American conservative political commentator Candace Owens and Rabbi Shmuley Boteach have traded barbs since Thursday over antisemitism, an alleged blackmail ring, support for rapper Kanye “Ye” West, a Michael Jackson death conspiracy, and a kosher sex shop in the ongoing feud between the two public figures.
Shmuley and his daughter Chana Boteach had in the past taken issue with Owen’s embrace of West when he had expressed conservative political ideas while failing to denounce his later antisemitic tirades. Boteach accused Owens herself of engaging in various forms of antisemitism.
Owens said on social media on Thursday that Shmuley “and his hag daughter have spent two years harassing me publicly with smears, complete with demands that I suffer financially for not parroting their perspectives.”
During the Thursday episode of the Candace Owens Show, the political commentator claimed that Boteach said that unless she criticized West he would take out a front-page newspaper advertisement in which he would cast her as an antisemite. Owens said that Boteach and others had taken clips from her show out of context in order to present her as someone who hated Jews.
Owens said that while the Jewish community and the media understandably “freaked out” when West tweeted that he was “going death con 3 [sic] on Jewish people,” and that “You guys have toyed with me and tried to blackball anyone [who] opposes your agenda,” the situation was more complicated than that. Boteach said on Saturday that Owens was defending West even though the rapper explicitly said that he loved Nazi leader Adolf Hitler. Owens said, however, that West was speaking about specific people seeking to blackmail him, such as personal trainer Harley Pasternak. West had leaked alleged text messages between the two, in which Pasternak supposedly threatened to institutionalize him.
“Awaken world, to the monsters who have caused immense suffering to others via slander, threats, and coercion,” Owens said on Friday in relation to Boteach and an ongoing civil suit against rapper Sean “Diddy” Combs by fellow artist Rodney Jones Jr.
The episode of her show was discussed Jones’s claims that he was sexually assaulted by Combs, and that Combs drugged underage girls and sex workers at his parties and had recordings of his celebrity guests in sexual acts with them. Citing journalist Ian Carrol, Owens said that record executives may have known or condoned what Combs was doing.
Owens described Combs as running a blackmail ring, and suggested that Combs was connected to sex trafficker Jeffery Epstein, as both operated in the Virgin Islands. Owens noted that cryptocurrency millionaire Nikolai Mushegian had drowned in Puerto Rico in 2022 after writing on X that “CIA and Mossad and pedo[phile] elite are running some kind of sex trafficking entrapment blackmail ring out of Puerto Rico and Caribbean islands,” and they were going to “torture me to death.”
Boteach attacked Owens as dealing material like the forged document The Protocols of the Elders of Zion and claiming that Epstein was a Mossad agent.
AGAIN CITING Carrol, Owens said that Combs had a fixer who had covered up a murder for the rapper, a man named Faheen Mohammed, who had previously served as Michael Jackson’s inexperienced head of security and was one of the first people on the scene when the pop star died. Owens said that Jackson had been smeared by the media as a pedophile and antisemite, and kept a list of Jewish enemies that included Boteach.
Owens said that Boteach was one of the people who smeared Jackson as an antisemite and was a “monster who has waged horrific campaigns against black and brown people in an effort to control our voices and destroy our relationships with one another.”
“When that Kanye situation went down, I was being threatened by a person named Rabbi Shmuley, a person that Michael Jackson put on his enemy list, a person I had never heard of, was threatening me,” said Owens.
Owens said that Jackson was in a legal battle with Sony when he died under suspicious circumstances, with an estranged former colleague John Bronca becoming a coexecutor of his estate. Carrol claimed that Bronca and then-Sony Music CEO were Jewish, though their connection to Judaism is tenuous.
“What if there is a small wing of specific people that are using the fact they are Jewish to shield themselves from any criticism?” said Owens.
Boteach said on Friday “Did Candace Owens imply that I killed Michael Jackson and that a cabal of Jews is murdering African-American Hollywood celebrities?”
Bombarded by Owen's fans
The rabbi said that he had been bombarded with antisemitic messages from Owens’s fans since her video.“Her biggest fan now is arch antisemite Nick Fuentes who is lauding her poisonous attacks Jews all over social media,” Boteach said in a Sunday X post.
He indicated on Sunday that he was considering a libel lawsuit over claims that Owens “essentially said that I killed Michael Jackson last week and that Jews run pedophile sex rings in Hollywood in order to blackmail African-American entertainers.”
“There can be no question that Candace’s serious defamation against me and the Jewish community must be met with a comprehensive lawsuit that will bankrupt her as well as Ben Shapiro,’ said Boteach.
Boteach said Friday that he held pundit Ben Shapiro, whose Daily Wire outlet employs Owens, as complicit in “her spreading the worst defamation against Jews.” He called on Shapiro to take action against Owens, and on Sunday called for fans to cancel their subscriptions to Daily Wire. Political commentator Dennis Prager was also slammed by Boteach on Sunday for his relationship with Owens.
On Sunday Boteach said that Owens was a “self-hating black woman” who agreed with West that George Floyd died of a fentanyl overdose rather than police brutality.
Owens had said on Thursday that Boteach had a “deep hatred for blacks, Muslims and Christians.” She said on Friday that she was targeted because of her “refusal to hate Muslims or to attack fellow black people and/or Christians on his command.”
Boteach attacked Owens on Saturday for her position on the Hamas October 7 Massacre against Israel, in which she was critical of US support for Israel. Owens’ comments had at the time also led to a tiff between Shapiro and his colleague.
Owens also derided Boteach for his advertisement of his daughter’s kosher sex shop products, describing it on Thursday as “filth.”
“I don’t know who needs to hear this but holy men do not open sex shops with their daughters,” Owens said on social media.
Boteach defended the product, saying that they were oils for married couples, and said that the store was offering a discount if one used the promotional code “CandaceO.”
Owens said that Jewish fans reached out to her in support after they were “appalled to learn about ‘Rabbi’ sex-shop-Shmuley’s harassment. I know he does not represent you guys.”