A Bit Fruity with Matt Bernstein - How Candace Owens Left Reality

Episode Date: January 9, 2026

Candace Owens’s daily livestreams have more viewers than Fox News, CNN, and MSNBC combined. The woman who less than a decade ago was a liberal blogger in New York City is now one of the most powerful voices representing — and tearing apart — the American Right. Her latest and most successful act is that of a professional conspiracy theorist, spinning webs around Brigitte Macron’s gender, Charlie Kirk’s assassination, and of course, The Jews. Millions of people who’ve self-admittedly “never agreed with Candace” are finding themselves in her clutches. Today, fellow Connecticut native Taylor Lorenz and I take a trip into Candaceland to try to decipher why Candace is the way she is and what the Right may look like after Trump. Listen to bonus episodes on Patreon! Thanks to today’s sponsors! Support a fairer future free from religious overreach at https://humanist.org/fruity Work smarter, not harder, with Factor meals ready in two minutes at https://www.factormeals.com/fruity50off Watch Taylor on YouTube. Read Taylor’s work on User Mag. Find me on Instagram. Find A Bit Fruity on Instagram. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

But I wanted to cover this because I just, it's really fake and gay. And I am actually an expert on all matters that are our fake and gay. Did you see that 10 people in France were convicted and, like, jailed under cyberbullying laws for transvestigating Bridget McCrone? Yes, I covered this. And I think it's insane. Yeah, France doesn't fuck around with online transvestigations. Take your wins where you can is what, yeah. I know, it's bad.

I didn't want those laws in place, but the people that they're going after are not very sympathetic. You're going to French jail, which I wonder what that's like eating baguettes. Dear listener, my brain processes Candace Owens, the way it does a skin rash that you tried to ignore for a while, hoping it would go away on its own. After all, itchy inflamed patches crop up all the time. You're not going to go to the dermatologist every time one happens, especially not with these new insurance premiums. Hey! Okay. I'm just trying to cope.

I'm just trying to cope with my increased premiums that I just learned about. All right. But now you've been living with this rash for a long time. And it hasn't faded, just keeps getting bigger, more annoying, more harmful. Ignoring it is no longer an option. It's time to go to the dermatologist. And by that, I do mean time for a podcast episode. Hello, hello, and welcome back to A BitFruity.

You probably already have a million thoughts about Candice Owens as we arrive into this episode. And if you're just learning about her for the first time, that's okay too. And I'm sorry. But let's start with the facts. Candice Owens uploads a podcast episode five days a week. and each episode averages three to five million downloads between YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and the like, putting her at a higher daily reach than Fox News, CNN, and MSNBC combined. She has a level of fame that even watching from afar kind of terrifies me.

I'm resistant to the idea that anyone should have this much power, and especially someone who's demonstrably as untethered from reality as Candice Owens. is. Over the years, Candice brought tons of people into Maga. More recently, she's also brought tons of people away from Maga, but not necessarily to like a better place, put a pin in that. She's gone from liberal to conservative to what I would describe now as like full on digital cult leader. And as Candace Land, I thought that was funny, like Candy Land. As Candice Land gets more confusing for those of us who look away from it, her audience and influence only grows. And her conspiratorial rebrands keep drawing unsuspecting people into the fold.

Like when I announced this episode, many of you sent me messages that your siblings who might not identify as conservative or even political have become avid Candice Owens fans. So today I want to demystify this 36-year-old who's built in underworld much, much, much bigger than herself, but is also at the same time just a girl from Connecticut. it. And to do that, I am so excited to welcome back Taylor Lorenz to the podcast. Taylor, I talk a lot on this podcast about figures that become my fixations, my sort of like obsessions that I'm not proud of. The most notable example of this was Deborah Messing, who for like a really long time, I was just unable to look away from. Even as she was going down this Zionist spiral that like

nobody else really paid attention to or cared about because she hadn't made work in multiple decades, but it's neither here nor there. I feel like Candace is this person for you. When I reached out about making this episode, you straight up were like, yes, let's do it. I watch Candace Owens every single night. Yeah, I'm also just another girl from Connecticut. I grew up literally five minutes away from Candace, although I think she was a freshman when I was a senior in high school. We went to rival high schools. I mean, I've become. so fascinated with her because I think she's emblematic of like so many things in digital culture. And I go through phases. I always watch a lot of right wing content to keep tabs.

But I think that since Charlie Kirk was killed, she's been on this like generational run. And I think she has established herself an online culture in a way that I have, I'm not seeing any other conservative influencer do. Like she's just been able to amass unprecedented levels of engagement. She often has hundreds of thousands of. people concurrently watching her live stream when she does her live streams. In the last few days, while I've been outlining for this episode, I watched some of her live streams. And the rate at which comments come in is so like, oh my God, she's so famous. And for a long time, I didn't really, and we'll get into this, but like, I didn't really pay

attention to Candace Owens because I understood what she was doing and I didn't really care about it. like she was another person who belongs to a minoritized population who was sort of allowing the right to tokenize that thing about herself. So she could tell these racist white people enacting racist legislation that they weren't racist because look, they have Candace. And there's gay influencers who do this. There's trans influencers who do this. I know this game.

And she was playing it really well for a long time. And so I just didn't really care. But then this most recent, as you say, generation. run where she's detached herself from reality with these conspiracy theories in a way that I felt like I blinked and then I looked over and she had like grown her following so immensely. She was spewing the craziest shit I've ever even heard. I mean, it's right wing, but it's also a lot of times like divorced from reality to the point where it's hard to even put a political label on it.

You know what I mean? It's really hard to make sense of. It is. It's so funny that she's, she's recently had this. drama with Alex Jones. Alex Jones called her a globalist agent working for the deep state CIA and the Democratic Party. Were they like anti-Semitic to each other? They are like feuding right now over some of the Charlie Kirk stuff and some of the other

Trump stuff. There's so much drama. I mean, we could do a whole other episode on just like the current meltdown happening in the right wing world. Like we've seen so many different factions emerge. Yeah. But I think of her as kind of like a modern day. Alex Jones, but like far, like far more palpable. I think what makes her so compelling is like she's beautiful. She's put together. She's not sounding like a ranting, raving lunatic when she's saying this stuff. But if you, yeah, if you listen to the stuff she's saying, it's, it's conspiracy theories that that are completely divorced from reality. I do love the idea of like two of the most notorious, like, anti-Semitic conspiracy theorists of our time. Alex Jones and Candice Owens, like,

beefing with one another over like who's the real globalist. Who's the real deep state actor? You're a Jew. No, you're a Jew. What are we doing, guys? There's been as a lot more conservatives have become disillusioned with Trump and especially the far right, the Q&Honors, like you've seen this sort of backlash with Epstein stuff, with Israel.

A lot of those people on the far right and people on the left are looking for guiding voices. And they're turning to people that are very anti-establishment. And Candice was able to seize on that so effectively because she is, she doesn't identify as like pro-Trump anymore. She talks about, you know, then sort of almost leaving the MAGA movement. And now she's just this like anti-institutionalist and positions herself against power in this way. Her stream on Monday was unreal. What happened?

She talks about how people aren't real. And like she talks, she's so good at weaving all these narratives together. but she's talking about the rise of AI and how things don't feel normal and how people don't seem real. And she's basically insinuating that like a lot of people in power are like droids maybe or like AI controlled like droids. But the thing is if you just stop and listen to her, she's corrected identifying the problem. That people aren't real. No, no. I'm just kidding.

I mean, I'm not real. I'm a lizard in like a Jewish body or I don't even know what the. correct theory is. Sorry. Keep going. Sorry. She's correct that like we're feeling this crushing weight of like technology and like sort of tech surveillance being like enacted on us without our consent. There is mass. I mean, she's been one of the few people that's talked about the restrictions on free speech that are happening that frankly no one on the left and a lot of people on the right are not even addressing. But people feel. People see this in this very visceral way. And ultimately she's talking about the problems of capitalism, but she's ascribing them to all these other crazy things. But

But that idea where she says everything since 2020, everything feels fake and gay, everything feels like not real, whatever, whatever. I am actually an expert on all matters that are our fake and gay. I think a lot of people, no matter where you're on the political spectrum, feel like our society is crumbling and our institutions are crumbling. And she just has these like very compelling narratives around that collapse. Which is what these people are so good at is identifying like the real feelings that people have, especially towards politics. inequality, censorship, capitalism, stuff like that. And instead of offering them substantive, community-oriented, positive solutions, they just fill that void with bullshit, which is, by the way, like the entire premise of Dopplking or by Naomi Klein. Yes, which is so good.

Which is so good. So should we get into the life of Candace Owens and try to make sense of where we are? Let's dive in. Well, it all starts in this state where I am podcasting from right now. In New York, Candace Owens is born in the town of White Plains, but grows up in Stamford, Connecticut, which is a suburb 30-something miles outside of New York City. Is there anything notable about where she grew up in Connecticut? Because it's like right next to where you grew up in Connecticut. Just that it's like it is a really nice town, but there's like, she grew up in kind of a not nice part of a really nice part of Connecticut.

