Candace Owens, the sharp-tongued Black conservative Christian commentator, has left the Daily Wire, the website announced Friday, following growing outcry over her continuing promotion of antisemitic claims:
- The week of March 18, she liked a post promoting a classic claim of Jew hatred: that Jews drink Christians’ blood.
- Earlier this month, she claimed “secret Jewish gangs” rule Hollywood and do “horrific” things.
- She previously said Hitler helped “make Germany great” and railed against the cultural “rot” of “D.C. Jews,” according to the progressive group Media Matters for America.
Owens, 34, joined the Daily Wire in 2020, hosts the daily show “Candace,” and works with the conservative groups — Focus on the Family, Turning Point USA and PragerU — that have criticized antisemitism on college campuses while not calling out her comments on Jews.
Focus on the Family ad
Owens’ remarks have won praise from Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes (“She has been in a full-fledged war against the Jews”) and condemnation from the Anti-Defamation League: “White supremacist and Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes is praising Candace Owens’ vitriolic antisemitism. It’s hardly surprising, but it does set off alarm bells: When bigoted people come together to push an antisemitic agenda, it adds fuel to the fire of hate.”
The Daily Wire, a $200 million business based in Nashville, was founded in 2015. Co-founder Ben Shapiro, who is Jewish, called some of Owens’ previous anti-Jewish slurs “disgraceful” back in November, but she stayed on with the media outlet, the Washington Post reported.
Owens, known for her in-your-face style, previously claimed Jews who criticized her comments “have consistently pulled clips from this show, taken them out of context, and tried to convince Jewish people that I hate them.”
She added: “What if that is what is happening right now in Hollywood, if there is just a very small ring of specific people who are using the fact that they are Jewish to shield themselves from any criticism? It’s food for thought. Right?”
Owens worked as communications director for Turning Point USA, a pro-Trump group that tries to woo young people to conservatism, and she was one of the key players in Kyle Spencer’s 2022 book, Raising Them Right: The Untold Story of America’s Ultraconservative Youth Movement and its Plot for Power.
Focus on the Family ad
Owens served as the public face of Focus on the Family’s anti-abortion events, Alive 2020 (“the largest pro-life event in Focus on the Family’s history”) and SeeLife 2022.
“Focus is honored to partner with Owens” said the $135 million ministry: “She shot onto the political landscape in 2017 when she became a conservative after being maliciously targeted by progressive activists. She has since become an outspoken advocate on many issues and a stalwart voice for protecting life in the womb.”
Owens is an activist and commentor on racial issues who seeks an exodus of Blacks from the Democrat Party to the GOP:
- She founded Blexit, Turning Point USA’s outreach to Blacks.
- She wrote the book Blackout, which argues Blacks should forsake “dependency, victimhood, miseducation — and the Democrat Party, which perpetuates all three.”
Focus criticized the mainstream media for not celebrating Owens, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and other “Black giants of the conservative movement” during Black History Month.
“Ms. Owens is a woman of strong Christian faith,” said Focus. “Thankfully, the rise of the new media has exposed the hypocrisy of those who claim to celebrate the accomplishments of all Black Americans when, in fact, they’re only recognizing the achievements of those Black Americans who agree with them.”
Owens has spoken at Colorado Christian University’s Western Conservative Summit and at Liberty University’s convocation.