- I would be really funny, though.
I'm like randomly really funny.
- [Yedoye Travis] That is Candace Owens,
the world's very first funny conservative.
Candace Owens was born in 1989 in Stamford, Connecticut.
In high school, Owens was the target of several
racist and threatening voicemails.
Because one of the students leaving the messages
was the son then Stamford mayor, Dannel Malloy,
the story attracted widespread attention.
Her family settled with the school district
for $37,500 thanks to the NAACP,
an organization Owens now believes is,
"One of the worst groups for Black people."
- NAACP is one of the worst groups
for black people.
- [Narrator] After dropping out of college,
Owens became CEO of Degree180.
A website which included, among other things,
a blog focused on taking down
then-candidate, Donald Trump.
Under Owen's leadership,
the publication consistently bashed
the former steak salesman at every turn.
- Let's go eat some steak, okay?
- [Travis] One article was titled,
"Does Donald Trump Actually Have A Small Penis?"
The piece concluded that,
"Donald Trump most likely
"has a penis the size of an infant."
In a 2015 column,
Owens wrote about the bat (bleep) crazy antics
of the Republican Tea Party,
and that is was "good news that
"they will eventually die off,
"peacefully in their sleep we hope.
"And then we can get right on with the
"obvious social change that needs to happen immediately."
- I absolutely love this president.
I think that what he did in this country
was the most necessary thing
by killing political correctness.
- [Narrator] In 2016, Owens launched a Kickstarter
to fund a new venture, Social Autopsy.
It was a project that ended up changing
Owens' political trajectory entirely.
- It was like a project that was so from the heart.
It was just like trying to rectify the wrongs
that I felt done for these kids
that aggressed me, you know, in high school.
And instead, I end up in the middle of a firestorm.
- [Travis] Owens explained the project's intentions.
"We attach people's words to their places of employment,
"and anybody in the entire world can search for them.
"What we're doing is figuratively lifting the masks up,
"so nobody can hide behind, you know,
"Twitter handles or privatized profiles."
Internet users were concerned that the site
would encourage public doxxing
and could potentially publish private information
about anyone at all.
In the wake of the project launching,
Owens got a call from Zoë Quinn,
a target of the sexist online
harassment campaign, Gamergate.
She allegedly told Owens she was worried
this would lead to the doxxing of children
and tried to get her to not go through with it.
Shortly after the conversation,
Owens began receiving threatening emails.
Simply because of the timing,
Owens believes Quinn was behind the myriad emails
from users with pro-Trump handles.
- We're getting like, inundated with emails
that say like,
bob@trump45.com and they're like,
"Die n word, die."
All their addresses happened to be
at trump45@gmail, like whatever it was.
They would actually have like weird porn handles.
Again, like weird handles.
- [Travis] According to Owens,
these emails definitely didn't come from
actual Trump supporters.
And because the web publication,
Breitbart supported her conspiracy theory
by writing an article saying that these attacks
all came from Zoe Quinn,
a theory never backed by any evidence
other than coincidental timing,
Owen's became a full-on conservative.
- People that I thought were white nationalists,
which was like Breitbart, was the only publication like,
that was telling the truth about what's happening.
- [Travis] Social autopsy never saw the light of day
after Kickstarter suspended the campaign.
But created along the way was a newly
minted fire brand for the conservative right.
- Oh also, I think I might be a conservative .
- [Travis] Things were quickly
falling into place for Owens.
After shedding her liberal roots,
Owens was hired by Turning Point USA,
a conservative campus advocacy group
that was facing accusations of racial bias.
The group drafted Owens shortly after
one of its former national field directors
sent a text to a Turning Point employee that said,
"I hate black people.
"Like (bleep) them all.
"I hate blacks.
"End of story."
Owen's platform at Turning Point
sprung her into the national spotlight.
And when Kim Kardashian's husband tweeted,
"I love the way Candace Owens thinks."
Owens became an overnight sensation.
- I find her to be a very,
I know her.
I think she's a fine person.
A fine young woman.
- [Travis] Owens' brand of conservatism is
seemingly empty and vapid.
When you begin to peel the assertive layers back,
there's often times nothing there.
No facts to back up her beliefs.
- [Travis] Good enough for me.
What many know Owens from is a video
where she legitimized Adolf Hitler
spinning Nazism into a patriotic form of nationalism.
In a congressional hearing on the rise of white nationalism,
Ted Lieu played back the video.
- [Lieu] Of all the people the
Republicans could've selected,
they picked Candace Owens.
I'm gonna let her own words do the talking.
- When you think about
whenever we say nationalism,
the first thing people think about,
at least in America is Hitler.
You know he was a nationalist socialist,
but if Hitler just wanted to make Germany great
and have things run well,
okay, fine.
The problem is that he wanted,
he had dreams outside of Germany.
- [Travis] Um hmm.
Can't think of anything else that Hitler did.
At the same hearing,
Owens claimed white nationalism was not a threat
and said that the southern strategy,
a well documented tactic used by the Republican Party
to leverage racism against Blacks to increase
their political support amongst white voters never existed.
- Myth of things.
Like the Southern Switch
and the Southern Strategy which never happened.
- [Travis] In a YouTube video she posted, Owens says,
"Black people shouldn't be concerned with the KKK
"or white supremacy."
- I mean there are what?
6000 Klansmen left in our nation.
You actually want me to actually process that
as a legitimate fear?
- [Travis] According to the Washington Post,
Owens believes that accounts of rising white supremacy
are made up by the media.
And it is worth noting,
Owens was named in a manifesto by a white supremacist,
accused of killing 50 people in New Zealand.
The gunman said
Owens was his main inspiration.
Owens has positioned herself as the black voice
within the vastly white far right.
She believes that eight percent black vote Trump
garnered in 2016 can be boosted.
And in May of 2019,
Owens walked away from Turning Point
to focus on this exact issue.
She launched Blexit,
the dumbest name I've ever heard,
as an effort to push black people
out of the Democratic Party.
Owens goes further to pit herself against the
community she ostensibly claims to defend,
saying police brutality isn't a concern
whatsoever for the Black community.
Even though one survey which
polled over 30,000 Black people across the U.S.
found 87 percent of the respondents said that
police killings of Black people
is a problem in the community.
And additionally,
new research published by the proceedings
of the National Academy of Sciences,
shows that Black males are two and a half times
more likely than white males to die during
encounters with police officers.
Owens who claims liberals who think Black people are stupid
once said the NRA was started for Black people to defend
themselves from the KKK.
- I know that the NRA started as a
civil rights organization.
Training Black Americans to arm themselves
and defend themselves against the KKK.
- [Travis] Which is 100 percent false.
The NRA was started in 1871
by Union Army Officers
as a training club for marksmanship.
But while Owens is working hard
at lying about history to move the needle for Trump,
in a few years when she's old enough,
she may try to move it for herself.
- I'm gonna say what Trump said.
- Say that now. - If I stepped up,
if my country needed me, like he said 10 years ago,
I would step and I would do the job.