Her parents divorced when she was eight and she was raised by her mom and her. grandparents. When her parents were still together, Candice says that her dad worked two jobs and her mom did not work. And she said in like wildly archived old interview footage that guys, I went deep for this one, but she said in these interviews that this time before she turned eight when her parents were still together was the happiest time of her life because she had time at home with her parents. Whereas after they divorced, not only were they separated, but they both had to work. Which I just think is so sad. And like, one of my favorite things about this podcast is taking these figures who become enormous and evil and bigger than themselves and just like, looking at stuff like this

because, you know, it's like, you know, like we're all human. Like, I fucking hate like. And yet she doesn't believe in paid maternity leave. I just forever feel like that girl and mean girls with the cake who's like crying being like, why can't we all love each other? And then they're like, she doesn't even go here. But anyway, in 2007 as a 17 year old high school school. student. Candice Owens received a barrage of racist voicemails from three white male classmates, including one of whom was the son of Dinell Malloy, the man who would go on to become the Democratic governor of Connecticut. And this is just kind of wild to me because it's obviously horrible that she received this like racist hate crime. But also one of the one of the people who committed that

hate crime being the son of a Democratic politician, I have to wonder if that's part of where this like resentment towards like the left stems from, you know. Candice's family sued the local board of education over the incident saying that they didn't protect her and she won $37,500 from that lawsuit. She majored in journalism at University of Rhode Island but dropped out after junior year because of what she says was a problem with a student loan, which I'm sure there was a technical issue, but I think, you know, the bottom line is like she couldn't afford tuition. That's also just something that happens to a lot of people in this country now more than ever.

Tuition is fucking insane. And it's sad that she becomes one of these people who ends up essentially pulling up the ladder behind her. After dropping out of school, Candice Owens gets an internship at Vogue. She's like in New York City working an internship at Vogue. Did you know this, Taylor? I had no idea. She interned at Vogue? This is awesome.

Not only did she intern at Vogue, she interned in the fashion cupboard at the Vogue office. Oh, in the closet? In the closet where they keep all the clothes and the shoes. Wild. Wild. I mean, can you imagine like Anne Hathaway in the Double Rose Prada? Like, she goes to the fashion cupboard because that's famously where Stanley Tucci gives her the makeover.

Although I will say as somebody that was interning in the fashion closet at Harper's Bazaar, it's nothing like that movie. Wait, you interned there? Yeah, I entered at Harper's Bazaar in the fashion closet. Why, you and Candice are like each other's like Mario Wario. Like you both Connecticut, both fashion closet interns. What's going on? Well, you basically are like working a UPS job. All you do is just ship out garment bags and check in garments and checking out garments.

And it kind of sucks. It's not really like glamorous in the way that people think. I want someone to make an edit where Anne Hathaway goes into the fashion closet of Vogue. And it's just Candace Owens being like, did you know Bridget McCrone is trying? transgender. It's so funny, but it's also like, I think around that time, Devil Wars Prada, I think, came out in 2006 or 2007, but it was like this seminal movie. And there was so much of that. I think also how to lose a guy in 10 days. She works at a mat. Like, there's all this millennial women's media was all about like working in fashion and working at a fashion magazine. And that was

sort of like the peak thing that you could do. Like kind of like the way that like Gen Z or like Gen Alpha, It's like influencers, I guess, are kind of like the aspirational job. Like, I just think it's kind of crazy. Like so many people when you go look at media or even politicians, so many millennial women went through those stupid fashion closet jobs, I think, because that was like seen as so cool from 2005 to like 2014. That's so interesting. And now magazines are out of business.

Fellow interns at Vogue who worked alongside Candice say that essentially she ran the fashion closet like the Navy, which I fully believe. She then goes on to work as an assistant for a private equity firm for a bit. We are twins. Did you also work at a private equity firm? At a hedge fund, yeah. What the fuck? As an assistant.

I was terrible. I got fired. It's literally like which way Western woman. And it's like you can either become Taylor Lorenz or Candace. So she works there for a while. And then in 2015, she begins working as the CEO of a small liberal, liberal-leaning marketing agency and blog called Degree 180. You know about Degree 180?

I just remember this era that it was a blog, but I didn't realize she was CEO of it. She was CEO. I thought it was a blog that she like wrote on. She did write on it, which begs the question of like what it means to be CEO of like ostensibly such a like very small operation. Yes, you have a blog. She ran this blog called Degree One. 180 with a colleague, and I looked all of these people up because I'm like, where are they now?

But she ran it with someone named Zoe Weiner. I looked up Zoe Weiner and she's like still a beauty Instagrammer and seems perfectly normal. And I, Zoe, if you happen to listen to this podcast, I would love to get on the phone with you and ask you about your early memories with Candace Owens. I also want to note that through degree 180's long forgotten Instagram account, which is still up, I found Candace's long forgotten Instagram account, which centered around her. cat called shit my cat thinks. I just, I love finding these nuggets and I'm going to put photos on the screen if you're watching the video episode. But from 2015 to 2017, Candice Owens had this

Instagram account called shit my cat thinks where she would just post photos and videos of her cat. And to this day, it has 77 followers. It's awesome. The bit fruity fandom is about to descend on this account. I'll see all of you guys, whatever. after you listen to this on shit my cat thinks on Instagram. But can I just say something as somebody that also had a lot of like not, this is so millennial. Like she is so millennial coded. Like that is just so like 2015 buzzfeed quiz, shit my cat things.

And of course it goes nowhere. It has 77 views because like 99% of these stupid accounts that people made like never went anywhere. It's just it's so funny. Like she was so normal. She was so. That was my first thought when I saw. this. And really my only thought, again, it's like Candace Owens, she's just like us, you know?

Which is kind of painful to think about, but I want to send you a video from this cat Instagram account. Hey, Bear, Homeland's on like you asked. Carry Matheson. It's 9 o'clock on Sunday. Okay. Isn't it awesome? Homeland is on. What a time, Kat. capsule. Candice is just laying down on a couch with the cat in her lap. When the cat is so cute, the cat is like snuggling her and looks very sleepy. Then the caption is quote, DVR it. Hashtag cat of the day. Hashtag cats of Instagram. Hashtag parenting 101. Hashtag adopt. Don't shop. Hashtag homeland. Hashtag showtime. Hashtag shit my cat says. Hashtag funny.

And Taylor Lorenz, how many likes does this have? This has 12 likes. Take me back. This is wild. This is so, go to, scroll to December 20, December 2nd, the second one she ever posted. The cat is looking over her computer screen, sort of like poking over his head over. It looks like when the cat's a kitten. And she has the degree 180.com CMS open in WordPress.

And the WordPress headline that she has written here says, woman wants to quit her job so she can stay at home and lick her cat. Candace Hollins was just like us. This is so 2015. It's so adorable and her cat is so adorable. Anyway, shall I continue? Or you can't. Yes, I'm down a rabbit hole.

It is so hard to look away from because it's so stunningly normal and precious for someone who would become, well. So Candice was a heavy contributor to the degree 180 blog, which someone so graciously preserved on the internet archive, and I read a bunch of the articles that Candace wrote. This blog was mostly like liberal-leaning lifestyle content for millennial women, as many blogs were. She wrote candidly about struggling with anorexia, misogyny, and monogamy. Taylor, I've clipped a passage from an article that Candice wrote about how monogamy is not realistic. And would you like to take that? Let me just scroll up and then Google Doc and find it.

Hold on. This is a very long Google Doc. Hold on. She writes, don't misunderstand. I do love the idea of monogamy. I think it's a beautiful concept that if two people can truly commit over a lifetime is magnificent. She needs a copy editor. But I'm also not foolish enough to try to transform something that I desire into something that is natural. Not everything we crave is necessarily organic. Come on. Okay, listen, I was also a lifestyle blogger and I wouldn't want people reading my content 10 years later. But it's really interesting to read this from her when she's so into like tradwife stuff now, you know? Well, we talk about grift on this podcast and there is an enormously grifty element to Candace Owens, and I think that you're just starting to poke the bear on that one.

In another article about trans people and sex, Candice Owens wrote, I want to formally state my belief that gender really is an idea that society made up. Come on, Candice. If I felt in my soul and in my heart that I was a man, it would be hard for me to understand why I had to explain that to someone else who was already into me anyways. I imagine it must be extremely hard and difficult to explain to everyone every day and throughout your life that you are you. Talk about a degree 180 turn.

The real degree 180 was the pivot she would make after this. Yes. I will say though, I mean, you know, I'm obviously not trans, but not to be like my trans friends, but like the most consistent explanation that I've heard like from all of my trans friends and like the trans people whose work I read online and stuff, it's like there was a period, I think especially in like the latter portion of the 2010s where people were really invested in like what makes someone transgender and like I need you to explain it to me. And that's kind of where that whole like born in the wrong body like brain doesn't match

my body where like language like that started to come out as an argument of like why someone is transgender. But the most consistent thing that I see is like, well, you're transgender because you are. You know, in the same way that like I'm like, I'm gay because I am. And like, they can run all the studies and try to find the gay gene and whatever they want. But it's like at the end of the day, it doesn't really matter. It's just you are. And it is exhausting to explain.

And it's so wild to see Candace explain this perfectly. I guess, I mean, 10 years makes such a difference, right? Apparently. I could never picture her saying this stuff now. I will say there was an anti-feminist bent to some of her writing from the very beginning. There was an element of maybe we've. pushed these social movements too far. So I want you to read one of the titles of an article she wrote for Dway 180 that I have here. At ladies, chivalry isn't dead. We just think everything men do is creepy.

