It Could Happen Here - Candace Owens' Hollywood Tabloid Pivot feat. Bridget Todd

Episode Date: March 11, 2025

Bridget Todd talks with Gare about how disgraced Daily Wire podcaster Candace Owens is using a celebrity scandal to rebrand her conservative politics for a normie audience.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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But I've not done a deep dive the way you have. So I'm very excited to hear an update on this character. So it sounds like we are in a similar place when it comes to this person. And this person is none other than Candice Owens. First of all, what are your thoughts on her? Because I am low key fascinated with her. I follow her on social media. I watch her videos.

Like I am like weirdly captivated by her. I mean, I've, I've covered her mostly through her involvement with Daily Wire. I've talked a little bit about kind of how that all fell apart, you know, like a year and a half ago or so. I've talked a little bit about kind of how that all fell apart, you know, like a year and a half ago or so. I've talked a little bit about her involvement in Turning Point USA with Charlie Kirk, and she's just kind of been one of these like randomly, you know, like, like orbiters of like the online, like right wing content sphere for like, I don't know, the past six years at least.

And I typically focus more on like, you know, like the Ben Shapiro's, the Matt Walsh's, you know, back in the day, the Steven Crowder's and stuff. But Candace was always just like around. And like, she definitely like went after a different demographic than what like my usual focuses, right? Like I'm focused on like, what's going on with straight white men? Like why, why are they like this? And who, who is targeting them?'s like the Matt Walsh, like, Steven Crowder kind of angle. But Candace Owens has kind of a broader net that she targets with her content. So she's always kind of come up as a side character. I don't think I've ever done a distinct focus on her before,

besides just whatever kind of crazy post or anti-trans or very weird racist rant that she goes on every once in a while. Yes, so there is so much to talk about when it comes to Candace Owens. I'm sort of like you, I sort of saw her as a side character but only recently have I realized, oh, people in my life are listening to Candace Owens

and citing Candace Owens and they have no idea anything about her backstory, all the stuff that you were just talking about. She's reinvented herself multiple times. And some people who mainly come at this from the anti-fascist research perspective might not be aware of her latest rebrand, which is what I'm excited to hear about today.

Yes. I just remembered how she had that whole event with Kanye when she did her BLM documentary. That was a whole other Candice era. Yeah, so much. Oh my god. I have to say, I was low-key embarrassed for her because during her Kanye West era, she was like, Kanye West designed the couture outfits for my blexit movement. And Kanye West was like, no, I fucking didn movement and Kanye West was like no I fucking didn't and like I was like oh they're so embarrassing that you like that you like

publicly aligned yourself with Kanye West only for him to basically like diss you publicly right after yeah and then come out as like an explicit neo-nazi like two weeks later yes yes oh Candice. So I want to talk about her. Like, I don't want to spend too much time on her background, but there are some pieces that I think, like, are good for understanding kind of who she is, this chameleon figure that she's been. Totally. If there is not, like, a Behind the Bastards on her, do you know if there is?

There should be if there's not. Not yet. Similarly on Bastards, she's been one of these, like, recurring characters. Oh my god. But she has not had a distinct focus. Robert Evans, get on it, because we need the Candace Owens behind the Bastards. So, Candace grew up in Stamford, Connecticut.

While she was a student there, she went through this horrible sounding racial harassment. A classmate left her this racist death threat on her voicemail that turned into a pretty serious local scandal, because it turned out the student who made that threat her voicemail that turned into like a pretty serious local scandal because it turned out that Student who made that threat via voicemail did so in a car with a group of students that included the son of The then mayor and then future Democratic governor of Connecticut, Daniel Malloy So she got tons of support from the local chapter of the NAACP, and her family ended up suing the Stanford Board of Education

and Federal Court for failing to protect her rights, resulting in a $37,500 settlement. She went on to study journalism at University of Rhode Island before dropping out. This is like the early 2000s? Yes, this was like young, like baby Candace, high school Candace before she was the Candace Owen that we know today.

Yeah. So I sort of, like, almost see a little bit of myself and where she got her start. Like me, she was an early adopter of using the internet to talk about things like race and politics. Like me, that also seemed to sort of manifest in a lot of, like, low-hanging fruit shitposts on the early days of blogging.

Like in 2015, she was writing blogs making fun of Trump's penis size. Sure, many such cases. Yes, many such cases. So in 2015, Owens is writing a blog called Degree 180, where she wrote pieces criticizing conservative Republicans writing about the quote, batshit crazy antics of the Republican Tea Party.

The good news is they will eventually die off peacefully and in their sleep we hope. And then we can get right on with the obvious social change that needs to happen immediately she wrote on her blog. So back then she was really someone who had like a progressive point of view and was doing a lot of public writing about what she was seeing and experiencing in politics at the time.

