00:00:44.640dear listener my brain processes candace owens the way it does a skin rash that you1.00
00:00:54.480tried to ignore for a while hoping it would go away on its own after all itchy inflamed patches0.63
00:01:01.020crop up all the time you're not going to go to the dermatologist every time one happens
00:01:06.060especially not with these new insurance premiums hey okay i'm just trying to cope i'm just trying
00:01:13.380to cope with my increased premiums that I just learned about. All right. But now you've been
00:01:16.800living with this rash for a long time, and it hasn't faded, just keeps getting bigger,
00:01:21.860more annoying, more harmful. Ignoring it is no longer an option. It's time to go to the
00:01:29.300dermatologist. And by that, I do mean time for a podcast episode. Hello, hello, and welcome back to
00:01:37.560A Bit Fruity. You probably already have a million thoughts about Candace Owens as we arrive1.00
00:01:43.020into this episode. And if you're just learning about her for the first time, that's okay too,
00:01:47.760and I'm sorry. But let's start with the facts. Candace Owens uploads a podcast episode five
00:01:54.440days a week, and each episode averages three to five million downloads between YouTube,
00:02:00.900Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and the like, putting her at a higher daily reach than Fox News,
00:02:07.000CNN and MSNBC combined. She has a level of fame that even watching from afar kind of terrifies
00:02:15.720me. I'm resistant to the idea that anyone should have this much power and especially someone who's
00:02:21.720demonstrably as untethered from reality as Candace Owens is. Over the years, Candace brought tons of0.94
00:02:28.560people into MAGA. More recently, she's also brought tons of people away from MAGA, but not
00:02:34.220necessarily to like a better place put a pin in that she's gone from liberal to conservative to
00:02:39.800what i would describe now as like full-on digital cult leader and as candace land i thought that
00:02:46.240was funny like candy land as candace land gets more confusing for those of us who look away from0.95
00:02:51.700it her audience and influence only grows and her conspiratorial rebrands keep drawing unsuspecting
00:02:58.500people into the fold like when i announced this episode many of you sent me messages that your
00:03:03.600siblings who might not identify as conservative or even political have become avid Candace Owens
00:03:10.540fans. So today I want to demystify this 36-year-old who's built an underworld much, much, much bigger
00:03:18.740than herself, but is also at the same time just a girl from Connecticut. And to do that, I am so0.84
00:03:26.820excited to welcome back taylor lorenz to the podcast taylor i talk a lot on this podcast about
00:03:35.120figures that become my fixations my sort of like obsessions that i'm not proud of
00:03:40.740the most notable example of this was deborah messing who for like a really long time i was
00:03:45.880just unable to look away from even as she was going down this zionist spiral that like nobody
00:03:51.820else really paid attention to or cared about because she hadn't made work in multiple decades0.86
00:03:55.800but it's neither here nor there. I feel like Candace is this person for you. When I reached
00:04:01.340out about making this episode, you straight up were like, yes, let's do it. I watch Candace
00:04:06.960Owens every single night. Yeah. I'm also just another girl from Connecticut. I grew up literally1.00
00:04:13.000five minutes away from Candace. Although I think she was a freshman when I was a senior in high
00:04:17.740school. We went to rival high schools. I mean, I've become so fascinated with her because I think
00:04:23.440she's emblematic of so many things in digital culture. And I go through phases. I always watch
00:04:29.960a lot of right-wing content to keep tabs. But I think that since Charlie Kirk was killed,
00:04:35.420she's been on this generational run. And I think she has established herself in online culture in
00:04:41.120a way that I'm not seeing any other conservative influencer do. She's just been able to amass0.74
00:04:47.180unprecedented levels of engagement. She often has hundreds of thousands of people concurrently1.00
00:04:52.800watching her live stream when she does her live streams in the last few days while i've been
00:04:57.100outlining for this episode i watched some of her live streams and the rate at which comments come
