Daily Wire Host Condemns Candace Owens and ‘Christ the King Anti-Semitic Crowd’ for Using Scripture ‘Like Satan Does in the Bible’

The Daily Wire’s Andrew Klavan spoke out about Candace Owens’s departure from the outlet on Friday, calling her out for her “wicked” use of Biblical Scripture to promote anti-Semitism.

Klavan, a secular Jew who converted to Christianity, identified Owens’s defense of the Nazis’ book burnings as the first warning sign in Owens’s descent into overt bigotry.

“When you start saying things like ‘some of those books Hitler burned weren’t so bad. You know, I was shocked-‘ this was something Candace actually said, ‘I was surprised to learn that the books Hitler was burning or the Nazis were burning, they weren’t good books. They were bad books, they were socialist books,” began Klavan. “Burning a book is the act of a a savage, first of all,” he added before insisting that Owens’s comments on the matter were a “dog whistle.”

“When you retweet a post saying a Jew is drunk on Christian blood, which goes back, as I’m sure you know, to blood libel that, you know, Jews eat Christian children. You know, that’s a dog whistle,” said Klavan, referencing Mediaite’s report about Owen’s liking such a tweet. “When you start to refer in this kind of clever way to a certain group of people in Hollywood corrupting blacks and killing Michael Jackson, you’re not allowed to then put on an innocent look and say, ‘Well, I’m just saying there’s certain people just like a few, you know, I’m just saying, you know,’ you’re messing with us, you’re messing with us and everyone knows it. And no one is fooled except those people who want to pretend to be fooled because they hate the Jews.”

Klavan reserved his harshest condemnation, however, for Owens’s citation of the Bible in defense of her anti-Semitic statements.

“You cannot serve both God and money,” declared Owens amidst a row with Ben Shapiro over Israel last fall. “Christ is King.” She’s repeated the phrase a number of times since, especially after being accuses of peddling anti-Semitism.

“The biggest truth that Candace told in that way that I find, again, and this is not personal animus toward her, but I find difficult to excuse this when anybody does it. The truth that hid wickedness that I thought was the most wicked truth to use, was the truth that Christ is King,” argued Klavan.

He continued:

It is almost exactly 20 years Since I acknowledged the kingship of Christ in my life and over the universe as well. It’s like two weeks and it will be 20 years since my baptism. It was hard for me to do, it was hard for me to do. I’m a proud man and I want to be king, I want to be in charge of my life, I want to take credit for the good things that happened to me. I want to say, you know, what my opinion is about right and wrong, I don’t want to bend the knee to anybody. And people who know me will tell you I don’t bend the knee to anybody except Christ the King. And the day I took off my paper crown and bowed my knee before his crown of golden light, I became a true man and a free man, and the joy in my heart has only grown. You know when I did this, by the way, the priest who baptized me said, “You know, Christians won’t accept you, you’ll still be a Jew.” And I said, “Well, I am, that’s my race. I’m a Jew, I’m proud of my race. It’s a great race, has done many, many great things, including write the Bible and you know, I am a Jew.” But that hasn’t happened at all, Christians have welcomed me with open arms. Except this Christ the King anti-Semitic crowd. Christ is the King and one day every knee will bow and recognize him, because he’s not just my king, he’s king of the universe. But when you use that phrase to mean that God has abandoned his chosen people, the Jews, through whom he came into this world incarnate, and that he’s broken his promises, his covenant with the Jews. You are quoting Scripture like Satan does in the Bible. You are quoting Scripture to your purposes, and that to me is specifically wicked.

Klavan went on to argue that Christianity forbids “all race hatred” because “it’s a sin against the image of God.” The title of the episode in which he addressed the controversy is “Because Christ Really Is King.”