Candace Owens Accuses TPUSA Halftime Show of Inflated View Counts
Candace Owens has accused Turning Point USA of overstating the audience for its “All-American Halftime Show,” claiming the right-wing organisation used paid tactics to make its livestream totals look larger than they really were. Owens made the allegation in posts on X on Sunday, following Turning Point USA’s alternative halftime production that ran alongside the Super Bowl 2026 broadcast.
Owens disputed a claim that the show drew about five million simultaneous viewers across social platforms, writing that the group “scammed its views” by paying platform advertising and using influencers to amplify the impression that it had set records, Yahoo News reported.
Her comments came in response to a post highlighting comparatively small real-time numbers on one YouTube screen capture, and she argued that big-budget organisations can misunderstand how view counts work when money is used to juice visibility. Turning Point USA has not publicly responded to the specific allegation in the posts referenced in the report.
Producer Blake Neff, who previously worked on The Charlie Kirk Show, also posted a breakdown of what he said were simultaneous totals across several accounts and platforms during the broadcast. Owens added that she disliked both Turning Point USA’s production and the official Super Bowl halftime show, criticising the latter for featuring a performance without English lyrics.
The dispute lands amid longer-running tensions between Owens and Turning Point USA leadership following the death of founder Charlie Kirk, with Owens previously criticising the organisation’s focus on “numbers and metrics” in the aftermath. It remains unclear whether Turning Point USA will address Owens’ latest claims with additional data or platform analytics.