Yeah, no, this is something that I guess some people might not know if they've only like become aware of her through daily wires. Yeah, like in the pre-2016 like BuzzFeed internet kind of sphere, she was just like one of like these people who would yeah have like, you know, progressive like ish takes, criticize embarrassing politicians and overtly racist stuff happening. And then the degree to which this heel turn happens is one of the most stark examples I've seen in like a... I'm trying to think of it if there's any exact parallel.

There's certainly some detransition grifters. There used to be ex-gay influencers. Or this is like proto-influencers, kind of before influencers were a thing. Like ex-gay speakers. But yeah, the switch around on Candace from these blog posts is so concentrated. So in her own words, she describes it as happening overnight. There you go. Yeah.

How it happened is like fascinating to me. So in 2016, when Gamergate was in full swing, Owens launched a Kickstarter for a project called Social Autopsy, which she described as a way to catalog the abuses of trolls and cyberbullies. Fun fact, that Kickstarter is still up today. It is such a weird time capsule of a different time. There's like a video of her speaking earnestly about the need to like have the internet be a like safer, more equitable landscape. It is nuts.

Like people should go listen to her speaking about this project. So the plan for this project was essentially that that she would create a way to de-anonymize online commentators and then connect them with their real names and their real life employers. And what's so funny is that that is the very same argument that a lot of people use, people who want to restrict the open internet still use today, that problems on the internet, online harassment and abuse would all be improved if only everybody had to use their government ID and government names to access the internet. And so it's very funny that that idea, it was bad then and it didn't really die, it

was just recycled into today. Yeah. I mean, there's a version of this that happens, or at least it kind of used to happen more in regards to anti-fascist research where like you're like identify specific like extremely racist accounts or like explicit neo-Nazis and contact their employer in an attempt to get to get them fired so they can focus on getting a new job and supporting themselves rather than doing racism online and in person. Especially if he's like you know a member of like a group whether that be you know especially if he's like, you know, a member of like a group,

whether that be, you know, the Proud Boys back in the day, or many, many other groups, Patriot Prayer, now Patriot Front, that sort of thing. It's funny how hated this tactic is soon to be by people like Candace and the Daily Wire people, but he or she's advocating it herself. Exactly. And it's like post-Anita Sarkeesian kind of content,

like, world. Yeah. So, pretty much everybody thought this was a bad idea, including video game developer Zoe Quinn, who folks might remember was kind of at the center of GamerGaten, was like viciously attacked. Owens was subsequently harassed and doxed, and she blamed Zoe Quinn and other feminists for this and said so publicly. As you can probably guess, like people like Milo Yiannopoulos loved this. And she blamed Zo Quinn and other feminists for this and said so publicly. As you can probably guess, like people like Milo Yiannopoulos loved this. People who were promoters of Gamergate really hyped up Owens' claims that like, yes, feminists

were actually the ones doing all the online harassing. Okay. I can see where this is going. So this event is what Owens credits with her turn from progressive to quote, becoming a red pill radical. She says, I became a conservative overnight. I realized that liberals were actually the racists. Liberals were actually the trolls.

She starts promoting right wing viewpoints on her YouTube channel, calling herself quote, red pill black, which I got to say is like pretty good branding. Like I'm not mad at the branding there. It's like, okay, black woman talking about right-wing stuff. Red Pill Black, I get it, I get it. Yeah, I'm interested to see how much the checkbook was a consideration here.

Oh, yes. How much her Kickstarter got versus how much she realized she could get if she jumped on the other side of the content churn. Well, she almost instantly gets noticed by Charlie Kirk, founder of Turning Points USA, right? And he hires her almost immediately. She starts cranking out these videos that really perform quite well. Like her videos really go viral.

Videos where she's doing things like dismissing the 2017 white supremacist Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville. Alex Jones gets her to co-host some of his info war show. She's doing stints on Fox News as a paid commentator. Like, business is booming for Candace Owens from this turn. Yeah, this is this is around when I became aware of her. Yes. In 2021, she joins up with the Daily Wire. There was so much fanfare around them hiring Candace.

Like it was a big deal. She moved to Nashville. Fun fact, there was even a House Joint Resolution, House Joint Resolution 350, a resolution in the Tennessee government to congratulate Candace Owens on relocating to Tennessee and for her work at Daily Wire that reads, whereas Ms. Owens has earned the admiration

and respect of millions of Americans through her activism in support of President Trump as a black woman and her perceptive criticism of creeping socialism and leftist political tyranny. Very cool stuff. Yeah, imagine it being like a joint resolution in your local government when you move someplace. Yeah, the governor of Tennessee was like super excited when the Daily Wire relocated their

headquarters to Tennessee and brought in all these people. Like there was like so many like private dinners, meetings. There was like a number of resolutions welcoming the Daily Wire to Tennessee in this like 2021 period as they were just starting to like launch their own like streaming service website, which is why they recruited Candice is because they were they was looking for content creators to fill out their slate. So you would think that this should be like a match made in heaven right? Smooth sailing, they need incendiary content creators, she is an incendiary content creator, should be a match made in heaven.

