"I became a conservative overnight."
How did Candace Owens go from running a left-leaning blog that once criticized Trump's penis size ... to becoming "the darling of the right"?
How did Candace Owens go from running a left-leaning blog that once criticized Trump's penis size ... to becoming "the darling of the right"?
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00:00Racially motivated police brutality is a myth.
00:04Feminism, it's the biggest joke in the entire world.
00:07You don't believe in climate change?
00:09I think the climate always changes.
00:10She's downplayed the effects of white supremacy,
00:12made fans out of Donald Trump and Kanye,
00:15and started a movement to get black Americans out of the Democratic Party.
00:18But before all that, she actually ran an anti-conservative blog.
00:21Let's take a look at how Candace Owens became the darling of the right.
00:30Everybody involved in this fake racial war is a loser.
00:34Candace Owens was born in 1989 in Stamford, Connecticut,
00:38where she was raised by her grandparents along with her three siblings.
00:41At 17 years old, she made local headlines
00:44after receiving multiple racist death threats via voicemail
00:47from several of her classmates.
00:57Owens reported the threats to a teacher
00:59who alerted the school and the authorities.
01:01I didn't go to the police.
01:02My teacher went to the police.
01:03It turned into the zoo.
01:04These kids were labeled publicly racists, right?
01:07I'm not comfortable with ever labeling a 14-year-old racist, right?
01:10Or any of these kids racist.
01:11Owens switched to homeschooling during her senior year of high school.
01:14Feeling a loss of control in her life,
01:16she has said she developed anorexia around this time.
01:19After going through a unique situation
01:21and feeling that my whole life was out of control,
01:23I just manifested as an eating disorder.
01:25And I had it for four years on and off.
01:28With the help of the NAACP,
01:30she and her grandfather eventually sued the Stanford Board of Education
01:33for failing to properly address the threats.
01:36Owens went on to study journalism at the University of Rhode Island,
01:39but dropped out due to a student loan issue her junior year.
01:42After college, she entered at Vogue
01:44and worked at a private equity firm in New York City.
01:47In 2015, she founded a marketing agency called Degree 180.
01:51What's up, everyone?
01:52My name is Candice Owens.
01:54I'm the CEO of Degree180.com,
01:56here answering your questions.
01:58The agency had a blog where Owens and several other writers
02:01occasionally published anti-conservative content.
02:03One article even mocked Donald Trump's penis size.
02:06The site is no longer active.
02:08Here's one article written by Owens,
02:10citing, quote,
02:16In 2016, she launched a Kickstarter campaign for SocialAutopsy.com,
02:20a website where people could send in screenshots of offensive posts
02:23with the goal of exposing internet bullies.
02:49Critics of the site, however,
02:50said it would encourage doxing and retaliatory harassment
02:53and warned that it would be easy for users to make and submit fake screenshots.
02:57After the Kickstarter went live,
02:59Owens was contacted by Zoe Quinn,
03:01the video game developer who was at the center of GamerGate.
03:04If you need a refresher,
03:05GamerGate was a campaign against progressivism and feminism in video game culture.
03:10Zoe Quinn was GamerGate's first victim.
03:12In 2014, she faced an online harassment campaign
03:16after her ex-boyfriend publicly accused her
03:18without evidence of exchanging sex for a good review of her game.
03:22On the Rubin Report,
03:23Owens said that Quinn reached out to her
03:25and asked her to stop working on SocialAutopsy.com,
03:27warning Owens that she could be harassed by GamerGaters,
03:30just as she previously had.
03:32She says you have to pull your project
03:34because people actually don't want to find out who harassed them.
03:38Owens declined Quinn's request,
03:39and as Quinn had warned,
03:41people soon started posting Owens' private details online
03:44in protest of SocialAutopsy.
03:46With little evidence,
03:47Owens blamed Quinn
03:48and the progressive side of GamerGate
03:50for the doxxing she experienced.
03:52I became a conservative overnight.
03:53I realized that liberals were actually the racists,
03:55that liberals were actually the trolls.
03:57In September 2017,
03:58she created a YouTube channel called Red Pill Black.
04:01Her first video was a skit
04:03reenacting her quote-unquote coming out as a conservative.
04:06Mom, Dad,
04:08I'm a lesbian.
04:09I like girls.
04:10We love you regardless.
04:11Oh, thank you guys.
04:12Oh, also, I think I might be a conservative.
04:15Owens started regularly posting videos
04:18criticizing Democrats, feminists,
04:20and the Black Lives Matter movement.
04:22What does Black Lives Matter want?
04:24I mean, today it seems like all they've really accomplished
04:27is burning down black neighborhoods,
04:28pissing off police officers,
04:29and ruining future employment opportunities
04:31for black kids that ride on their behalf and get arrested.
04:34Her first viral YouTube video
04:35featured her commentary on the white supremacy rally
04:38held in Charlottesville, Virginia in summer 2017.
04:41Approximately 93% of black homicide victims
04:45are killed by other black people.
04:47Nobody wants us dead more than we want ourselves dead.
04:50Everybody involved in this fake racial war is a loser.
04:54The video caught the attention of many conservatives online,
04:57including InfoWars conspiracy theorist Alex Jones.
05:00Candace, I know about your story, but this is riveting.
