Jeremy Boreing says he should have fired Candace Owens two months earlier

Jeremy Boreing did not do the polite ex-boss thing with Candace Owens. On PBD Podcast, the former Daily Wire executive said he would fire Owens again “10 out of 10 times,” and that his real mistake was waiting too long.

10 out of 10 times I would have fired her again. Nine out of 10 times I would have fired her two months earlier.

That is the clean, searchable bit. The messier part is more revealing. Boreing is not claiming he never saw the appeal. Quite the opposite. His Candace Owens story is basically the conservative-media version of buying a sports car with the check-engine light already on. He loved the horsepower. He now says he should have trusted the smoke.

Jeremy Boreing even rejected the easiest revisionist history available to him. Asked whether signing Owens was the mistake, he said no, not really. He had “misgivings,” but he still believed she could be “a force for good,” and he still thinks her charisma was freakishly rare.

I believed and still believe that she’s the she has the most star power of any person I’ve ever met. That’s after 20 years in Hollywood. I mean, I’ve met giant movie stars.

The Daily Wire talent machine has a Candace-sized warning label

The useful thing about Boreing’s answer is that it gives away the actual math of Daily Wire. Big names secure the brand. New talent makes the model work. Jordan Peterson can make an announcement feel like a Super Bowl ad for lobsters and stern fatherhood, but the real business is finding the next Michael Knowles or Brett Cooper before everyone else sees the outline.

Well, it’s both. You secure the brand with some household names, but the the economic model is in breaking new talent.

That’s why Boreing’s Owens answer matters more than another round of right-wing palace gossip. He is describing the central tension of modern conservative media: personalities are the product, but personalities are also the liability. You want someone who can cut through the feed. You don’t want someone who cuts through the company.

His standard, at least as he describes it now, was supposed to be ideological alignment, raw talent, and ethics. That sounds noble. It also sounds like a hiring rubric written after the lawsuit threat, the subscriber churn, and the group chat screenshots have already happened. Boreing’s candor is real, but it’s also convenient. The executive who built a business on combustible people is now explaining that one of them was, shockingly, combustible.

I didn’t want someone who would go grift. You know, I didn’t want someone who would let the let the audience um wield them as opposed to trying to both represent and lead the audience.

Boreing’s verdict is harsh, but not simple

The line that keeps this from being a simple revenge lap is that Boreing still gives Owens the thing her critics hate giving her: talent. He says she was famous, a huge opportunity, able to reach people The Daily Wire struggled to reach, especially women. He also says that calculation warped his judgment.

I probably didn’t prioritize rightly whether or not I really believe that Candace would always tell say what she believes is true. Did I really believe that Candace would behave ethically?

That is a brutal thing to say about a former star, and it is also a very executive way to say it. Boreing doesn’t call Owens untalented. He calls himself seduced by upside. In his telling, the sin was not hiring a flamethrower. It was forgetting to ask whether the flamethrower had a safety switch.

He also offers a neat theory of the next few years: when Republicans are up and platforms are friendlier, independent talent looks powerful. When Democrats regain power and platforms squeeze conservative creators again, networks become more valuable. If he’s right, the next Candace Owens won’t just be deciding whether to sign with a company. The company will be deciding whether the star power is worth the cleanup crew.