Perfect. Not quite because things end in, like, this really messy public fallout just a few years later. So I know that you've done episodes on this. From my perspective, and I would love to know what you think, it's not 100% clear what went down, but the public friction between Candice Owens and Ben Shapiro, one of the founders of Daily Wire,

it seemed to be related to reactions around the situation in Gaza. Yeah, totally. So Ben Shapiro is Jewish and Owens, as we said, has said and done a lot of anti-Semitic stuff, a lot. And actual anti-Semitic stuff. That people use that as a way to like, shut down like, very admirable like pro-Palestinian activism. No, Candice Owens just is anti-Semitic. And it's the same

thing with like, Jackson Hinkel. And she made it like an escalating series of anti-Semitic claims after October 7th, which slowly kind of like broke with the company and been like more and more and more over a series of a few months. Yes. It's funny because like it also kind of mirrors this like online fight she had with Steven Crowder like a year or so prior when Daily Wire was trying to recruit him. And then she got informed about like how abusive he was to his wife. And then she went on like a media blitz media blitz against him as he was in negotiations with the Daily Wire.

She's very willing to stir shit up, even if it goes against her own interests or the interests of whatever company she works for. She is absolutely willing to make some kind of chaotic spectacle, regardless of her own, like, you know, financial security, I guess. Yes, like, she... I'm so glad that you mentioned that. She is not afraid to get down and dirty in public. And I do think, like, you know, as a Black woman who works with a lot of white men, I would imagine that she's probably thinking, like, I have to have some kind of decorum.

I don't want anyone to say that I'm being a crazy black woman or whatever. It seems like she has no such qualms. Like, she is like, I will make this a public messy fight, and I am not afraid to make a genuine spectacle of myself. Yeah. And so it is really important to note that, like, as you said, she wasn't just, like, criticizing the Israeli state.

No. She was, like, getting She was getting into blood libel and deep conspiracy theories. Yeah, no, there was some really nasty posts. Yeah, one of the things that she said, she's claimed that Judaism was, quote, a pedophile-centric religion that believes in demons and child sacrifice, and that she was waking people up

to the fact that pedophiles are in power, stuff like that. Not great. Not good. Not good. So, as you said, like, this starts to become, like, a public feud toward her employer. She wrote on Twitter, no one can serve two masters,

and ended her post writing, you cannot serve both God and money, to which Ben Shapiro, her boss, tweets, like, quote, tweeted, Oh, my God, like, Candice, if you feel that taking money from the Daily Wireiro, her boss, tweets, like, quote, tweeted, Oh my God, like Candice, if you feel that taking money from the daily wire somehow becomes between you and God, by all means quit. Like messy as hell. It's crazy that instead of having like a company meeting they were just doing this on twitter.com. Oh my God. And my messy ass was eating it

up. I was like, keep fighting. Let him fight. Oh yeah, no, absolutely. I'm totally willing to like watch this, watch this go down. I do not want to get involved. Right, right, right. Owens like went on Tucker Carlson show and said that Ben Shapiro was quote, acting unprofessional and emotionally unhinged

for weeks now. She said that Shapiro quote, crossed a certain line. When you come for scripture and read yourself into it, I will not tolerate it. Very cool. Yeah. So at one point, Owens tweets that she wants Ben Shapiro to have a public, like, debate with her,

moderated by podcaster Patrick Bett-David. Ben Shapiro was having none of this. He tweets, Candice, I can see why you'd want to hide behind a moderator, particularly one who said we should rename our company, quote, Daily Jewish Jewish wire just yesterday. No. Jesus Christ.

One on one, Monday at five, we can sit down and have a healthy debate like adults and we'll live stream it on X and YouTube. Take it or leave it. As to the true reason why you didn't respond to my offer to sit down with you and discuss these issues publicly or privately back in February, I have no idea what the hell you're talking about. Like this is lawyer employee going at it on Twitter. I can't believe I'm taking Ben Shapiro's side here, not just because he's Ben Shapiro, but

also because he's an employer. But it's a really tough situation here. Yeah, I feel the same way because like, it's just not a great look to have somebody that you just hired to all this fanfare coming at you like this on Twitter. And I think, I mean, this is just my opinion, so take that for what it's worth. Just as somebody who has worked in media and been around the block, the reason why I'm not comfortable saying their feud was entirely based on Owens' anti-Semitic comments and

behavior is that she just went so hard and so public that something to me, I almost wonder if there was like a contract dispute here, like she was like, oh, I can make more money on my own. Totally got to get out of this contract or something. Because like it just doesn't smell right. I mean, yeah. If she had like an inclination that she could afford to lose his job because she might make more money on her own, then yeah, absolutely.