05:02I want to beg you to come on the full show sometime
05:05with Paul and I and share these stories.
05:07Paul, what a great guest.
05:09In April 2017, Turning Point USA,
05:11a conservative student non-profit
05:13that was at the time facing allegations of racial bias,
05:16hired Owens as its director of urban engagement.
05:19She was later promoted to communications director.
05:21In April 2018, a video of her berating black protesters
05:25at a Turning Point USA event went viral,
05:28catching the eye of then-president Donald Trump.
05:30I don't know why people like being oppressed.
05:32It's the weirdest thing I've ever heard.
05:33I love oppression.
05:34We're oppressed.
05:35400 years of slavery.
05:36Jim Crow, which, by the way, none of you guys lived through.
05:38Your grandparents did, and it's embarrassing.
05:40You have a young lady who's been very much in the news
05:43in the last three or four days.
05:44Candace Owens.
05:45She's fantastic.
05:47She's, like, the hottest thing out there now.
05:49Kanye also gave Owens a shout-out,
05:51sparking a relationship that lasts to this day.
05:59Somebody actually sent it to me in a text,
06:01and I thought they were pranking me,
06:02but he is the only person that is in hip-hop
06:05or that has a public stage
06:06that is willing to think independently.
06:08In late 2018, Owens founded Blexit,
06:10a movement to get black Americans
06:12out of the Democratic Party.
06:14Minorities do not belong to the left.
06:17We belong to nobody but ourselves and God, OK?
06:20In early 2019, she spoke at the
06:22Conservative Political Action Conference,
06:24aka CPAC, for the first time.
06:27Stop selling us our own oppression.
06:30Stop taking away our self-confidence
06:32by telling us that we can't
06:34because of racism, because of slavery.
06:36I've never been a slave in this country.
06:38Stop telling us that we need to be
06:40obsessing over our past,
06:41and we should be obsessing over our future
06:43and the potential that we have.
06:44In April 2019, she attended a
06:46congressional hearing on white nationalism
06:48and clashed with Democratic Congressman Ted Lieu.
06:51I'm going to let her own words do the talking.
06:53I'm going to play for you the first 30 seconds
06:56of a statement she made about Adolf Hitler.
06:58Whenever we say nationalism,
06:59the first thing people think about,
07:00at least in America, is Hitler.
07:02You know, he was a national socialist.
07:04But if Hitler just wanted to make Germany great
07:07and have things run well, OK, fine.
07:09Problem is that he wanted,
07:10he had dreams outside of Germany.
07:12He wanted to globalize.
07:14He's trying to present as if I was
07:15launching a defense of Hitler in Germany,
07:17when in fact, the question that was asked of me
07:19was pertaining to whether or not I believed
07:21that Hitler was a, whether or not I believed
07:24in nationalism and that nationalism was bad.
07:26Owen's comments about Hitler prompted
07:28several Turning Point USA chapters
07:30to call on her to resign.
07:31Which she did in May 2019,
07:33citing her need to focus on Blexit
07:35and writing her first book.
07:37In August 2019, Owen's married George Farmer,
07:39who is now the CEO of conservative
07:41social media site Parler.
07:43My husband's English, met in London,
07:45got engaged two weeks later,
07:47and then, yeah, got married about
07:50eight months after that.
07:51Owen's attended another congressional hearing
07:53in September 2019, during which she downplayed
07:56the effect of white supremacy in the U.S.
07:58White supremacy and white nationalism
08:00is nowhere near, ranks nowhere near
08:02the top of the issues that are facing Black America.
08:04The things that I said today,
08:06that are actually harming Black America,
08:08number one, father absence,
08:10number two, the education system
08:12and the illiteracy rate.
08:13Illegal immigration ranks high,
08:15abortion ranks high,
08:16white supremacy and white nationalism,
08:18if I had to make a list again of 100 things,
08:20would not be on it.
08:22This hearing, in my opinion, is a farce.
08:25In October 2019, she was invited to speak
08:27at the Young Black Leadership Summit,
08:29which was held at the White House.
08:30We want Trump.
08:31We want the Victor narrative.
08:33In June 2020, she faced intense backlash
08:36for a comment she made about George Floyd
08:38on Blaze TV.
08:39The fact that he has been held up as a martyr
08:41sickens me.
08:42George Floyd was not a good person.
08:44In September 2020, she released her first book
08:46titled, Blackout, how Black America can make
08:49its second escape from the Democrat plantation.
08:51People kept saying, Candace, you can't use
08:53the phrase Democrat plantation.
08:55And I was like, no, I want to call it
08:58when the Democrats had the plantations,
09:00because it was the Democrats that owned the slaves.
09:02In March 2021, she started hosting Candace,
09:05a political talk show on Daily Wire Plus,
09:07where she shares her takes on news and pop culture,
09:09often garnering backlash.
09:11What about the entire COVID conspiracy theory?
09:15The idea that masks worked,
09:18which has now been debunked.
09:19If Black people are getting one month
09:21for the stuff that we live through in America,
09:23somebody's going to need to explain to me
09:25how it is that gay people
09:27and lesbian and trans people also got a month.
09:30I do not believe that Andrew Tate is a rapist.
09:32I don't.
09:33I think that that is what people like to
09:35accuse men of when they're trying to take them down.