As you probably have seen, there have been a ton of,
let's say ignorant takes on the Russian invasion into Ukraine.
One of the individuals who really stands out is Candace Owens who has opinions that
are so ill informed that even Ben Shapiro had to speak out against them.
And we'll get to Ben Shapiro later in this clip.
But before we do, I just want you to enjoy the number of things that
Candace Owens gets wrong in the rant you're about to hear.
>> Someone said to me, okay I guess this is in response to a tweet where I said,
I'm the only person who has considered how pulling out of Afghanistan and
starting a war with Russia.
Are related from an energy policy perspective.
And Anthony said hey McFly, we didn't start a war with Russia,
Putin didn't even start a war, he started a genocidal colonization, where are you?
Ukraine is defending itself and the rest of the world from an authoritarian
regime and all you can think about is fossil fuel profitability.
Wow, genocidal colonization is interesting.
Again, going back to my point of people being stupid,
he's not trying to commit a genocide of Ukrainians.
That obviously makes no sense because, there is no difference,
ethnically from Ukrainians and Russians obviously.
Ukraine wasn't a thing until 1999, Ukraine was created by the Russians, it was,
they speak Russian.
So, it's absolutely ridiculous and again, this entire episode has
been exposing to you how ignorant people are about the goals of live reporting.
So I would just encourage that guy to get a little more educated.
>> So Ukraine's capital,
Kiev was actually established hundreds of years before Moscow was established.
And look, I am not an expert in this area,
I do make sure to understand what I'm gonna talk about before I talk about it.
So we're gonna go to someone who does understand the history and
knows it far better than anyone, in this conversation.
Before we do though, we should take a trip.
You ready to take a trip?
>> No. >> To the debunker?
>> You didn't see Republicans when we had control of the Senate tried to rig
the game.
>> Shows how the green new deal would be a deadly deal for
the United States of America.
>> Our systems are not racist.
[MUSIC]
>> Now in the debunker, we deal with cold hard facts, including the fact that
Ukrainians do in fact have their own language, they don't speak Russian.
I mean some of them do, but they have their own language as well.
But John why don't we hear from an expert on this, and then we'll discuss further.
>> In 1991, at the beginning of the end of the Soviet Union,
Ukraine declared independence after nearly 70 years under Moscow's control.
And when Russian President Vladimir Putin took power a decade later,
he began trying to get it back.
At a NATO summit in 2008, he reportedly told then President George W Bush,
that Ukraine was not even a country.
And he repeated those claims last week before launching the invasion.
>> Modern Ukraine was entirely created by Russia.
>> That claim ignores the centuries of history through which modern Ukraine
took shape.
It was first home to the Kevin Roose people.
Over time it was absorbed by Poland and Lithuania, and then the Russian empire and
Austria Hungary.
A post World War one treaty briefly recognized its independence,
the Ukrainian socialist soviet republic was born in 1922.
In 1932 Soviet leader Joseph Stalin deliberately imposed famine there,
killing at least three million Ukrainians in a single year.
By 1950 for the country that exists today, was part of the USSR.
But even after Ukraine declared independence in 1991 pro Russian
political elements remained, which Putin exploited.
>> So that's a quick summary.
That does debunk a lot of what she had to say in that ridiculous video earlier.
But yeah, like the idea that you create, no, it was just part of Russia and
as Trump said, Putin's doing this out of love.
He just wants to unite his country again, that's so disgusting.
>> I look at him how he acts, how he looks driven by love.
Yeah, look we have to give I try to play Devil's advocate,
give credit where credit is due.
And Candace Owens said that hour was spent exposing people's ignorance on this topic,
she is delivering on that promise.
It is a little bit weird to see so
many people full grown adults who came to sit behind her and listen to her talk
confidently about something she knows absolutely nothing about.
If you were to be as charitable as possible, she Wikipedia Ukraine
discovered that at one point it was part of the USSR and thought, well that's
the beginning of history, don't need to go back any further than that.
And even if it wasn't totally a historic, the idea that the land was apparently
pulled out of the ocean to be part of the USSR and
it never existed independently before.
It is a country now and has been for decades,
its people very much do not want to be part of Russia.
The vigorous defense of their country should be testament to that.
The fact that all of that counts for nothing to her, and that she is so
ready without any feeling, any duty to learn about this, to center empathy.
Anything like that to just advance the invaders propaganda,
the invaders narrative.
She's not alone in that it's an incredibly popular thing,
a profitable thing on YouTube and stuff like that to do.
But why are people buying it, of all the people to listen to.
>> Under her logic shouldn't Mexico invade the United States.
>> It's just.
>> It would be like.
>> There's nothing going on up there.
It's just regurgitating l what she thinks the right wing wants to hear.
It's been an interesting, like, I don't know if you wanns call it progression,
I don't know what you want to call it.
But, there are the right wingers who thought from the very beginning,
the popular talking point is to support Putin right?
I mean, we've been serving as apologist for Putin's behavior,
since the Trump administration why don't we keep doing it?
That's what seems to suit the Republican voters well.
But then all of a sudden you start seeing the videos of hospitals being bombed,
you start seeing the refugees fleeing the country.
And there seems to be widespread support for Zelensky, for
the Ukrainian people and widespread condemnation of Putin.
But there are still some conservatives Candace Owens included,
who have decided to dig their heels and continue spouting these ignorant rants,
not because they actually believe in what they're saying.
Not because they've actually thought about what they're saying, not because they've
even read a damn thing about the history of this conflict and this war.
But because they think this is what's going to do well with my viewers.
And there is some contingent,
some portion of right wingers who do agree with that insanity.
>> Yeah, there are people making bank off of the bio lab stuff and all of that, and
we knew it ahead of time.
Look, I think it's accommodation of a few things.
One, she is predisposed ideologically to like authoritarian strong men.
And even if she wasn't individually Trump like Putin, she's a Trump zealot now.
She used to hate him, but
then she realized the money wasn't supporting Trump, so you support him.
They had some idea that the war would make Biden look bad and so supporting it.
It continuing helps them to have something to attack Biden over.
But then also let's not discount,
it is a movement that has virtually no core values other than Contrarianism.
If the nation is horrified at what they're seeing,
they can't just agree with the sheep who think that killing civilians is wrong,
they have to deliver for their contrarian audiences.
Some alternate viewpoint that will demonstrate purity,
an understanding beyond mere mortals.
And that's why they're going to find some way to disagree.
And she's not even the best at it, but it's a growing thing.
>> She's really not, but she did have some
decent takes early on including this masterpiece timeline.
Putin gives a speech saying he has no plans to occupy Ukraine and
that he is launching a special defensive peacekeeping operation in the Donbas East.
Ten minutes later, Kiev opposite side of the country faces explosions NATO Western
military says it's Putin.
So she's like denying that Putin is the one invading Ukraine.
>> It's just.
>> It's inconceivable.
That he could attack a different part of the country.
>> Big brain energy over there, big brain energy.