The Daily Wire should have crashed and burned when Crowder leaked their contract (if not well before then). They got defenders saying Crowder shouldn't have leaked the contract and it was just an opening offer and yadda yadda yadda, but that entire debate is all a sideshow distracting from the real problem, which is that The Daily Wire claims to be an anti-(excessive) censorship, conservative, non-mainstream organization, and then it makes a contract where its employees are greatly punished for running afoul of the most mainstream of leftist standards. There’s “unfair opening offer” and then there’s “structured in such a way as to fundamentally undercut the entire alleged premise of the company.”

All questions of “fairness,” “negotiation,” and “friendship” aside, that contract deserved to be leaked simply because it exposes a massive open question about The Daily Wire’s commitment to its claimed values. Hypothetically, if I join “the organization to oppose cannibalism” and someone leaks that they stop their employees from saying cannibalism is bad, I don’t give a shit about whether the leaker was betraying trust or not and I don’t care if it turns out you can get permission to say cannibalism is bad if you ask nicely—I want to know why the organization to oppose cannibalism ever took that position on any level.