Cozy Earth, a mainstay on the ‘Oprah’s Favorite Things’ gift list, sponsored a Carlson episode featuring a paid shill for Venezuela and Owens episodes featuring Charlie Kirk conspiracy theories
A recent episode of The Tucker Carlson Show featured a registered foreign agent for Nicolás Maduro’s communist regime in Venezuela. Carlson concluded the episode by calling the U.S. government’s 9/11 Commission “a fraud” and promoting his new 9/11 conspiracy docuseries. The content was underwritten by the luxury pajama and bedding company, Cozy Earth.
The company also sponsored recent episodes of Candace Owens’s eponymous podcast in which she spread conspiracy theories about the assassination of Charlie Kirk, accusing the Trump administration of quashing an investigation into the real killer before describing Cozy Earth’s bamboo pajama set as “the softest PJs that I’ve ever owned.”
The fringe content is a strange choice for a company backed by establishment money. The company’s primary investor is Aries Capital Partners, a Utah-based investment firm led by the son-in-law of the late Huntsman Corporation founder, Jon Huntsman Sr. Before founding Aries Capital, Huntsman’s son-in-law, Rick Durham, served as co-president and chief financial officer of the Huntsman Corporation, the multinational chemical manufacturer founded by Jon Huntsman Sr. in 1970.
Aries Capital’s website boasts about its investment in Cozy Earth. “When Aries looked at Cozy Earth as a business, they knew [company CEO] Tyler [Howells] was a naturally talented founder,” the website reads. “They were very impressed with his business acumen at a young age. To have a company as small as it was to get selected to Oprah’s favorite things four times is remarkable. Aries knew their products were fantastic and they had a great growth rate, they just needed the right partner to help them grow.” That partner was Aries, and now, Cozy Earth is using Carlson and Owens to help peddle its wares.
Neither Cozy Earth nor Aries Capital responded to requests for comment.
Durham’s wife, Christena Huntsman Durham, leads both the Huntsman Family Foundation and the Huntsman Mental Health Foundation. His brother-in-law, Jon Huntsman Jr., was elected governor of Utah in 2004 and enjoyed approval ratings as high as 90 percent. He resigned in August 2009, eight months into his second term, to serve as former president Barack Obama’s ambassador to China and then as President Donald Trump’s ambassador to Russia. He also ran for president in 2012, presenting himself as a positive candidate who would take the “high road” rather than “run down someone’s reputation.”
The same cannot be said for Carlson and Owens, who have become known for trafficking in conspiracies and smearing prominent conservatives.
During an October interview with avowed Stalin and Hitler supporter Nick Fuentes, for example, Carlson said Christian Zionists like Sen. Ted Cruz (R., Texas) and U.S. ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee are heretics who have been “seized by this brain virus.” Carlson has also defended Maduro, arguing that, while Maduro is “very left-wing on economics,” his social policies are among the most conservative “in North, or South, or Central America.”
Carlson did not discuss Venezuela during the Cozy Earth-sponsored podcast episode with his FARA-registered guest, Robert Amsterdam, though he did identify Amsterdam as “one of the people that I talk to most off-camera about what is happening to the Christian population of the world.”
Amsterdam has represented his Venezuelan foreign principal, Reinaldo Muñoz Pedroza, since 2020, according to federal disclosures. While the records describe Pedroza as Venezuela’s “attorney general,” the Trump administration says otherwise: It sanctioned Muñoz Pedroza in 2020, describing him as an unrecognized official installed by the “illegitimate Maduro regime” and rejected by Venezuela’s National Assembly. Amsterdam’s firm was paid at least $4 million for its work with Muñoz Pedroza, records show.
Cozy Earth has sponsored four episodes of Carlson’s show in total, including one with disgraced former congressman George Santos, and another on underwater UFOs.
Owens, for her part, has taken aim at Kirk’s organization, Turning Point USA, in the wake of the conservative commentator’s assassination, accusing its leaders of carrying out an “inside job.” In the Cozy Earth-sponsored episode on the Trump family, Owens suggested the Trump administration was covering up the conspiracy because of its support for Israel.
“When Trump rushed to tweet out that—or Truth Social out—that AI photo of him and Charlie with the Star of David in the background, I just knew,” Owens said, referencing a Truth Social post from Trump that included an image of a banner displayed in Israel honoring Kirk.
“I just knew the investigation into who murdered Charlie was officially over, right?” she continued. “The officials wanted nothing to do with it because there was nobody more psychotically insistent that people stop asking questions about Charlie’s death … than the people that are dedicated to the Israel lobby.”