That that would, that would allow her to push this further than what she might otherwise might. Like there's been a lot of a lot of discussion in the right wing content sphere about like the daily wires, fairly restrictive contracts, despite still getting paid like tens of millions of dollars. There is like restrictions on like what happens when you lose monetization because the daily wires like a company trying to make a profit. So totally. I think there could absolutely be other financial stuff going on here. I think it's more like an interlocking series of issues rather than just one thing or another. Yes.

So after Rabbi Shmuley Boteach criticized Owens for her defenses of Kanye West, Owens liked to tweet asking Boteach if he was, quote, drunk on Christian blood again. Jesus. And I guess that was the final straw. A few days later, Daily Wire and Candace Owens ended their relationship with Owens tweeting, the rumors are true. I am finally free. Whew.

Hey, it's Amartines. The news can feel like a lot on any given day, but you can't just ignore las noticias when important world-changing events are happening. That is where the Up First podcast comes in. Every single morning in under 15 minutes, we take the news and boil it down to three essential stories so you can keep up without feeling stressed out. Listen Up First from NPR on the iHeart Radio app or wherever you get your podcasts.

Do you remember what you said the first night I came over here? How goes lower? From Blumhouse TV, iHeart Podcasts, and Ember 20 comes an all new fictional comedy podcast series. Join the flighty Damien Hirst as he unravels the mystery of his vanished boyfriend. And Santi was gone.

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investigative hookups. Mama always used to say, "'God gave me gumption in place of a gag reflex. And as I was about to learn, no amount of showering can wash your hands of a bad hookup. Now, take a big whiff, my brah. ["I Heart Radio"] Listen to the hookup on the I Heart Radio app,

Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. ["I Heart Radio Music Awards"] Our iHeartRadio Music Awards are coming back Monday, March 17th on Fox, starring Bad Bunny, Glowrilla, Kenny Chesney, Money Long, Nelly, your host, iHeartRadio, LL Cool J.

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This is Leave the Gun, Take the Canole. The five families did not want us to shoot that picture. Leave the Gun, Take the Canole. The five families did not want us to shoot that picture. Leave the Gun, Take the Canoli is based on my co-host Mark's best-selling book of the same title. And on this show, we call upon his years of research to help unpack the story behind the godfather's birth from start to finish. This is really the first interview I've done in bed.

Ha ha ha ha! We sift through innumerable accounts. I shoot 35 pages, isn't it, really? Many of them conflicting innumerable accounts. I see 35 pages in the real world. Many of them conflicting. That's nonsense. There were 60 pages. And try to get to the truth of what really happened. And they said, we're finished, this is over.

The movie's not gonna work. You gotta get rid of those guys. This is a disaster. Leave the Gun, Take the Cannoli features new and archival interviews with Francis Ford Coppola, Robert Evans, James Kahn, Talia Shire, and many others. Yes, that was a real horse's head.

Listen and subscribe to Leave the Gun, Take the Canole, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. OK, so that's what happened with her and Daily Wire. So where is she now? Well, this is where the story gets interesting because I had not heard from Candace Owens in a minute and my reintroduction to her happened recently when I was trying to make sense of the dispute between two Hollywood A-listers, Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni.

So the issue between Blake and Justin, it's a little bit complicated and ongoing, but it's actually a pretty interesting story that includes a lot of things that I enjoy, like how celebrities use media and how social media platforms can be weaponized for or against specific people. Email correspondence, where people make themselves look terrible in writing

because they do not expect those emails to be in a deposition later. Like that is my favorite thing in the world. Like please continue to put your wrongdoing in writing so that my nosy ass can read it later and be like, ooh, messy. So I do encourage like folks to read up on it because it does go beyond just like two celebrities

having a feud. But you don't really need to know the specifics for our purposes. The quick and dirty version is that Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni were in a movie adaptation of the very popular novel by Colleen Hoover called It Starts With Us. In December, Lively filed a legal complaint

against Baldoni, accusing him of sexual harassment and starting a smear campaign against her. Baldoni strongly denies that and has sued her in response. Both cams have released information like emails, text messages, and video, attempting to make the other look bad. So it has kind of turned into one of those inkblot tests that changes depending on whose version you buy.

Version one is that Blake Lively was being sexually harassed on set by a fake feminist ally who is actually an abusive man. Or version two, that Blake Lively is an egomaniac who was using her star power and A-list celebrity network like her husband, Ryan Reynolds from Deadpool to control the narrative around her being a nightmare on set and steamrolling everybody on this project. Cool.