And this is an article where basically Candace argues that like women are being too sensitive about misogyny and about like cat calling and that kind of thing. I mean, it's funny because this is still before me too, but it was written during the peak of liberal feminism. And I do think that like that sort of corporate girl boss feminism was starting to aggravate people. I mean, like that blog post is written in February 9th, 2016, which is ironically still when Bernie was in the running for president and people were starting to kind of voice their frustration with Hillary. And you just started to see the emergence of, I think people feeling like, wait a minute, we don't love this brand of feminism. You can see the inklings.

But I empathize in the sense that, like, I think if you ask me about my thoughts on feminism during that same time, I think Hillary Clinton was being so shoved down our throats. She was so positioned as like, this is feminism. This is what you better get on board. You can bomb Libya as a woman. Yeah. And so, like, even I'm an avowed feminist.

But that year, I just remember being like, is that what feminism is? Because maybe I don't like it. Does feminism mean I have to? become a boss and yeah, the man can't open the door. Like, I don't know. It was just like, I think it was in the discourse. Sure, sure. But regardless of any of this, still consistently, Candace was very anti-Trump. And this is in the lead up to Trump 1.0 election. And so famously in this one article titled, The Republican Tea Party is led by the Mad Hatter, Candice wrote. I can't believe that she wrote this. The good news is Republicans will eventually die off

peacefully in their sleep, we hope. And then we can get right on with the all caps obvious social change that needs to happen all caps immediately. So people tend to know this quote, but what is less often discussed is the following list that she makes of the things she thinks will happen after the Republican Party is like crushed forever as she says die off. The first of which is. The gay, transgendered, by, straight, anything else conversation will be instantly over, deleted, done. Because us millennials literally never even gave a shit about this. I actually remember being in third grade and piecing together in my head that one of my guy friends was homosexual. I didn't give a shit then. I don't give a shit now. And the fact that he actually had to give a shit until this year about being himself is the most ridiculously pathetic and stupid thing that our government has informed. upon a group of people for wanting to be themselves since slavery.

It is not my business who somebody else wants to have sex with or love. Not yours either, Tea Party peeps. I actually find it creepy that you have cared so much and for so long about somebody else's sex life. This is someone who in 2015 was saying that after the 2016 election, that the gay transgender conversation will be over forever because we need. need to move on. This is the same person making millions of dollars spreading the craziest theories about the First Lady of France being transgender in 2025, which we're going to get to. But, I mean, talk about Gryft right? Now we're really getting there. It's wild. And also it just,

it's like such a sliding door's like reality of like if Hillary Clinton had one, what would have happened to the internet, you know, like how, because she wouldn't have pivoted, right? And also what was, I think, like, a good influencer or somebody that succeeds on the internet, all of us. Like, it's like, you know, you have to sort of read the tea leaves of the current vibe and like what's ascendant and like what's culturally ascended in terms of belief systems. And she, she was so liberal at this time because that's what was. Yes. That's what was dominating. Totally. But I, but I will say, like this blog didn't have a readership, frankly. Candace Owens, to be extremely clear, had no audience. She was essentially an anonymous person. So like, I do think this was actually

an honest reflection of what her politics were at the time. And I don't mean necessarily that she was approaching it from that internet standpoint. I just think that you see her ability to kind of be this chameleon. We're like, I mean, I want to believe that she believed this stuff back then. And she probably did. But how much of it is just her going along with what Yeah. I mean, she does never come across as someone with like a super firm backbone. I really am so grateful for whoever internet archived the entire degree 180 website, because one of the other gems I found on it is this video interview of her. It's titled Get to Know Our CEO. And they're just asking like random like meaningless like what Disney princess would you be BuzzFeed ask questions? And I want to

show you how she answered that question. What's up everyone? My name. is Candice Owens. I'm the CEO of Degree180.com here answering your questions. Sleeping Beauty. I really like sleeping. I think that I'm sleeping beauty because I'm pretty. I like to sleep. I mean, she knows from the beginning that she is pretty. She is pretty. And you know what? Say what you want about all of like the women with Mar-a-Lago face. It does not seem like Candace Owens has ever gotten a lot of work done. She's been really pretty from the beginning. Good for her. But beauty has a lot to do with personality too. You know. Should we talk about social autopsy?

Yes. This is when she came on my radar. This is when things begin to go off the rails. So in 2016, as a 26-year-old, with the help of her team at degree 180, Candice launches a Kickstarter. For a new website, she plans to call social autopsy. Do you want to explain the premise of what social autopsy was? Social autopsy wanted to end cyberbullying. and it wanted to do that by essentially doxing everyone.

It's so funny because this is literally what she actually speaks out against now, which is like mass surveillance and like doxing and all this stuff. She was claiming like bringing transparency to the internet and like making it easier to like get someone fired from their job basically if they, you know, said something bad online. And it was a terrible idea. And a lot of people said it was a terrible idea. that kind of just made her like dig her heels in harder.

Yeah, the idea was that she would make this website that connected people who left anonymous mean comments online to their actual identity and their employers so you could get them fired, which in a lot of ways, like, you know, rest in peace, social autopsy, you would have loved Palantir. It's amazing that people were against that idea back then

because it's like, like she was so early to like this cancel culture idea, you know? Candace puts up a Kickstarter Kickstarter. campaign to raise $75,000 to create this website. I have no idea how she could have established the technology she was trying to get with $75,000. But regardless, that Kickstarter is also still up today. And it did raise $4,000 from 54 people. I wonder where that $4,000 went. Peter Thiel didn't see it. He would have funded that shit immediately. Peter Thiel would have been all over that. Well, they found each other eventually. Immediate backlash ensued from people who recognized that there was no way of ensuring that this would work as intended and not turn into, like we said, a doxing

website for anyone and everyone. People start to pile on online on this idea. And again, they're piling onto Candice, who at the time is not a woman that people know. She's not a public figure. And instead of taking the L for a bad idea, Candice starts to buy into this conspiracy that the people leading the criticism to social autopsy where two women, named Zoe Quinn and Randy Lee Harper, who were two of the main victims of GamerGate, which was a mid-2010's misogynistic online harassment campaign against women video game developers. This gets a little bit, like, thorny and confusing, so try to stay with me. I scripted my part out here, so you can hopefully follow along.

But basically, let's talk about these two women. Zoe Quinn was a video game developer, and she was one of the main victims of this online harassment campaign called GamerGate, which some of you probably know about. And as a victim of online harassment and doxing herself, she had voiced her opposition to the social autopsy website. And Zoe had also reached out to Candace privately, as they were now both victims of online hate, Candice becoming a victim of it because of her website idea. Instead of uniting through their shared experience, Candice started a conspiracy, mostly for herself. Keep in mind, she had no audience, that Zoe Quinn was directing all of the hate towards her and against social autopsy.

Randy Lee Harper, another Gamergate victim, wrote a blog post of her own where she exceptionally tore into Candace Owens and social autopsy. In this blog post, Randy Lee Harper called Candice a goddamn train wreck and a fucking idiot. This was probably unnecessary, but also these were all women who were so traumatized and dealing with so much online hate. These were essentially private citizens who had become the target of one of the biggest online hate campaigns of all time. And so I'm going to try to give everyone grace. But because of Candice Owens' feud with Zoe and Randy over social autopsy,

Candice fell into the arms of the people who were harassing Zoe and Randy, who were these Gamergate harassing mostly young, very online men. They were basically all misogynistic young men who then convinced Candace that these GamerGate targets were lying about the abuse that they faced, that they were making money off the controversy, etc., none of which was true. It's interesting because within Gamergate, there are vaguely like anti-Semitic undertones of like these minoritized and oppressed people are actually your overlords who are responsible for everything bad that happens to you and they're making money off of it. So it's interesting that from the beginning, Candace has the shape of an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory that she seems very susceptible and open to. You mentioned these like men that she fell in with. Those were the earliest conservative influencers. Right.

Exactly. Candice's anti-Zozy and Randy Crusade left her with a ton of right-wing bedfellows who also hated women in video games. They hated women in general. And she soon found herself on the phone with some of the earliest far-right influencers. Milo Yanopoulos and Mike Cernovich, who offered Candace support and told her to, quote, keep her head up. She would later describe this experience as, quote, what turned her conservative overnight. So I want to take a beat here because I think in examining her earliest kind of online output, even though it had no audience, you can see that she was susceptible. Like my

understanding of Candace Owens before I looked into all of this was that like a conservative guy was nice to her and offered her a bunch of money and like power and influence and access. And then she was like, okay, well, I guess I'm conservative then. To an extent that is what happened, but you can see that she also is ideologically susceptible to being like, this has all gone too far. Fuck the left. Fuck women. Fuck minorities. Kind of all of that. And I think it's important to mention and Taylor, if you want to take this, like these right wingers to this day, they're so good at capturing someone in their most vulnerable moments. Like, was social autopsy a really bad idea? Yeah. Yeah, but it's also just really hard to be a person online who's getting a lot of heat for anything, even if it is a bad idea.