00:05:04.220in is so like oh my god she's so famous and for a long time i didn't really and we'll get into this
00:05:12.040but like i didn't really pay attention to candace owens because i understood what she was doing and
00:05:16.480i didn't really care about it like she was another person who belongs to a minoritized population
00:05:21.580who was sort of allowing the right to tokenize that thing about herself so she could tell these
00:05:29.120racist white people enacting racist legislation that they weren't racist because look they have
00:05:33.680candace and there's gay influencers who do this there's trans influencers who do this i know this0.91
00:05:39.480game and she was playing it really well for a long time but and so i just didn't really care
00:05:44.560but then this most recent as you say generational run where she's detached herself from reality
00:05:51.500with these conspiracy theories in a way that i felt like i blinked and then i looked over and0.99
00:05:56.760she had like grown her following so immensely she was spewing the craziest shit i've ever even heard0.99
00:06:03.060i mean it's right wing but it's also a lot of times like divorced from reality to the point0.97
00:06:08.520where it's hard to even put a political label on it you know what i mean it's really hard to make
00:06:12.220sense of it is it's it's so funny that she's she's recently had this drama with alex jones
00:06:19.240Okay. Alex Jones called her a globalist agent working for the deep state CIA and the Democratic Party. Were they like anti-Semitic to each other? They are like feuding right now over some of the Charlie Kirk stuff and some of the other Trump stuff. There's so much drama. I mean, we could do a whole other episode on just like the current meltdown happening in the right wing world. Like we've seen so many different factions emerge. Yeah.
00:06:45.860But I think of her as kind of like a modern day Alex Jones, but like far more palpable. I think what makes her so compelling is like she's beautiful. She's put together. She's not sounding like a ranting, raving lunatic when she's saying this stuff. But if you listen to the stuff she's saying, it's conspiracy theories that are completely divorced from reality.
00:07:09.360I do love the idea of, like, two of the most notorious, like, anti-Semitic conspiracy theorists of our time, Alex Jones and Candace Owens, like, beefing with one another over, like, who's the real globalist?
00:07:22.780You're a Jew. No, you're a Jew. What are we doing, guys?1.00
00:07:27.380there's been as a lot more conservatives have become disillusioned with trump and especially
00:07:33.640the far right the q and honors like you've seen this sort of backlash with epstein stuff with
00:07:38.360israel a lot of those people on the far right and people on the left are looking for guiding voices
00:07:45.680and they're turning to people that are very anti-establishment and candace was able to seize
00:07:50.840on that so effectively because she is she doesn't identify as like pro-trump anymore she talks about
00:07:57.020you know then sort of almost leaving the maga movement and now she's just this like anti-institutionalist and positions herself against power in this way her stream on monday was unreal what happened she talks about how people aren't real and like she talks she she's so good at weaving all these narratives together but she's talking about the rise of ai and how things don't feel normal and how people don't seem real and she's she's basically insinuating that like a lot of people in power are like droids maybe or
00:08:27.000like AI controlled like droids but the thing is if you just stop and listen to her she's correct
00:08:34.400at identifying the problem that people aren't real no no just kidding just kidding I mean I'm0.92
00:08:40.240not real I'm a I'm a lizard in like a Jewish body or I don't even know what the correct theory is
00:08:46.360sorry keep going sorry she's correct that like we're feeling this crushing weight of like
00:08:52.540technology and like sort of tech surveillance being like enacted on us without our consent
00:08:56.920there is mass i mean she's been one of the few people that's talked about the restrictions on
00:09:01.080free speech that are happening that frankly no one on the left and a lot of people on the right
00:09:05.220are not even addressing but people feel people see this in this very visceral way and ultimately
00:09:10.460she's talking about the problems of capitalism but she's ascribing them to all these other crazy0.58