Yes. And so what's interesting about this to me is that it's one of those stories where algorithmically, it depends on what silo or what pocket of the internet you're at to determine what version of this story you're getting, much like Johnny Depp's defamation lawsuit. It sounds too much like the Johnny Depp thing. Yeah. Exactly.

Exactly. And so for whatever reason, TikTok thinks I hate Blake Lively and want to pour over every nuance of how she is a fraud, right? Like, but someone else's TikTok might be like, no, Blake Lively, we should be supporting her. Like, it's one of those situations where, just depending on where you are on the internet, you might get a very different impression of the public sentiment leaning one way or another. Yeah, yeah, this is all the types of things I try to avoid learning about at almost all costs. So, thanks.

Yes, I do not blame you. So, I was trying to get to the bottom of it, because I kept hearing about it, like everyone was talking about it. So, I'm talking to my cousins, who I would lovingly describe as normies, and that they are not super online. It's like they're not like you and me. They're not like deep into the depths of extremism or anything like that. No, they're not watching like the Daily Wire

for fun slash for work. Yes. Uh, yeah. And my cousins are like, oh my god, there is this black girl journalist who has been following everything and breaking it down. She has all the T, we'll tag you. That journalist was Candace Owens.

Okay. So, you know, Candace has been. Okay. So. All right. You know, Candace has been making so many videos off of this and like her coverage, coverage in quotes, has really taken off online. As The Cut put it in a piece called Candace Owens Has Gone Mainstream, they write, The right-wing commentator's coverage

of the Blake Lively Justin Boldani case has reached millions of viewers. Owens' podcast was hours and hours of analysis of the Blake Lively Justin Boldani case has reached millions of viewers. Owen's podcast was hours and hours of analysis of the case, deep dives into court filings, tabloid news stories, even Ryan Reynolds's recent SNL 50th anniversary special appearance. One listener said, she's really been able to go in and pinpoint discrepancies in some of the things Blake Lively has said rather than us having to go through it our own. Ah, of course. It's the woman who's lying about being sexually harassed, of course. Mm-hmm.

One listener of her podcast says, she recognizes that Owens seems to have a pro-Baldani bias, but she doesn't care because, quote, she's urging us to look past the fact this is not a feminist issue at all, that it's about getting justice for whoever is being wronged here. She's uniting the left and the right. The Right Wing Women's Magazine also published a headline about this saying, how Candace Owens is uniting conservatives and liberals with her, it ends with us coverage.

So her coverage of this dispute has really allowed her to attract a lot more viewers beyond her normal right-wing extremist base, which has generally been like a lot of white men, like that who was really listening to her content before when she was with Daily Wire. Now she has really branched out. So like Normies, like my cousins, who have no idea who Owens is, have no idea her background, her past, the work that she has done, and just think like, oh, she's a normal entertainment journalist, like digging and getting the dirt.

I know she's doing this on her podcast, I assume YouTube as well. She also just like trying to like flood TikTok, trying to flood like Instagram Reels. Yes. Is this kind of part of how she's trying to like expand her reach? It is. Like she's everywhere. And then she has her longer form podcast than YouTube,

but then clips of her like, you know, breaking down the top lies or top inaccuracies and things that Blake Lively has said, those go super viral on social media, the short clips. Yeah. Okay. And all of this has been just gangbusters for her growth and engagement. Here's how The Cut put it.

Since Owen started covering the Lively-Baldani case, her YouTube channel has exploded in popularity, allowing her to attract a much larger fan base than the audience of hardcore conservatives she has amassed over the years. Each episode about Lively racks up at least 1.5 million views. In the past month alone, Owens has amassed more than 450,000 new subscribers on YouTube, and her total video views have quadrupled since this time last year. This is according to data from the platform Social Blade. Over the past three months, her audience on YouTube has almost started skewing 65% female,

according to data provided by a spokesperson, a marked shift from her past fan base. So yeah, she's exploding in popularity. She's everywhere. And now she's attracting, like, normie women who are just coming in for this celebrity dispute. Yeah. That's probably not gonna end well, huh? Well, I don't think it will end well. You know, I was, like, racking my brain

trying to figure out, like, why has this story taken off so much for Owens? And there are a couple of reasons I think this is, like, working for her. One, I hate to say it, but she is actually genuinely interesting to listen to. You know, when she was a progressive voice online, she definitely was somebody who had a point of view and a clear voice and a perspective. And that really comes through

when she's breaking down Blake Lively in these videos. She has a way of speaking that really makes you pay attention and signals to the listener like this person is really breaking it down. It's the same reason why on TikTok or social media when someone is like story time or like I'm about to tell you all the details of something, those videos always perform very well on social media. And I think that Owens is just very good at knowing how to hold somebody's attention online. Like I have to say it. Sure. I mean, she's been doing the content churn for almost a decade now. Like, yeah, you do get good at it on, like, a technical proficiency level.

