast on your feet, steeped in an understanding of what you stand for and the basic ideologies at play, and you need to have a sense of humor. She had none of that.
When Owens joined those discussions, her inability to keep up or even connect with her fellow hosts was so painfully obvious that in a short period of time she either pulled herself out of the mix or she was dropped.
She never seemed knowledgeable or interested in discussing conservative content or advancing conservative thought, policy, or strategy. Instead, she was always looking for a feud that she could reframe as someone attacking her, and now she’s the innocent victim just trying to mind her own business.
She found that feud in a highly public and controversial face-off with one of the people who hired her, Ben Shapiro. Talk about biting the hand that feeds you. Still, in her world, Owens won by losing. The DailyWire fired her, and now she had a whole new grievance platform and some convenient new enemies — which she needs.
These days, her mix of grievance porn, conspiracy theories, and her propensity to take aim at people that, until now, you trusted and liked is all part of her recipe for notoriety. It's how she holds her nearly 8 million followers on X together. Her YouTube channel has garnered 6 million followers. That’s what it’s all about, isn’t it?
So, when someone tells you that you’ve been Candaced, that means someone thought that by taking you down and discrediting you, they could help themselves build up their own clout, be it through the internet or some other means. How they decide to take you down is limited only by their imagination and willingness to go there.
There’s a pivotal scene in the classic movie The Usual Suspects, where Kevin Spacey’s character explains power: “They realized to be in power, you didn’t need guns, or money, or even numbers. You just needed the will to do what the other guy wouldn’t.”
That aptly sums it up when someone Candaces you. It’s when they are willing to do what you won’t in order to take you down.
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