On her Monday show on the Daily Wire, the conservative media platform run by right-wing commentator Ben Shapiro, Owens declared that Kanye’s weekend post on Twitter, in which he announced his intention to go “death con 3” on “JEWISH PEOPLE,” which resulted in Twitter locking his account, did not have the hallmarks of the oldest hatred. An “honest person” reading the message, she said, wouldn’t think West “wrote this tweet because he hates or wants to genocide Jewish people. This does not represent the beginning of the Holocaust.”

Candace Owens telling Jews what is and isn’t antisemitic. https://t.co/nxQjeLSPLP“>pic.twitter.com/nxQjeLSPLP

— StopAntisemitism (@StopAntisemites) https://twitter.com/StopAntisemites/status/1579581536172920834?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw“>October 10, 2022

So, Owens, who previously said that Hitler would have been “fine” if he’d kept his ambitions confined to Germany, is now the arbiter of what is and isn’t antisemitic? Cool, great: Apparently anything short of calls for genocide is kosher.

In a rare show of disunity, Shapiro, while not responding to Owens’ segment, publicly disagreed with her, returning from a Sukkot-timed Twitter break Wednesday to write that West’s posts were “clearly antisemitic and disturbing.”

While Owens’ new metric for what qualifies as antisemitism was the most noteworthy aspect of her deeply confused defense of West, it wasn’t the only one to raise eyebrows. Owens also said that those reading the tweet in bad faith fundamentally misunderstood West’s position, noting that “death con 3” was likely a misspelling of “defcon 3,” which is actually a “military defense position.”

Effectively: In her mind, West was perhaps poised to come to the rescue of Jews — not making antisemitic threats. (Odd that she thinks West would know the meaning of the term “defcon 3,” but not its correct spelling.)

Owens tried to persuade listeners that she was not going “defcon” (read: defensive) on West’s tweet, but instead asking an “open question” about his motives. Yet she only offered this caveat after saying that if “you’re a liar” you’ll say “I actually thought that Kanye West was going to launch a military strike in Israel.” I guess any attack on Jews is inevitably an attack on Israel.

Of course Owens had more to add about the Kanye kerfuffle, breaking the news Wednesday that JP Morgan Chase ended its banking relationship with West’s company for unspecified reasons.

Calling out a bank after an antisemitism debacle seems bad for the Jewish people. But I’ll defer to Owens on that one — she’s clearly the honest expert.

This article was originally published on the Forward.