Yes. Also, you know, we just love good old-fashioned misogyny. And if that misogyny can be laced with, like, a conspiracy theory, I think that it's even better. So like, I think that part of this is just like social media platforms are always going to amplify misogyny. I would argue that things like misogyny, transphobia, misogynoir, racism, all of that is like baked into the experience of showing up online as a feature, not a bug. And I think that Owens takes it even further because she is breaking it down. Like she's uncovering some conspiracy.

Like it's not just, let's talk about, about Blake Lively. It's I'm uncovering the web of lies and I'm going to, I'm going to expose Blake Lively's dark truth. Right. And so like, of course that's going to take off. And she does gain this element of authority because she's a woman talking about this. It makes men feel better about being misogynistic

because a woman's telling them it's okay to. I mean, this is the same thing that she was able to weaponize for all of her, like, anti-Black Lives Matter stuff, for all of her, like, racism isn't real things. She tries to use that to her advantage, mostly to make, like, the white members of her audience, like, feel good about their own racism because a black woman told them it's actually okay.

And, like, that's been, like, a big part of her career the past few years. Exactly that. And I think, like, she really understands the inviting power of taking what you might think of as, like, a contrarian stance on something? Like... After the Me Too movement, how many women got engagement

by taking a contrarian stance, right? Like, I think going against the conventional attitude that says, like, oh, we have to automatically support the woman in this dispute probably makes people tuning into Owens' breakdowns feel like they're like free thinkers who are going against the grain, you know, by taking an unpopular opinion, which I do think connects to her more odious stances on things like trans people and women and Jewish people. Yeah, no, I mean, like you say the same thing with like, you know, like the gaze against

groomers thing, right wing trans influencers, D trans influencers. It's the same like Gambit. And certainly I think like, yeah, like your identification of her as like a professional contrarian is like very, very key to her success. Exactly. I also think like part of the reason why people are attracted to conspiracy theories is that it allows for like fantasy world building. And I think that I really see the ways that she injects that into her coverage. Even the word coverage, I put that I really see the ways that she injects that into her coverage even the word coverage I put that in words because like She is like a wild person so her coverage is like also wild She does not adhere to as she puts it quote a traditional style of reporting

I know I'll take her word for that one. You know what I'll believe her on that that single point Yeah, I believe her I believe that you know she amplifies Rumors and even once she read a letter that she said that she got from Blake Lively's husband Ryan Reynolds his Acting coach when he was 12 and according to Candace Owens his acting coach said that Ryan Reynolds was an obnoxious kid You know what? I also believe it. I Oh, I have no trouble believing that. But like her coverage includes like side characters. Yeah, things that have no bearing on this whatsoever.

I mean, this focus on like this like conspiratorial Ben is like the same. She's using the same tactics she did for her Black Lives Matter documentary for like most of her political work. Like she's using the same tactics over and over again. And eventually she like reaches this like stress point or this like threshold where she cannot see a path forward or she can't see a way to surpass it. And then she does a pivot. This happened with her progressive blog. This happened even at the Daily Wire.

She does not she doesn't work with Turning Point USA anymore. And like this this new pivot is learning, hey, it's super lucrative to be like a tabloid entertainment, quote unquote, journalist. Very easy, super lucrative. And all of the tactics you learned on the right wing media sphere work great here. Like all of this like conspiratorial thinking, really a disregard for like facts and evidence works perfect for this sort of like rumor based reporting. And it spreads like crazy.

And yeah, it spreads across political lines. You don't, you aren't just targeting the mega people or like the far right. This, this can be so much more broad to like the giant audience of like, you know, quote unquote, like apolitical people go to these platforms for a form of like, of like escapism and entertainment rather than just hearing about politics yet again, because that's, you know, very, very tiring. Yeah, and I think in my mind, all of it is sort of connected.

Like Ben Shapiro, nobody cared more about celebrities or talked more about celebrities than Ben Shapiro. He would love to be like, I don't care what Hollywood is doing, but he was obsessed with like Beyonce and Meg Thee Stallion. Like it was just like a negative obsession. Like, you know, anti-fandom is still fandom. When you make video after video about how much you don't like Meg Thee Stallion,

in a kind of way, you are a fan just in the opposite direction. And so I think that Candace Owens really took that and learned how to perfect it. Because she is much I think that she is much better at this than Ben Shapiro is like, the evidence being that like, her YouTube channel is exploding with people who probably would never watch any of Ben Shapiro's content. The big bummer for me is that the Daily Wire's first film, Lady Ballers, left us on a cliffhanger

with Candace Owens and Matt Walsh sitting in a car talking about how Matt Walsh sitting in a car talking about how Matt Walsh planned this entire plot of the film as some kind of scheme or social experiment and it was implied there would be more. It was like Avengers Nick Fury type post credit scene. And now we're never going to learn what Candace Owens and Matt Walsh get up to now. Because she's left the company, she's now doing her own thing. So now we just have this dangling plot thread that's just gonna bug me forever.