And conservatives love to take the grievance and angst you might be feeling as someone getting a lot of heat and being like, you know, who you can blame it all on, the people with the least power in society. It's intoxicating to, you know, to feel so validated in your lowest moments. I mean, there was that article that came out years ago about like this like canceled men's club. And it's like basically anytime a man was getting canceled online, you had all these like, you know, reactionary figures like reaching out to them and being like, hey, come, you know, join our group. Oh, like the woke mob got you too. You know, like, don't worry. Like we support each other. And I mean, it is so hard like in those moments as we have all dealt with. It's like when you are getting piled on online, like there's like these times when it's like, yeah, the media is clearly like kind of all coalescing around

someone. Everyone is attacking someone. Maybe it's justified. Maybe it's not. I remember so clearly when the social autopsy thing was viral because to anybody with two brain cells, like it did. It was the worst idea ever. And I think Candace herself would probably recognize that now, given her comments about speech. But I can also understand the like pain and suffering and like when you are dealing with hate and harassment and just wanting to feel like someone understands you. And here she was trying to do something. I don't think she had bad intentions with that site, you know. No, especially because the broad understanding of cyberbullying in the 2010s was very like unmasked these people who feel so emboldened.

Like I probably would have as like a high school student probably seen the idea for social autopsy and been like, yeah, great. Like, you know, you shouldn't be able to say that without your face on it. I think that's actually still a very popular opinion from people who don't, you know, think too hard about the implications of that and, you know, surveillance and all sorts of stuff. But anyway. Or who don't know the very. real fact that removing anonymity does nothing to curb cyberbullying and can exacerbate cyber

bullying. I mean, it was always an ill-fated idea, but I think she was vulnerable. And yeah, I mean, it's compelling to have Cernovich and Milo. And at the time, okay, like, they weren't the big deals that they are now, but they were notable on the internet. And they were sort of, they did have a level of online clout. And so I think she's getting torn down by everyone and to have these men with clout reach out and be like, you're right in all this. Like, it's compelling probably to her. Going into my research for this episode, I had kind of this idea in my mind that Candace's newest, like, conspiracy streak was the newer iteration of, like, her and her career. But learning about this, like, Gamergate stuff and the way that conspiracy was really tied in with the way that she, like, abandoned any sort of, like,

liberal ideology she ever had. It made me realize that conspiracy is, like, actually the bedrock for who she's kind of been her entire adult life. And that this newest iteration is like less of a, of a transformation and more of like a return to form. And this is 2016. And we're right on the precipice of Trump winning presidency for the first time. So you can see how all of this is like seductive to 26 year old Candice Owens. I would like to give a quick thank you to the American Humanist Association for sponsoring this episode. And I was so, grateful when they reached out because the AHA's value system really aligns with my own. So it was just a very natural fit. And if you are a frequent listener of this podcast, then they probably line up with

yours too. Humanism is fundamentally about living ethically, caring about other people, and making decisions based on evidence instead of dogma. And on a legal level, it means enacting laws that center our shared humanity over religion and shielding us from coercive laws that center religion over humanity. For example, earlier this year, the AHA got involved in a case regarding West Virginia's taxpayer funding because basically West Virginia decided that $5 million of West Virginia's taxpayer funds were going to go towards a religious school in Ohio. I don't even know how the hell that happens. But in any case, the AHA challenged that funding, and it was ultimately ruled unconstitutional, and that those taxpayer funds could not go to religious education, much less in another state.

The AHA puts my belief in fairness and humanity free from religious coercion and overreach into action, which is why I think it is a great group to support. And if that interests you, you can check out the American Humanist Association at humanist.org slash fruity. That is humanist.org slash fruity. Check out what they've been up to. Read more about it. And if you're able to, feel free to support the organization. Thank you so much to the American Humanist Association for sponsoring this episode.

And now let's get back to the show. So the following year in 2017 as a 27-year-old, which is how old I am now, Candice starts making her own pro-conservative pro-Trump content on YouTube. Her first YouTube video, which is still up, is a skit where she pretends to come out as a lesbian. And her family is like, yay, congratulations, we love you. And then she, like, comes out as conservative. And, like, they're so shocked and horrified. And, like, the joke is like, oh, it's easier to come out as queer than to come out as a conservative.

mom, dad, I'm a lesbian. I like girls. Oh, sweetheart. We always knew. The bottom line, we just want our children to be happy. We love you regardless. Brave soul. Oh, thank you guys. Oh, also, I think I might be a conservative. I don't understand. I can't breathe. I will say, like, she hit the beats 10 years ago that all of the conservatives do now, which is like I'm the most victimized person in the world by being a conservative. Like she was very early to this sort of like power inversion style of rhetoric. Her early videos were also about how like feminism is no longer necessary because like

women secretly already have all the power in society and white supremacy isn't that big of a deal, etc., etc. The through line of all of Candace's early YouTube videos is that the people you've been told are oppressed under like white cis heteropatriarchy, whether they're black or queer or women, they're actually the ones with all the power and they're making unfair and ridiculous demands of straight white men, you know, like asking to, I don't know, not be hate crime. This is like very obviously not the case.

And like this podcast episode isn't going to be one where I like engage in good faith with every argument Candace Owens has ever made because like it's like someone's like pointing at the sky and being like, the sky is orange. And I'm like, well, the sky's blue. And it's like, what argument are we getting? It's just not true. But you can see how this early inversion of reality for her would lend itself to becoming like a full-blown conspiracy theorist, I think. Totally.

I feel like you can see the inklings of her dipping her toes into conspiratorial thinking, feeling persecuted, feeling targeted, feeling specifically attacked. And just like the way that also she's able to spin narratives up in her mind. Yeah. Yeah. Candice also leans heavily into the idea that the political left exaggerates the. existence and the threat of racism to coerce black voters and that the left is just hoping that black voters never like wake up to realizing that what's actually in their best interest, as she claims, is becoming, you know, a right winger who picks themselves up by their bootstraps

and magically stops letting white supremacy hold them back. That's the basic thesis of her 2020 book Blackout. And it's also the main premise for Blegzit. or black exit, which was a term that initially referred to a nonprofit in Minneapolis that encouraged black people to invest in black-owned institutions so as to not rely on white ones. It was like a positive thing for racial justice, but was co-opted by Candace in 2018 for her movement to encourage black voters to exit the Democratic Party, which by the way has been copied. And there is now a Jexit, which is a Jewish voters exiting the Democratic Party, which is led by right-wing Zionists.

And I see Jegxit posts shared all the time from people I grew up with on Facebook. I'm so glad we're all having fun. Are you having fun? It's so funny, though. I mean, obviously also a lot of it is related to like Brexit and Trump 1.0. Like it's so funny because it's just been iterated on so much. Yeah. What would that LGBT?

LGBT, ex-Libigit. Libigit. Yeah, but it's like she's correct. Like the reason that these movements have, aside from, from, you know, serving a very specific political purpose by, you know, minorities tokenizing themselves for profit because it's politically expedient for them, you know, for their own sort of career. I think like it's true that the Democratic Party takes minority voters for granted. Like when Joe Biden was running in 2020, like this is like one of the main arbiters of like

that crime bill in the 90s. that like incarcerated unprecedented levels of black people. Like none of those people in the Democratic establishment really do care about minorities, I would argue. You know, but neither do the conservatives. But it's like, I don't know, there is this compelling argument. And I do think that like a lot of people have been feeling more and more disenchanted with the Democratic Party.

And so like they end up falling for these right wing narratives. Totally. And yeah, I mean, it's obvious why this messaging from a black woman would resonate with a mostly white audience plagued by accusations of racism, white conservatives, love having members of minority groups tell them that they aren't actually racist, homophobic, transphobic, etc. Especially while they're supporting legislation, that disenfranchises those very groups. This part of her career, as I said up top, it makes the most sense to me because it's synonymous with so many of the conservative LGBT influencers I've covered on this podcast.

What's notable, though, to me is that despite the huge success, of these figures, there has never actually been that much of a shift in the voting basis of the groups that they claim to represent. Like, more than 80% of black voters and more than 80% of LGBTQ voters continue to vote Democrat as recently as the 2024 election, which is the same case that has been for decades and decades and decades. So, you know, as much as people like Candace and a lot of the people that I've covered on this podcast love to like ascribe like momentum to what they're doing on behalf of like the minority groups that they belong to. It is ultimately at the end of the day, mostly for like a heterosexual cisgender white male audience. A hundred percent. I mean,

Candace was always tokenized herself. Like Candice has always been the token black person. We can get into, I don't want to like jump ahead to the turning point stuff. But Candice was always a very useful tool to the Republican movement, especially the MAGA movement in Trump 1.0. Ironically, Trump 2.0 is more diverse. He gained significantly in the lieutenant vote. He did gain some black voters. I think the demographics of the country are shifting. A lot of young people of color did vote for him during this most recent election. But certainly back in late 2010s, I think that there was not a lot of diversity in that Trump sort of inner circle coalition. And so I think that she served a very, a very useful purpose. Also, she's beautiful and compelling and charismatic. Yes. Do you want to jump ahead to turning point

USA? Because I'm down if you're down. Yeah. Let's do it. I don't. I don't. I don't really often say those words in that order, but, you know. So naturally in 2017, amid allegations of racism at Turning Point USA, I can't imagine why Turning Point USA would end up being a racist workplace, but it's neither here nor there. Charlie Kirk hires Candace Owens to become the organization's director of urban engagement. Even that title feels racist. It does. It sounds like some 85 year old, like, white man. And it's interesting because at this point, Candice, who one of the very good things and one of the few good things that I would say about Candice Owens is that she is an incredible talent on camera. But at this point, she's still not doing on camera work. She is essentially like in the corporate ladder at Turning Point USA. She works there for two years. And while there, she really blossoms into a public figure. She is. is recognized by Donald Trump, who calls her a great thinker. And this is crazy.