00:09:14.620things but but that idea where she says everything since 2020 everything feels fake and gay everything0.60
00:09:19.740feels like not real, whatever, whatever. I am actually an expert on all matters that are fake0.60
00:09:24.880and gay. I think a lot of people, no matter where you're on the political spectrum, feel like0.97
00:09:29.220our society is crumbling and our institutions are crumbling. And she just has these like very
00:09:34.680compelling narratives around that collapse. Which is what these people are so good at,
00:09:39.980is identifying like the real feelings that people have, especially towards politics, inequality,
00:09:46.140censorship capitalism stuff like that and instead of offering them substantive community oriented0.84
00:09:53.480positive solutions they just fill that void with bullshit which is by the way like the entire
00:09:59.020premise of doppelganger by naomi klein yes which is so good which is so good so should we get into
00:10:04.900the life of candace owens and try to make sense of where we are let's dive in well it all starts
00:10:11.760in this state where i am podcasting from right now in new york candace owens is born in the town
00:10:18.860of white plains but grows up in stamford connecticut which uh is a suburb 30 something
00:10:25.740miles outside of new york city is there anything notable about where she grew up in connecticut
00:10:30.920because it's like right next to where you grew up in connecticut just that it's like it is a
00:10:34.620really nice town but there's like that she grew up in kind of a not nice part of a really nice
00:10:39.040part of Connecticut. Her parents divorced when she was eight and she was raised by her mom and
00:10:45.260her grandparents. When her parents were still together, Candace says that her dad worked two
00:10:50.300jobs and her mom did not work. And she said in like wildly archived old interview footage that
00:10:58.320guys, I went deep for this one. But she said in these interviews that this time before she turned
00:11:03.020eight when her parents were still together was the happiest time of her life because she had time at
00:11:07.880home with her parents whereas after they divorced not only were they separated but they both had to
00:11:13.180work which i just think is so sad and like one of my favorite things about this podcast is taking
00:11:18.780these figures who become enormous and evil and bigger than themselves and just like looking at0.88
00:11:24.780stuff like this because you know it's like you know like we're all human like i i fucking hate0.79
00:11:30.240like and yet she doesn't believe in paid maternity leave i just forever feel like that girl in mean0.87
00:11:35.700girls with a cake who's like crying being like why can't we all love each other and then they're
00:11:39.480like she doesn't even go here but anyway in 2007 as a 17 year old high school student candace owens
00:11:46.100received a barrage of racist voicemails from three white male classmates including one of whom was
00:11:52.500the son of danelle malloy who the man who would go on to become the democratic governor of
00:11:57.460connecticut and this is just kind of wild to me because it's obviously horrible that she received
00:12:02.440this like racist hate crime but also one of the one of the people who committed that hate crime
00:12:08.440being the son of a democratic politician i have to wonder if that's part of where this like
00:12:13.140resentment towards like the left stems from you know candace's family sued the local board of
00:12:19.300education over the incident saying that they didn't protect her and she won 37 500 from that
00:12:25.980lawsuit she majored in journalism at university of rhode island but dropped out after junior year
00:12:31.940because of what she says was a problem with a student loan which i'm sure there was a technical
00:12:37.500issue but i think you know the bottom line is like she couldn't afford tuition that's also just
00:12:42.240something that like happens to a lot of people in this country now more than ever tuition is
00:12:47.580fucking insane and it's sad that she becomes one of these people who ends up essentially pulling
00:12:53.160up the ladder behind her after dropping out of school candace owens gets an internship at vogue1.00
00:12:58.680She's like in New York City working an internship at Vogue.
00:16:05.760She ran this blog called Degree 180 with a colleague.
00:16:09.060And I looked all of these people up because I'm like, where are they now?
00:16:11.520But she ran it with someone named Zoe Weiner.