Like, what does the Candace Owens character at the end of Lady Ballers do next? I'm gonna be thinking about this for like years. America deserves closure. We deserve to know. Just putting that out there. I think we do deserve closure. I just think my closure's gonna be a little bit different. I am very fine having all of these plot threads wrapped up quite quickly. But I do not see that in the cards immediately. Hey, it's Amartines. The news can feel like a lot on any given day, but you can't just ignore las noticias

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We sift through innumerable accounts. I see 35 pages in the re-edict. Many of them conflicting, -"That's nonsense. There were 60 pages." and try to get to the truth of what really happened. -"And they said, we're finished. This is over. The movie's not gonna work. You gotta get rid of those guys. This is a disaster."

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like, you know, my question is like, has Owens, has this kind of like mainstream audience that she's been able to amass, has she changed her views? Is she trying to do a rebrand or a pivot? In an interview she said, in terms of my perspective, I haven't changed anything. I've been anti-MeToo since long before it was cool. Sure. I mean, that can be true.

It's also true that she is getting better at propaganda and widening her footprint, which, yeah, then once her audience gets bigger, she may be able to slip in more things that I would find unsavory to a larger audience over time. But she also might be content to keep growing that and be slightly less off putting in the meantime. But no, I mean, like there's all just just a huge audience for the anti-Woke backlash, anti-ME2 stuff right now. That's kind of like the new mainstream, frankly.

So I am certain that she's gonna try to continue to flex that and grow that in the next few months, years. Yeah, so I agree with you. I believe Owens when she says that like her stances have not changed much. Yeah, easy to be like, oh, well, she's pivoting to go mainstream now that she has these like women in her audience who were interested in celebrity. And you can honestly you can sort of see some of this in changes to her physical appearance. Like she was sort of known for having very severe hair. The joke being that she had alienated herself so much

from her fellow black people that like no black person was gonna do her hair and that's why it looks that way. But lately, you've really seen this like softening. She's kind of going for like a softer public look. She is pivoting to different kinds of programming. She's branched out into doing a book club for paying subscribers and some kind of a fitness program. That makes sense. Yeah, totally. Like the Health Guru fitness entertainment bubble.

Yeah, that's huge. That's such a good grift. She's gonna make so much money. Yeah. Yeah, she is. But I really agree with you, Gare, that like, I think that these new followers are certainly going to be walked down a pipeline that includes per extremist attitude just using celebrity scandal as a hook because like as you said celebrity scandals and celebrity stories are just considered fluff for a lot of people so like people who care about extremist content and ideology are

maybe not seeing that as a space that they need to pay too close of attention to about these stories that you might see on the cover of an US Weekly. But these stories actually can be used to tap into extremist ideologies and unleash them in a whole new audience. And like you were saying, if you are just like watching a podcast because you wanna be entertained

about a story about two celebrities, you might not have your like bullshit detector up to be like, wait, is this extremist content? Because it's seen and treated as a less charged space. not have your bullshit detector up to be like, wait, is this extremist content? Because it's seen and treated as a less charged space. And so that line of thinking that says that this is just fluff, it doesn't really matter what happens in celebrity news, isn't incorrect. It is dangerous because it lends itself to people being more susceptible to it when extremist

content is slipped in without even really realizing it. I mean, and like that relates even to like the originator of this Gamergate stuff and the whole like anti-woke, like media fandom content sphere, right? Where so much of like the anti-woke backlash has been built on people complaining that Star Wars is too woke now. There's too many women in movies.

There's too many black people in commercials. Where do all the white people go? There's too many gay people in TV. There's too many black people in commercials. Where do all the white people go? There's too many gay people in TV. There's too many trans people in TV. And like that is definitely focused on by the rest of the Daily Wire goons. And you can very easily pivot back to that sort of cultural commentary

after you're done talking about Blake Lively. Like this is a very small jump where you're still talking about the entertainment industry. But with this like anti woke framing of like, you know, why is all these minorities here? Why are they pushing transgenderism on kids? You know, whether that be talking about, you know, trans actors in the business, whether you be talking about, you know, like female led or like diversity casting, like all that

kind of stuff that especially Candace can use her like contrarian position to speak on authority about talking about why are you recasting these legacy characters to be people of color or why is a Woman the lead of this thing when it should be actually a man You know just like very very basic stuff that's been a part of like the YouTube slop for a decade now but it's still like still takes in a lot of a lot of clicks. And it is it is a lot of the daily wire and like right wing content still still does. It's all this like weird like culture war stuff.

