2-25-26 Afternoon Rush - Candace Owens V The World - Paid Smear? & More Fact Checking From State Of The Union
The Rush Hour With Dave Neal
Dave Neal
4.5 • 1.7K Ratings
🗓️ 25 February 2026
⏱️ 30 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Afternoon Episode – The Rush Hour Podcast
Go to rushhourwithdave.com for tickets to my upcoming Asheville NC, Stamford CT and Boston shows!
It's getting messy out there, folks.
Today we break down the firestorm surrounding Candace Owens as accusations swirl that a paid smear campaign is underway just hours before her highly anticipated Erica Kirk investigative series drops. Is this coordinated pushback? Strategic timing? Or just the internet doing what it does best? We unpack the claims, the receipts, and what this means for the rollout.
Plus, continued fallout from last night's State of the Union address. Who won the optics battle, who's spinning what, and why the reactions may matter more than the speech itself.
We also have more developments in the ever-expanding Epstein files saga — what's missing, what's being questioned, and why public trust continues to erode.
And in a surprising twist, Laura Owens scores a legal win in a small harassment case against a YouTuber. What the ruling means, and whether this changes the online commentary landscape moving forward.
Fast-paced, unfiltered, and breaking it all down before your commute home.
The Rush Hour Podcast — let's get into it.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to the rush hour. Your daily dose of pop culture for your rush hour ride. |
| 0:07.0 | Buckle up and enjoy the drive with your host, stand-up comedian Dave Neal. |
| 0:13.0 | Good afternoon, everybody, on this hump day, Wednesday, February 25th, 2026. |
| 0:18.0 | I have all of your news for your rush hour ride home. We are jam-packed. |
| 0:21.7 | Today is the launch of Candace Owen's new investigative series. Apparently she's going to be |
| 0:27.5 | connecting the dots and exposing Erica Kirk, which is leading all of these sort of Erica |
| 0:32.4 | Kirk fans, the commentators, to go absolutely crazy. There's a lot of similar language being used, and some |
| 0:40.6 | people are now claiming that they were offered money in order to smear Candace Owens. So is it a paid |
| 0:47.3 | smear or did just a whole bunch of people not like her and they all want to call her a demon? |
| 0:50.8 | We'll have this as our top story. We'll cover more on the fallout from the |
| 0:54.1 | state of the union. You know, a lot of the culture war topics coming up. Why, you know, |
| 0:59.8 | Megan Kelly thinks people are, I guess, reversed racist because people are upset at the U.S. |
| 1:05.5 | men's hockey team being used as a political pawn. We'll get into this. And more Laura |
| 1:09.9 | Owens updates as she's back in court today |
| 1:12.4 | after getting a very small victory over a YouTuber in her sort of, you know, case of all of the |
| 1:19.0 | different fraud she's committing as she's still kind of jockeys for victimhood. All these stories |
| 1:23.5 | and moor starts right now on the rush. All right. So how about this? This guy Matt Wallace posted, |
| 1:28.7 | full disclosure, I was offered money today to say bad things about Candace Owens and turned it down. |
| 1:33.5 | Now, technically, this is not full disclosure because they don't provide any of the receipts. |
| 1:38.9 | If you were offered money to say bad things about Candace and you were turning it down, |
| 1:43.8 | methinks you would provide the receipt as you would go super viral. |
| 1:47.5 | Candice Owens reposted this. |
... |
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