I mean, Candice went from cat-stagramming, from, like, some shitty New York City apartment that we've all been there, to being recognized by the president of the United States in, like, a year. And in 2018, the following year, Kanye West tweets, quote, I love the way Candice Owens thinks. Put yourself in her shoes. Like, that's got to feel crazy. And this is also before Kanye became a full Nazi. But it's also before Candace became a full Nazi.

So, you know. This was such an interesting time because Turning Point was such a different organization. It didn't have the power it had now. It really was this upstart thing. I say upstart thing. It was funded by billionaires. Okay, this is most astro-turfed thing you've ever seen, which is funny. Because, you know, people think of Charlie Kirk as the founder of Turning Point.

He didn't found it alone. He founded it with this old-ass. you know, billionaire guy who died of COVID in 2020. And then, you know, Charlie died of gun violence, the irony there. But turning point was just getting started and they weren't seen as cool either. Like this is like before the like owned live stuff like had gone viral. Like 2017, it was actually peak resistance. Like it was pink pussy hat, women's march, girl boss.

I think that she was able to position herself as countercultural at that sort of pivotal time. and she started to ride that maga wave. Yeah. And it's also like part of her success is that she did this early. Because now everybody knows that if you are part of a minoritized group, you can slot yourself into this ecosystem so much so that I've spoken about this on this podcast. It's become oversaturated. Candice being Candice as pretty as she is and as good as she is on camera, if she were to try

to become Candice now, I don't think it would work because the slot has been filled so many times over. A hundred percent. She was right place, right time. Now it's just this well-trod path, and you have to be so compelling. Like, it's really hard. I just think of the way the influencer landscape has like fragmented and it's become so like niche-fied. It's so hard to amass the amount of attention and power and money. And I do think that the conservative influencers that were in there early, we're able to do that. But it's funny because a lot of them have flamed out or crashed out or been involved in controversy or Charlie Kirk is dead now. So it's like she is kind of like one of the few remaining ones who's been able to hold on to her audience and continue to become more relevant.

Yeah. I mean, Candace came up around the same time as Tommy Laren. Right. And Tommy Laren is kind of like flop. Where is Tommy Laren? I mean, that's a whole other episode. Let me know if you want it. But she, I mean, Tommy Laron at one point, and her ascendance to conservative media royalty was like, I think I might be a little bit pro-choice. And they were like, we will never hear from you again. That's where she went. Also, she was so tied to Facebook video. And I think Candice tied herself to YouTube very early. And I think that was also very smart.

Candice leaves Turning Point USA in 2019 to join Prager You, where she lives. launched the Candice Owens show and officially became an on-screen talent powerhouse. One year later, she leaves Prager You to join The Daily Wire, which has Ben Shapiro's online publication, where she hosted her own live political talk show called Candice, which had like a live studio audience and stuff. Now, these years when she was bouncing between Turning Point and Prager You and the Daily Wire and like all of the right wing networks, this is when Candice came onto my radar because when social autopsy happened, I was like in high school and did not know what was going on. And I mostly ignored Candace because like I said at the beginning, like I knew what

she was doing and I knew why she was succeeding. It was like a pretty standard grift that we've described where like a minority can do this on the right and she was just doing it particularly early and particularly well. So as she ascended the ranks and became incredibly wealthy and well watched among Republicans. To me, it kind of became background noise. And this would change. But before we get into how it changes, I want to talk about the Freedom Phone.

Oh, my God. Let's do it. Because these people are at the end of the day about their wallets. And that can take them into some pretty funny places. Candace is no exception. So in 2022, while at the Daily Wire doing her show, Candace began promoting the freedom phone,

which Taylor reported on at the time. Taylor, take it away. First of all, it was just a shitty Chinese Android. Let's just be clear. So throughout Trump 1.0, we saw the beginnings of the tech clash, and you started to see liberals be like, why did Donald Trump win? Not because of our broken economic system.

And we ran a, you know, historically unpopular candidate and, you know, haven't done anything for our base in years. No, it was because Facebook. Facebook is why Trump won and social media is bad. And actually, the government needs to be regulating speech and all this stuff. Conservatives were nasty platform. Like, right, we saw Alex Jones kicked off. Like, we saw a lot of conservatives and lose their audience for good reason, right?

Milo. Exactly. So they really invested heavily in building an alternative tech ecosystem, which included sites like Rumble, you know, the YouTube alternative. D-Live, a competitor to Twitch, GAB, Parlor, Truth Social, like basically like a mirror conservative universe for like everything. There's a conservative Amazon right now as well. Like everything that you can think of that's a major American tech company,

which is funny because now all the major American tech CEOs are just conservatives. But the phone stuff started after this because like basically, so Gab, was it Gab that couldn't be downloaded in the app store or Parlor? Parlor, which is just like a right wing like social media app. Yeah, so Parlor is like Gab or Tooth Social or any of these other right-wing social media apps. You couldn't download it in the app store because of the role that it played in January 6th organizers. Right. Like they were all on it.

And then after January 6th, the app stores, the mainstream app stores, we're like, we're not going to offer this anymore. Long story short, they already built this alternative app ecosystem. And around this time is when you start to see conservatives be like, wait a minute, if they can ban this. app, what else can I take from us, right? Like, you, are they going to take our phones? Are you going to be like China? Where they determine what apps go on your phones? But the Freedom Phone was the beginning of a lot of these conservative phones. Like, we have the Trump phone now, which again is just, they're all just like shitty Android. But it was a way to, it was like, it was like, you can have this Freedom Phone and download whatever apps you want. And I think it came pre-installed with Parlor

or something. Right. They offer this phone for $500. But $450. 50, if you use the code Candace, by the way. They're positioning it as in opposition to like woke Apple and like woke Google. They pre-installed the phone with an uncensored app store that included Parlor and the apps that were banned elsewhere, which are now no longer banned because like you said, these tech companies just became far right when it became economically expedient for them to do so. As you said, the actual physical phone, which they were charging $500 for, first of all, it took eight months to end up shipping it out to people, which was a whole controversy because people ordered it and then it just never came. And then eight months later, it arrived and it's an Umi Digi 8-9, which is a Chinese

smartphone that you can buy for $120 running on an Android system. Of course. Which is just awesome. But my favorite part of this, Candice was like the face of this because she was very famous, ready. And she tweeted about buying the freedom phone on July 14th, 2021. I just did a live on Instagram talking everyone through the new freedom phone, which is now trending. So excited that I partnered with a solution against Apple and Google. Use code Candace for 10% off. This was when on Twitter, you could still see what type of device someone was tweeting from. And it was fucking sent from

iPhone. Of course. Of course. I love it. It's so ridiculous because nobody wants to use these crappy Android phones. Just the way Trump is not using his Trump gold phone or whatever. It's so funny. And now, of course, they all have their own like wireless network too. That's like another grift. It is just interesting how like a core part of these conservative grifter business models is creating like a conservative version branding wise of every product that is otherwise like. just a normal product. Like I remember during the Dylan Mulvaney Bud Light controversy, yes. When one of these influencers came out with ultra right beer and it was just beer that you could buy for like an extraordinarily high price for a six pack and it was like just beer,

but they were like, this beer is never going to be trans or like, you know, fucking whatever. But it's like, it's just such a bullshit. It's the like the razor. What's the, uh, you know, when Dollar Shave Club went woke or whatever. You had like the freedom raisers or whatever. Freedom. I mean, what I will say, literally. Oh, man. But what I will say about this, Matt, the right has an ecosystem of brands to support conservative influencers because conservative influencers couldn't for a long time get

mainstream brand deals. Now, conservative influencers have the entire right wing brand ecosystem, which is flourishing, and the entire mainstream brand. brand ecosystem. Liberals have the mainstream brand ecosystem. People on the left have no brand. People on the left have Patreon. Yeah. Like there's no like leftist Amazon. And I don't mean Patreon the company. I just mean like we have patrons. We have to beg. No, we have to beg our audiences to subscribe to us and like give us, you know, whatever amount of month because we don't have a fake woke phone company that can sponsor us. Yeah. Yeah. What would the leftist phone?

be. Guys, use code mat for 10% off the gay phone. Yeah. Yeah, it would be just like rainbow. I don't know. You can set your pronouns. Pre-installed with Grindr. Yeah, exactly. But it's like also, it's so funny because like, they were so early to identifying those problems with tech too. Like they were so early to identify all these speech problems and all these de-platforming issues and all of that stuff. And they just, they capitalized on it. Wow. Yeah. It's just another example of them identifying the momentum of like a real problem and a real feeling that people are having of surveillance, of free speech, of all of this sort of like collapsing on itself. Frankly, as a result of free market capitalism and then being like, we're going to give you something worse.

Yeah. I would like to give a shout out two factor for sponsoring this episode of the show. Many people know that this a bit fruity operation is largely a one-person operation. I do basically everything. And lately, I've just been kind of like busy to the point of losing my mind a little bit. For example, after my live podcast tour, I had some merch left over that I decided to sell online and donate all the proceeds to Palestine, which was a resounding success. Thank you to everyone who bought a shirt.