It's very, very tied in with Hollywood. Like you were saying about how like Ben Shapiro claims, you know, like, hey, Tali was trying to build his own alternative to it? But he can't stop talking about it. He can't stop complaining about Disney's Snow White. And I can see Candace doing the exact same thing, but now with, honestly, a bigger, more apolitical audience that's much more malleable and can be shaped around these larger cultural trends when you think about this perception

of this backlash against wokeness. I absolutely think that's what we're going to see. And I can tell you, we can finish by, I can tell you about her next big pet issue, which is going to be championing Harvey Weinstein, who she has been interviewing. No, no, no. So she's been interviewing him since 2022. According to the Hollywood Reporter, she explains while he is, quote,

an immoral man, he is also a victim of the justice system. A victim, sure. A victim. And she says, I've always had faith in our court system and now it's beginning to change. Now I'm beginning to wonder if our courtrooms have been politicized. And the thing that's made her think this is Harvey Weinstein. It's wild. I mean, like, Ben Shapiro is starting his own campaign to free Derek Chauvin.

I think there's going to be a lot of pressure on the courts right now. I mean, you're seeing that from, like, Elon and Trump as well. I think undermining the authority of the court, I think, is actually kind of part of this larger concerted issue amongst the entirety of the right right now. Because this is, like, their biggest remaining roadblock to achieving their right wing utopia is the court system. And I, you know, this may not be intentional on every person's part, like Ben Shapiro and Candice Owens aren't, aren't like intentionally collaborating on this, but they may be copying

each other's trends. And if they're seeing this, this wider push across a large amount of like the right wing content people to put pressure on various amount of the right-wing content people to put pressure on various aspects of the courts, including by using high-profile cases like Harvey Weinstein or Derek Chauvin, that's not a great sign. And I can definitely see them trying to do that in conjunction, I guess. SONIA DARA GARRETT Yeah, I think we're going to see a lot more of it. Candice has a series coming out called Harvey Speaks

that apparently tells his side of the story, so look out for that. And I think that's the thing, like, I think with her content, like, when asked why it was, she thought that her Blake Lively stuff was really taking off. She says that she believes her new fans on the left, quote, have just kind of gotten wise to the fact that maybe women lie just like men.

And so I just implore folks that, like, even if you think that you're just, like, retaking in this content because you're following fluffy celebrity news or whatever, it is so easy to go from maybe women lie to maybe women can't be trusted or maybe women shouldn't work and have jobs, a stance that Candace herself has actually advocated for, despite very obviously being a working woman. And so I don't think we should

trust Candace Owens even if she does this rebrand. Like don't let her rebrand herself as like just a celebrity investigative journalist. Like she put all of these odious views out into the world and I don't want her to be able to like soften it or you know Soften what it is that she advocates for what it is that she believes in if that is truly what she's trying to do Did just sort of like a massive more mainstream audience? So don't fall for it if you're if you're getting tagged in Candice Owens videos just know what she actually is about I mean, yeah, I think I think for our audience It's it's more likely that you'll have like family members who are going to be finding this stuff. And you should find a list of sources, maybe this episode included, but probably you can find some articles as well. Think of some background on Candice's history

and previous beliefs. You can pick and choose some of her most outrageous claims. So when your aunt sends you a video about how Ryan Reynolds and Blake Lively are kidnapping children or something, you can... You can maybe inform Aunt Judy that maybe you shouldn't listen to everything this Candace Owens character is saying. Yeah, this Candace Owens might not be on the money. Might not be on the level. No. Yeah, inform an auntie today.

Yes, that's right. And that's all I got. That's it. I don't know how you usually end these episodes. Usually by getting sad, but I don't know. This has been an interesting dive into the life of a woman with many, many careers. A chameleon. Many personalities. A chameleon. A chameleon. Many personalities, a chameleon,

a chameleon of contrarianism. Ooh, I like that. If I ever write a book about her, that'll be the title. Jesus Christ, oh, what a nightmare that would be. Man, scary. Bridget, where can people find you online? You can find me on my podcast, there are no girls on the internet on this network,

I heart radio, I mean. You can find me on Instagram podcast, there are no girls on the internet on this network. I heart radio, I mean. You can find me on Instagram at BridgetMarianDC or on bluesky at Bridget Todd. Well thank you so much. Good luck in DC. Thanks for holding the line out there as Elon puts a killdozer through your entire city. We're doing our best. I would love to talk again about a DC update maybe next time you come on the show. Oh my god, yes please.

There we go. Well, we will talk then. Goodbye everybody. media, visit our website, poolzonemedia.com, or check us out on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can now find sources for It Could Happen here listed directly in episode descriptions. Thanks for listening. when important world-changing events are happening, that is where the Up First podcast comes in. Every single morning in under 15 minutes, we take the news and boil it down to three essential stories so you can keep up without feeling stressed out.

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