Candace Owens tears up while mourning Charlie Kirk's death, hails him as her "brother" & "best friend"

During a live tribute that briefly crashed due to heavy traffic, commentator Candace Owens paid tribute to her colleague, Charlie Kirk, as a visionary and her close friend. Owens teared up while describing the profound personal loss she has suffered.

On September 11th, the scheduled YouTube stream faced a setback when over 150,000 concurrent viewers caused technical issues. Before the stream resumed, Candace Owens shared on her social media that it was a technical failure, which allowed her to deliver a deeply personal eulogy for Charlie Kirk, the co-founder of Turning Point USA, who had been murdered a day earlier.

Owens emphasized that her main concern was to ensure that Charlie Kirk’s final public memory was not of his violent death but of his legacy and spirit. She recalled their first meeting in 2017, a young man determined to change the world, despite often wearing ill-fitting suits, driven as much by conservative ideas as by his ambition.

"I don't want today to be about anything other than you guys knowing that Charlie really was an amazing person...we were really close and he was he was my best friend and my brother," Candace Owens told her viewers.

She extended her condolences to his wife and young children, and asserted that she would never wish such a violent death on anyone, "least of all, someone with a heart like Charlie's."

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Candace Owens recalls personal bond with Charlie Kirk in memorial tribute

Throughout her tribute, Candace Owens described Charlie Kirk's personal demeanor as different from his public persona. She remembered anecdotes of Kirk sending her pictures of sunglasses and clothes and asking, “Does this look cool?”

"Charlie was my overly bright and sometimes really annoying kid brother. I was smiling, going through my chat of how many times he would text me a picture and say, 'Does this look cool? Do I look cool?' she said."

Owens also recalled how Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump gave him a certificate to get fitted for a suit, which also changed what she described as his practical sense of style. At the core of her message was a personal story about their relationship.

Candace Owens said that while she was busy with “the culture,” Charlie Kirk was an expert on “the politics." He was teaching her all of the nuances about Washington, while she challenged him with the musical interpretations of Kanye West.

It was a relationship "forged in fire," she explained, remembering how Kirk held the line against intense internal pressure to fire her during the early controversy of her criticism of the lack of due process in the #MeToo movement.

The broadcast ended with Owens promising to continue on Kirk's legacy, saying that "there's no Candace without Charlie" in light of their rapid rise in conservative politics.

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As of September 12, authorities were still searching for the person responsible for taking Charlie Kirk's life, and an investigation was ongoing into the events leading up to the shooting at Utah Valley University.