But the reality of the situation was that. that I had like 250 shirts and totes sitting in my apartment that I had to send out myself. So I spent the last two days, so many hours, the last two days, like printing labels with a thermal printer that I got and like packaging orders like on the floor of my living room, which was really quite a joy. And shout out to the majority report, which I had on in the corner of my room the entire time while I was packing orders. It was honestly kind of fun.

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And in March 2024, Ben Shapiro, head of the Daily Wire, fires Candace Owens for reportedly anti-Semitic comments she made and engaged with on Twitter. This is where things start to get to the Candace we know today. At the time, this is five months after October 7th. Israel had already killed 30,000 people in its genocide on Gaza. And Candice was, like many of us, critical of U.S. aid to Israel. but was simultaneously going on rants about Jewish people more broadly. She said common sense things like American taxpayers shouldn't have to pay for Israel's wars

or the wars of any other country. And she said that Benjamin Netanyahu is committing a Holocaust on Palestinian children and women, which are things that I agree with and things that people across America broadly agree with. But then Candice also says things like she compares Jews in Hollywood to the Bloods and Crips gangs. Candice very intentionally doesn't separate Jews from Zionism and uses, like, the very real violence of Zionism and understandable anger towards Israel as a way to do audience capture for her anti-Semitic conspiracy theories.

And this is why I have said this a number of times on this podcast. She and people like Tucker and Nick Fuentes, they are some of the most infuriating things as an anti-Zionist Jew. And I think for anti-Zionists in general, who come from a place of humanitarian concern and wanting equality for all people, and they exploit these desires that, by the way, the Democratic Party has spent two years leaving wide open on the table. And again, it's another example of there being like a really real gap in solutions for like, I have all of this anger towards a colony of the United States committing a genocide on people with my attack. dollars, and with no real solutions coming from the government, we still send aid to Israel regularly. Here comes Candice Owens to sell you whatever she wants to sell you, including conspiracy theories about Jewish people that are wildly untrue and bastardize the Palestinian

cause, bastardize the fight against anti-Semitism. But also, Israel and Zionists paved the way for someone like this to flourish by insisting that there is no distinction between Judaism and Zionism. So yeah, I'm ranting. It's just really frustrating. I think like the last point you made is really crucial here, which is that ultimately it's the Zionists that continue to force this narrative that there is no difference between Jewish people and Zionism and that these two things are interchangeable. And I mean, this is something that Netanyahu, and again, the Zionist government in Israel continues to point to. Or they say, you know, well, look, the majority of Jews do support Zionism. right, these things that make it very hard for people to separate the two. And I think that when

you, you know, look at someone like Candace Owens or whatever, yeah, they want, they want people like her to exist. They want to conflate Judaism with Zionism and then be able to point to a conspiracy theorist or somebody saying hateful anti-Semitic things and say, like, look, see, like, look at how bad that is. Look at how dangerous the world is. This is why we need Israel, right? Israel needs anti-Semitism to exist and needs anti-Semitism to flourish around the world in order to justify its weaponry and its very existence. Exactly. And it's around this time that Candace makes what now seems like a pretty obvious bedfellow in

the neo-Nazi Nick Fuentes. It's also around this time that she starts blaming Jews for everything in eerily similar ways that very early on she blamed Zoe Quinn and the Gamergate victims for leading a secret war against her in the social autopsy days. That's one of the really interesting aspects of the exercise we do on this podcast is like going back and finding these moments where you're like, oh yeah, like you don't understand how power works and you're very willing to like ascribe crazy conspiracy theories to anything that like, I don't know, satiates your feelings of persecution and hatred of minorities, I think. Yeah. I mean, it's very funny. First of all, as many of

pointed out very ironic that Ben Shapiro kind of ultimately turned on her over Israel when this is sort of why I think Ben Shapiro and a lot of these people are ultimately losing in the conservative movement. It's because like you've aligned yourself with fascists. You can't say that you're fine sacrificing the rights of, you know, gay people, trans people, women, black people, right? Oh, but then Jewish people are this protected class and oh, but you can say, no, like, again, you're going to get Nick Fuentes. You're going to get these people that fundamentally don't believe in the rights of And do believe in hate speech and do believe in all this stuff. So I kind of, I'm not sympathetic to Candace, but it is ironic, right?

Because it's like, she's like, oh, here's where you draw the line. But this is what you've been paying me to say for the past few years, right? About her own race of people, black people. So it's just ridiculous. This is what drives me crazy about right wing Zionists like Ben Shapiro. I mean, I think Zionists in general are right wing. And I've made that case on this podcast before. But like people who explicitly align themselves with the right, with Trump, with mass.

with fascism. But then they think that their interests in the nation state of Israel, which is like a geostrategic military outpost for the U.S., they think that is going to also serve their interests as Jews. And like you said, I mean, white Christian nationals, they will come after every other minority. Eventually they're going to come for you too. And a lot of people ask me, especially like other Jews with Zionist families who are struggling with how to talk to them and who I get it. Like I've had to have conversations within my family of especially older Jews who have existed for decades and decades and decades with this idea that the only thing that can keep Jews safe is the state of Israel. We've seen demonstrably how Israel is endangering Jews globally.

But then they ask, like, what do I tell my parents when they ask, like, how do I convince them of this? And what is it that keeps Jews safe? And the answer is what keeps Jews safe is what keeps every other group of minorities. safe, which is a respect for other human beings in a political sense, which is political equality, which is a recognition of multiculturalism and everybody's ability to practice their religion, to exist in their body, to love who they love. Like equal rights and the enshrining of equal rights into law and making that the norm in society, that's what keeps Jews safe the way that it

keeps every other minority group safe. And when you refuse to recognize that, you find yourself in the position of Ben Shapiro firing Candice Owens for hating Jews. Well, yeah, I mean, both of you agree that every other minority is a reasonable target. So, of course, of course Jews would end up being one too. 100%. And this is why Ben Shapiro is losing a thousand subscribers a day on YouTube and Candice Owens' his descendant. In the wake of Candice Owens' breakup with Benny Boy Shapiro,

she goes nuclear on Jews, soaking up her newfound ability to do so without, consequences. She begins singing the praises of Nick Fuentes. She blames. There's like a lot of things she said about the Jews. I can't list all of them. I also don't want to. But a few are that she blames Jews for sexual abuse in the Catholic Church. I don't really know how that one worked. She said that Sigmund Freud and Stalin, who she incorrectly labeled as Jewish, were part of a Jewish cabal. She said that JFK was assassinated by A-PAC. And in that way, she is always weaving her anti-Israel sentiment with anti-Semitic sentiment. Also, despite Candace feeding into some like anti-Semitic conspiracy theories, like, let's be clear,

she was fired for Daily Wire in part because she tweeted like genocide is always wrong. Like, she did come out really strong in support of Palestinians and children and focused a lot on children. And I think that set her up to be this like martyr where I think a lot of people were suddenly looking at her like, well, wait a minute, Ben Shapiro, why do you have a problem with this stuff? The comments that got her ultimately fired, it was a lot about Gaza. Well, and this is the thing. She always is saying both of these sort of anti-Zionist things and the anti-Semitic things

like in the same breath in a way that makes it really hard to disentangle. And like she was saying really anti-Semitic stuff, but I agree that like she could have just been, for example, like calling it genocide and Ben Shapiro would have fired her. Exactly. Ben Shapiro can say, you know, anti-Semitism is bad and he's right about some of the things that she was saying. But ultimately, working at Ben Shapiro's company will not give you room to criticize Israel. And that's what she was doing.

Exactly. So outside of this kind of stuff, one of Candice's first big beats after Ben Shapiro fires her is her crusade against Blake Lively in the legal battle that she had with Justin Baldoni. Taylor, could you explain just a little bit about like how Candice used the anti-Blake lively crusade to become president of the misogyny slop ecosystem? Yes. And sort of her pivot from like conservative recruitment through hard politics and like talking about political issues to this sort of like cultural news celebrity gossip thing that she got into. Yeah. So Candice was very early to covering the Blake lively Justin Baldoni legal feud. Obviously she was pro Baldoni and anti Blake lively. She used it as a way to rail against me too. Essentially Blake lively and Justin Baldoni were filming this movie together. Blake lively made allegations that Justin Baldoni sexually harassed her. There's evidence that what she said was true. There's other allegations against Baldoni.

I don't want to like litigate the whole case. But it's about sexual harassment in the workplace. And that should have been unacceptable. And yet people were so quick to defend Baldoni. So, you know, to say again, me too had gone too far. Women make these allegations. Never mind that Blake Lively had no reason to make these allegations, right? Yeah, she didn't, she didn't need Justin Baldoni's money.

I don't think Blake lively was looking for a payday. Nor is she looking for fame. She's way more famous than him. The whole thing is just ridiculous. But Candace hopped on that story very early and did a lot of like almost daily coverage of it. And she's always used pop culture news to like grow her audience. She covered Megan Nostali.

And she'll cover a lot of these like entertainment-y type stories because she knows that it broadens her audience and it gets those normie listeners in. And then she can sort of convert them. And of course, as she's covering this pop culture news, she's covering it through a conservative bent. Yes, like an anti-woman, anti-me-2, we don't actually need, like, you know, rules and regulations around sexual harassment in the workplace. This has all gone too far. Fascinatingly, echoing some sentiments from her blog post from Degree 180 10 years earlier. Yes.

