Candace Owens

Candace Amber Owens Farmer ( Owens; born April 29, 1989) is an American conservative political commentator, author, activist, and television presenter.

She gained prominence for her conservative views and outspoken commentary on various social and political issues.

Owens has been recognized for her pro-Trump activism despite being initially critical of the former president of the United States Donald Trump and the Republican Party.

She is known for her criticism of Black Lives Matter and the Democratic Party.

In 2007, while a 17-year-old senior in high school, Owens received three racist death threat voicemail messages, totaling two minutes, from a group of white male classmates.

Joshua Starr, the city's superintendent of schools, listened to the voicemail messages and said that they were "horrendous".

Owens's family sued the Stamford Board of Education in federal court, alleging that the city did not protect her rights, resulting in a $37,500 settlement in January 2008.

Owens pursued an undergraduate degree in journalism at the University of Rhode Island.

She dropped out after her junior year because of an issue with her student loan.

Afterwards, she worked as an intern for Vogue magazine in New York.

In 2012, Owens took a job as an administrative assistant for a private equity firm in Manhattan, later moving up to become its vice president of administration.

In 2015, Owens was CEO of Degree180, a marketing agency that offered consultation, production, and planning services that included a blog on a variety of topics written by Owens and other commentators.

In a 2015 column that Owens wrote for the site, she criticized conservative Republicans, writing about the "bat-shit-crazy antics of the Republican Tea Party"; she also added that "The good news is, 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."

In 2016, the blog featured an article mocking Donald Trump's penis size.

Owens launched SocialAutopsy.com in 2016, a website she said would expose bullies on the Internet by tracking their digital footprint.

The site would have solicited users to take screenshots of offensive posts and send them to the website, where they would be categorized by the user's name.

She used crowdfunding on Kickstarter for the website.

The proposal was immediately controversial, drawing criticism that Owens was de-anonymizing (doxing) Internet users and violating their privacy.

According to The Daily Dot, "People from all sides of the anti-harassment debate were quick to criticize the database, calling it a public shaming list that would encourage doxing and retaliatory harassment."

Both conservatives and progressives condemned the website.

In response, people began posting Owens's private details online.

With scant evidence, Owens blamed the doxing on progressives.

Following that, she earned the support of conservatives involved in the Gamergate harassment campaign, including right-wing political commentators such as Milo Yiannopoulos and Mike Cernovich.

Owens worked for the conservative advocacy group Turning Point USA between 2017 and 2019 as its communications director.

Subsequently, Owens became a conservative, saying in 2017, "I became a conservative overnight ... I realized that liberals were actually the racists. Liberals were actually the trolls ... Social Autopsy is why I'm conservative."

Kickstarter suspended funding for Social Autopsy, and the website was never created.

By late 2017, Owens had started producing pro-Trump commentary and criticizing notions of structural racism, systemic inequality, and identity politics – all positions she herself had been publishing two years earlier.

In August 2017, she began posting politically themed videos to YouTube.

In September 2017, she launched Red Pill Black, a website and YouTube channel that promotes black conservatism in the United States.

On November 21, 2017, at the MAGA Rally and Expo in Rockford, Illinois, Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk announced that Owens had been hired as the organization's director of urban engagement.

In 2018, Candace Owens co-founded Blexit along with former Tucson police officer Brandon Tatum.

In 2021, she joined The Daily Wire, where she hosts Candace, a political talk show.

Politically, Owens has expressed skepticism towards the extent of white supremacy's impact and has voiced opposition to both COVID-19 lockdowns and COVID-19 vaccines.

During the 2023 Israel–Hamas war, she criticized the Church of Saint Porphyrius airstrike and accused Israel of genocide against the Palestinian people.

She has been accused of disseminating conspiracy theories.

Born in White Plains, New York, Owens was raised with her siblings by her grandparents from around the age of 11 or 12, after her parents divorced.

She is the third of four children.

She said her paternal grandfather Robert Owens, a black American, was born in North Carolina.

Owens is also of Caribbean American heritage through her grandmother who is originally from Saint Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands.

She is a graduate of Stamford High School.