Candace Owens Claims Turning Point USA Lied About Its Views on the All-American Halftime Show Video

Candace Owens is publicly alleging that Turning Point USA “scammed its views” for its controversial All-American Halftime Show.

Turning Point USA claimed its alternative Halftime Show to Bad Bunny’s actual Halftime set at Super Bowl LX drew roughly 5 million viewers. The political commentator, 36, took to X on Sunday, February 8, not long after the Kid Rock-led live stream ended, to allege that the stated 5 million viewers were inflated or were even false numbers.

Responding to an earlier post that questioned how the video of the live stream ended up with such little engagement after one hour — just 667 Likes and only 175 comments, per a screenshot posted on X — for an event that allegedly drew millions, Owens replied: “The problem with people who have a lot of money they didn’t earn, is that they tend to have no idea how stuff actually works. No, this is not a possible result if you truly had 5.2 million live viewers.”

She later theorized that Turning Point USA, which sponsored its All-American Halftime Show after conservatives were outraged by the choice of a Puerto Rican artist who has spoken out against ICE to headline the main Super Bowl LX Halftime Show, would spend “an offensive amount” on YouTube ads overnight to increase the numbers on its video. Indeed, overnight, the numbers did increase significantly on the Turning Point USA YouTube video.

Despite being critical of Turning Point USA for allegedly inflating its numbers, Owens made sure to tell her followers that she was not in favor of Bad Bunny’s halftime show performance at Super Bowl LX, which Nielsen estimated drew 127.7 million viewers.

“I am sorry but I hate both options,” she wrote. “On The [sic] one hand, we have a half-time show presented without a word of English spoken. On the other hand we have an organization that scammed its views by paying platform advertisers, followed by influencers to pretend they broke records.”

Owens, who worked as a communications director for Turning Point USA from 2017 to 2019, has been publicly calling out the organization and its new leader, Erika Kirk, in the wake of Charlie Kirk’s death.