This was the point that I started hearing something that I hear a lot now, which is people being like, I've never agreed with Candace Owens. But she has some points. This bothers me so much because it's like, okay, so you're falling for reactionary rhetoric. I want to ask you to talk to that type of person, though, like in good faith. Because they are falling for reactionary rhetoric, but also like, I don't want them to. I think when you think of conservatives or you think of right-wingerers, you think of these people that have said a lot of, like, hateful rhetoric, I think people will be like, I could never agree with them. Right.

Oh, I'm so shocked that I agree with them on something. And it's like with the Blake lively Justin Baldoni thing. She's just doing the sort of classic anti-me-to rhetoric. And it's the same thing with the Amber Hurd stuff. It's the same thing with Megan Markle. Anybody that falls for these misogynistic hate campaigns is like, I can't believe I'm believing with Candice Owens. I hate to be the one to tell you, but you have become susceptible to a misogynist hate campaign.

And those campaigns are very compelling. And you're not going to realize that you're falling for that. What you're going to do is you're going to ingest a very biased and warped, you know, stream of information and news that's presented in this very sort of warped way. And then your conclusion is going to be like, wow, this lying bitch, right? And before you know it, you have fallen for misogynistic hate. Which has, I would argue, left you more susceptible to like anything else conservative say. Which leads you more susceptible to that other stuff because you start to, one, you've now fallen for a conservative line of thinking. And you're like, well, what else was I wrong

about? Well, what else do I agree with her? Seeker. Oh, I can't believe I agree with Candace Owens. maybe civil rights have gone too far or whatever, right? Like suddenly you go down this rabbit hole and you just start listening to more and more conservative messaging. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Gosh, Candace just came out. We just took a two-second break and Taylor opened her phone and it was Candace. You're so fucked.

Candice's latest act is I think she's understood. I mean, she definitely can understand those viewership numbers. And she knows that tapping into something a little more pop cultural and like a little more conspiratorial, a little more out there than just like commenting on the political news of the day is what her audience wants and what's growing it. So she's continued with celebrity stuff, but it's just gotten off the real. So this is the point where I kind of lose my ability to understand what the hell she's talking about anymore. But we're so lucky to be joined on this podcast today by someone who's kept up with it every single day.

I'm really a Candace lore head. I was at a like wine night with a couple gay guys. And one of them, this guy that I've known for years, was like, have you seen Candice Owens's Bridget McCrone transvestigation? And I was like, I don't look at that. Like I'm again, back to the top of the episode, that is a rash. that I'm avoiding acknowledging. And he was like, I don't agree with Candace on anything. But she makes some points.

And I was like, no. Oh my God. So, and I know some people came to this episode today wanting us to like get into the weeds of every fucking thing she says with these conspiracy theories. And I didn't honestly, like that's not what I do in this podcast. Because like I said, engaging with what she's actually saying is not that interesting. Looking at why she's saying it and what she gains from it, that's sort of my speed, but my understanding of this conspiracy is that Bridget McRone, the first lady of France,

is a trans woman who was born under her brother's name and has been committing identity fraud, and that Candace has been the biggest purveyor of this conspiracy and refuses to back down, and now the McCrowns are suing her. Yes, that's exactly right. Is that the tea? Yes. The thing is, is that there is a lot of weird stuff with the first. First Lady of France. Like, I mean, the fact that she's almost 25 years older than McCrone,

she met him when he was a teenager, 14 or 15 or something? Yes, I was going to say, the real scandal about Bridget McRone is that in 1993, at the age of 39, Bridget met 15-year-old Emmanuel McCrone at the high school where she was a teacher and he was a student. But that's not what Candace is talking about. There's this really brilliant French reporter whose name is completely slipping me. She did this like really great presentation on Candace Owens and this conspiracy a while ago in New York. And I thought it was so smart because it was like there's this big conservative effort to paint trans people as pedophiles. And that is this ongoing campaign. And in this case, we have this very well-known pedophile essentially. Right. It's sort of this reverse effort to make

her trans. Oh. And to sort of. continue to conflate these things. That's basically what's happening. Because my biggest question around this Bridget McCrone stuff when I started catching wind of like Candace Owens like powering through a lawsuit from the McCrones because she's like, she, I think Candice has literally said, I will die on this hill. Yeah. And my biggest question is like, why? What you just gave me is the most coherent explanation, but I kind of still don't understand why she would die on this hill. Like, it's so weird. Well, now I think she's just in it too late. Right. Now she can't, you can't back down on the internet, right? Like, once you're in it, you're in it and she can't

go back now. And it is weird. Like I think actually Candace does believe some of this stuff. She falls for things that I don't think. Like, I mean, she'll say like, oh, we fact check. We have evidence of these things. But she, I think she's susceptible to misinformation from people. And I think that she's convinced herself that this stuff is true about Brigitte. I, I think there is weird stuff about Brigitte. I think she was probably a pedophile. Yeah. I mean, that's, I'm not disputing that.

But like, but there's a lot of weird stuff around her life. You know what I mean? And also just like records. Like, Brigitte's like 65 years old. Like they didn't have everything digitized. There are weird inconsistencies when you dig into her life and probably anyone's life, especially from those, you know, that age. But that doesn't mean that her conspiracy theories are true.

That's just one of many of her. That's a big series for her. And that's been a big thing. That got a lot. of people in as well after the Blake lively stuff and then she moved on to Charlie. Well, Anna, at a certain point, I mean, because I think the average person might be like a YouTuber is getting sued by the president of France and his wife. Like, why would you not just concede at that point?

Because they're going to bankrupt you. I do think people underestimate how much money Candace Owens makes. Oh, yeah. I mean, she's a conservative. So she could make like tens of millions of dollars. Who knows? She's making, I mean, from YouTube, she's making millions, undeniably. She's making millions from her.

her YouTube and her advertising and stuff. But that's not even the weird consulting thing. Like, the right-wing ecosystem is so flush with money and she's married to a rich guy. Like, she's rich. Like, there's no question that she's rich. I just think that even if they successfully sue her, she will still have profited from the series that she made on this conspiracy. Obviously. Yeah, 100%. And also, like, it's not even clear. Like, this is France and we're the U.S. and we have freedom of speech and you can say whatever conspiracy, you know, like, It's a very weird legal case that they're launching. And frankly, it's a huge mistake on the Macron's.

They have legitimized this conspiracy theory by the way that they've responded to it. Yes, Barbara Streisand effect. They have legitimized and confirmed aspects of it in ways too unintentionally. Exactly. And it's ironic now it only has elevated her. It's like this is what also conservatives understand very well, like these influencers. is like whoever you pick your battles with, like that puts you on the same level of that person. So you have the first lady of France, this massively important international figure of a woman,

is like obsessing over this random YouTuber. Like that just elevates her status. And now she's getting rid of, you know, getting rid of it and all the prep. Like everyone has to pay attention to her. It puts her on this global stage. Totally. Candice Owens, respond to me. Debate me.

Please respond to my podcast. So we'll listen to a bit. Rudy. And now Candace's latest act, her biggest conspiracy of them all so far, her audience is growing at a rate that is truly unthinkable because of her conspiracy around the assassination of her former best friend and employer, Charlie Kirk. Taylor, I have been trying so hard to not pay attention to this. And now it's just like so big. It's like Erica Kirk is taking meetings, private meetings with Candace Owens to like squash conspiracies around her husband's death. I've been trying so hard to not pay attention, but it's just gotten so big. And also

we're making a podcast about it. All I know is that Candace doesn't think that Charlie Kirk's death was a straightforward assassination by like some disgruntled 20 year old, but actually a larger plot with nefarious actors, including Israel. There's something. about Egyptian planes. I think actually she's pulled the McCrones into this too, maybe, or the French. Yes.

The DuPont family. Yes. That's all I know. The U.S. military at Fort Wachuga. Fill me in. You watch this every night. I know you watch this over dinner. So please.

I know. No, I just, I mean, listen, I watch so much content all day long. Just to keep to, I also like, I'm very fascinated by what's going on in the right, like on the right right now. And like, I mean, it's the same reason I watch Nick Fuentes or watch a lot of these liberal influencers too. I just kind of like watch a little bit of everything so that I'm informed when I talk about this stuff on the internet, which is my job. So, so I think what's so interesting about this conspiracy is like the right was really trying to use this as this moment to like galvanize, you know, power against like the liberals and stuff. And she ended up just completely fracturing their movement. Charlie Kirk's assassination. Charlie Kirk's assassination. She doesn't believe that it's cut. dry. And I think there are a lot of really weird things about the case, just the way that there were weird

things about like the Trump assassination shooter or whatever, right? And that has left that had that opens the door for conspiracy theories. And for any random guy to be like, oh, yeah, well, I think I saw so and so, you know, at this army base just days before. And and why were these Egyptian planes, you know, trailing around Erica Kirk? I don't know what the Egyptian planes are. Well, so the Egyptian planes are fundamentally like, I think it's like, it's not, we don't have time. Like, it would, it's going to, it would take me like an hour at least. It's not worth understanding. And also it changes every single day.

There is new. Fundamentally, she doesn't believe that Charlie was killed by Tyler, or at least that Tyler didn't act alone. And I think there's a lot we don't know. There's just a lot. We don't know. This trial hasn't happened. It's all been closer.

We don't even have, I think, like video footage of Tyler being apprehended. Like, there's just a lot that we don't know. And it is, you know, you've seen this from a lot of. conservative like gun influencers as well that are like, well, how would this gun with this bullet have done this damage? Like, doesn't make sense. Like there's just a lot of unanswered questions. And when there's a lot of unanswered questions on the internet, there might be completely legitimate explanations for those things. But when there's not transparency and you have podcasters, by the way, running the FBI and, you know, just this like joke of a political system, people don't trust anything. And by the way,

this is an audience of people of conservatives, which is so funny. Again, I love that the conservatives are now dealing with their own conspiracies. Because it's like you guys fostered this movement. You cultivated this. You cultivated a fandom of conspiracy theorists of people that don't trust institutions that don't trust the federal government. Like no one should trust the federal government. Well, and now it's driving a wedge in the movement.

Exactly. And now Trump is the federal government too, you know, so. Could you explain how Candice is kind of like tearing right through the American right with this stuff? Yeah. I mean, I think that she's just not allowing them to use Charlie's death the way that they want to. And this is what I mean why, like, I truly think her live stream on Monday was so good, where, like, she sort of was so able to effectively articulate this feeling where she talks about,

like, she talks about like, she's like, we criticize Hollywood. Like, we criticized all the liberals for years for like, you know, for gaslighting us, you know, blah, blah, blah. And then here we have to watch Erica Kirk on stage. a glittery jumpsuit with fireworks around her. And by the way, they've taken, you know, the tent that Charlie was shot dead in a replica of it. And they're touring that around America and people can take pictures in it. Like, oh yeah, the assassination selfie booth. It's weird. And like, conservatives, like the MAGA, the mainstream MAGA conservatives won't say it's weird. They're like,

what do you mean? Oh, she's a grieving widow. How dare you question her? You know, how do you? And I think to most normal people, they're like, okay, but that's weird. And also, why is she the CEO of Turning Port? And also what? And also she said what? She said she didn't date anyone before Charlie. Turns out she did. Like, why can't we question her? Why can't we? You know, and so I think that that's opened up this sort of fracture in the movement and Candace has just plowed through it. And then like, you're right. It is weird. And by the way, like something is weird in society. Something is sick in society. Again, it's capitalism, guys. Like, we know it's actually a lot of systemic like issues. But conservatives are very good at, especially successful right-week influencers are very good at identifying these problems.

speaking to people's emotional feelings and then leveraging those to like spin these narratives that ultimately serve their worldview. I think my big question with her newest iteration, which seems to be just like these increasingly bizarre and like hard to understand conspiracy theories, is like what is the function of this increasingly insular detached from reality conspiracy land that Candace is building around herself? It's not just Candace, though. She's indicative of this broader.

Look at somebody, look at the rise of someone like the Dreia, the Drea chronicles or whatever, that leftist conspiracy theorist. It is suddenly getting hundreds of thousands of views claiming that, you know, just ridiculous nonsense that like Elon Musk is trialing neuralink on undocumented immigrants or like there's a data center being built below the Trump ballroom or something. Like there's all these like leftist conspiracies too. And you're seeing actually a lot of people that are gaining traction online in the past several months are conspiracy theorists. And conspiracy theories, they're hitting so hard right now because everyone's just getting really blackpilled and getting really fed up with both political parties, fed up with the system, fed up with institutions.

They don't know who to trust, but they recognize that we're all getting exploited and fucked over. And so it's like, which brand of conspiracy do you want? Candice's brand is incredibly compelling and she has this huge audience and she already has this conservative sort of people that are primed to believe this slot that she's giving them. The thing that strikes me about Candace, though, and this is really where she's departed for me from like the traditional right-wing influencer route is like she does not care about the health or popularity of the Republican Party anymore, it seems. Which is smart of her.

Which is smart of her career-wise, but it's like I think which way conservative of grifter. You can become like the Erica Kirk now or you can become the Candace Owens. I think they represent two very real factions, which is right. Erica Kirk is like, I want the billionaire donors at Turning Point USA and CPAC and all these things to continue giving us more money than ever. And we can just like firm up the Republican institutions. Whereas you have Candice and like Candice doesn't give a fuck what happens, you know, as long as Candice does well for Candice. Yeah. And I don't think that like she's leaving the Republican Party as some sort of like savvy move. No, she's not. And I will also say that a lot of people in my own audience that I've gotten messages from have been like kind of thinking that like Candice is doing a left pivot and she's not. I really want people to understand that like just because she's anti-Trump and anti-genocide. Like we've seen from Marjorie Taylor Green. Like that does not mean you are becoming a leftist. She's not becoming leftist. You're a hundred percent. right. But right now in the Republican Party, right? And really since the Epstein binder thing, but more since it's been happening since Trump took power. Suddenly, this like reactionary movement that was sort of so much of Trumpism is about like drain the swamp, right? Like Trump is in power. Trump has seized power. Trump has, you know, he sees aggressive authoritarian control of the United States. Now you're seeing him cover all this stuff up. You're seeing, again, like the actually mass censorship being enacted under his watch, all this stuff. Right. He's the swamp. Exactly. And the smart right-wing influencers are, also thinking Trump's going to die. This is not, he's not, there's no third term for him, right?

Like he's going to die. What does a post-Maga world look like? And how can I best position myself to function in that world? And they're getting, they're jumping off the ship early because they know that that ship is ultimately going down. Hmm. I don't know where they're going, but they're certainly not going to the left. She's not becoming leftist.

No, she's not. And that's why I said at the very top, I was like, Candice Owens brought millions of people, I think, into MAGA. And now she's taking millions. of people out of MAGA, but that does not mean she's taking them to where I think is a healthy place to be ideologically. And I guess where I want to wrap this up is like to all of these people who are either like getting swept up in Candace content, who have siblings who are getting swept up in Candice content like many of the listeners of this podcast. I think the answer might

be bleak, but I hope there's an optimistic version of it. Like what do we do? What, what at least can we say to those people to give them a better off-ramp than like wherever crazy place Candace is trying to take them, you know, for her own benefit. I mean, unfortunately, I think this just goes back to the fact of like, it's not just Candace. Candice is just the face of this shift that's happening online towards conspiracism. It's been happening for a long time. I think a lot of the solutions are like systemic. And I think like Candace is certainly not addressing those systemic problems.

What I would say is, okay, even if Israel, killed Charlie Kirk, which I don't think they did. What? Oh, because that's a big part of her whole thing. Yeah. Or the government. So what are we going to do about it? Like, okay, you're right. The government does, by the way, the government does do, you know, assassinations. Usually have like foreign leaders in countries or whatever. Like, I don't know, we shouldn't trust the government. She's right. When she say like, oh, they're giving us fed slop or whatever. Yeah, police lie. Federal law enforcement lies all the time. That's good to not trust them.

Yeah. An ICE agent fucking killed a woman today. Yes. So what are we going to do about it? Like, Candace is not proposing those solutions. And I think that we need to get behind people that are willing to hold power to account. And also just to recognize, like, the other thing that drives me crazy about these conspiracy theorists and this movement, especially on the left, which you're seeing a lot more people on the left gets sucked into right-wing conspiracies and these leftist conspiracies. It's like the world is bad enough, right? Like, the world is bad enough. The stuff that we know is bad, is bad. Like, they're already sending undocumented immigrants to concentration camps.

why do you need Elon Musk to be doing neuralink on them? Why is that compelling to you? But like the reality of this other stuff isn't. Like, why do you have to make the world more depraved in these ways? I think of that viral Reddit post that went viral recently of the guy that was like, I'm a whistleblower at a door dash delivery app company or something. Yeah. And they have a desperation score and they do that stuff.

And of course, none of that was true. It was totally written by AI. The guy was an AI grifter. It was all this fake thing. But we have 10 years of journalism showing how unethical these delivery companies are. Why is that not enough? You know, we should rally behind regulating these companies instead of like falling for conspiracy theories. And that's how I feel about like the Charlie Kirk shooting stuff too.

It's like not that it was bad enough, but like, gun violence is a problem every day. Exactly. Exactly. Gun violence is a problem every day. Like, why don't we address that? Yeah. I think Candace is just going to continue. I don't know.

It'll be interesting to see kind of how she evolves. And I don't think that the Charlie stuff is going to last her forever. No, but she'll find something new to sink her teeth into. She'll have to find something else. Yeah. And you know where you will never find Candice Owens' podcast? On the new gay phone, use code fruity for 10%. You know I got to end on a joke, Taylor.

You know I do. Ironically, we do need a free speech phone. If we ever needed a free speech phone now, Now is the time. Taylor Lorenz, thank you so much for joining me on this journey today. I am sorry for what you put yourself through watching this woman every single day. But it, you know, Candice at the end of the day, these figures like her, they become so big and so famous and so, despite broadcasting themselves to the world, so constantly almost like enigmatic in a sense.

But at the end of the day, I'm like, this is a 36-year-old. from Connecticut. And I like demystifying that for people because I think it all brings us back to Earth. A hundred percent. Taylor, where can people find and support your work? I have a Patreon. Support me on Patreon. My YouTube channel, though, subscribe to my YouTube. I'm on every social platform at Taylor Lorenz. But yeah, find my stuff over there. Support another girl from just a small town girl from Connecticut. Support who doesn't have a freedom phone deal. Support Candice Owens. this is warrior. I appreciate you so much for this, this, this, this, God damn it. I appreciate you so much for listening to this episode. If you've made it this far, I hope you're taking care of

yourself. We all need to. I love you so much. And until next time, stay fruity.