00:16:13.600i looked up zoe weiner and she's like still a beauty instagrammer and seems perfectly normal
00:16:18.580and i zoe if you happen to listen to this podcast i would love to get on the phone with you and ask
00:16:23.220you about your early memories with candace owens i also want to note that through degree 180s long
00:16:29.960forgotten instagram account which is still up i found candace's long forgotten instagram account
00:16:35.980which centered around her cat called shit my cat thinks i just i love finding these nuggets and i'm
00:16:43.160gonna put photos on the screen if you're watching the video episode but from 2015 to 2017 candace0.93
00:16:48.780owens had this instagram account called shit my cat thinks where she would just post photos and
00:16:53.880videos of her cat and to this day it has 77 followers it's awesome the bit fruity fandom0.99
00:17:01.780is about to descend on this i'll see all of you guys whatever after you listen to this on shit0.99
00:17:09.020my cat thinks on Instagram. But can I just say something as somebody that also had a lot of like0.97
00:17:14.440not this is so millennial like she is so millennial coded like that is just so like 2015 BuzzFeed
00:17:21.520quiz shit my cat thinks and of course it goes nowhere it has 77 views because like 99% of0.99
00:17:28.280these stupid accounts that people made like never went anywhere it's just it's so funny like she was0.99
00:17:32.940so normal she was so that was my first thought when i saw this and really my only thought again0.99
00:17:39.000it's like candace owens she's just like us you know which which is kind of painful to think about
00:17:45.040but i want to send you a video from this cat instagram account hey bear homelands on like
00:17:54.560get asked kerry matheson it's nine o'clock on sunday okay isn't it awesome homeland is on
00:18:07.480what a time capsule candace is just laying down on a couch with the cat in her lap when the cat
00:18:16.440is so cute the cat is like snuggling her and looks very sleepy then the caption is quote dvr it
00:18:23.000hashtag cat of the day hashtag cats of instagram hashtag parenting 101 hashtag adopt don't shop0.92
00:18:28.840hashtag homeland hashtag showtime hashtag shit my cat says hashtag funny and taylor lorenz how0.94
00:18:34.720many likes does this have this has 12 likes oh take me back this is wild this is so0.92
00:18:43.700go to scroll to december 20 december 2nd the second one she ever posted the cat is looking
00:18:50.200over her computer screen sort of like poking over his head over looks like when the cat's a kitten
00:18:54.440and she has the degree 180.com cms open in wordpress and the wordpress headline that she
00:19:03.660has written here says woman wants to quit her job so she can stay at home and lick her cat
00:19:10.160candace owens was just like us this is so 2015 it's so adorable and her cat is so adorable
00:19:18.180anyway shall i continue or you can i can't yes i'm down a rabbit hole it is so hard to look
00:19:25.220away from because it's so stunningly normal and precious for someone who would become
00:19:29.560well so candace was a heavy contributor to the degree 180 blog which someone so graciously
00:19:36.900preserved on the internet archive and i read a bunch of the articles that candace wrote this0.91
00:19:43.500blog was mostly like liberal leaning lifestyle content for millennial women as many blogs were
00:19:49.500she wrote candidly about struggling with anorexia misogyny and monogamy taylor i've clipped a passage
00:19:58.060from an article that candace wrote about how monogamy is not realistic and would you like
00:20:03.860to take that let me just scroll up in the google doc and find it hold on this is a very long google
00:20:08.700doc on. Sorry. She writes, don't misunderstand. I do love the idea of monogamy. I think it's a
00:20:15.900beautiful concept that if two people can truly commit over a lifetime is magnificent. She needs
00:20:21.360a copy editor, but I'm also not foolish enough to try to transform something that I desire
00:20:27.480into something that is natural. Not everything we crave is necessarily organic. Come on.
00:20:35.200Okay, listen, I was also a lifestyle blogger and I wouldn't want people reading my content 10 years later. But it's really interesting to read this from her when she's so into like trad wife stuff now, you know?
00:20:49.260Well, we talk about grift on this podcast. And there is an enormously grifty element to Candace
00:20:56.680Owens. And I think that you're just starting to poke the bear on that one. In another article about
00:21:02.100trans people and sex, Candace Owens wrote, I want to formally state my belief that gender
00:21:08.640really is an idea that society made up. Come on, Candace. If I felt in my soul and in my heart
00:21:15.060that I was a man, it would be hard for me to understand why I had to explain that to someone
00:21:20.340else who was already into me anyways. I imagine it must be extremely hard and difficult to explain
00:21:27.120to everyone every day and throughout your life that you are you. Talk about a degree 180 turn.
00:21:35.160The real degree 180 was the pivot she would make after this.
00:21:38.560Yes. I will say, though, I mean, you know, I'm obviously not trans, but not to be like my trans friends, but like the most consistent explanation that I've heard, like from all of my trans friends and like the trans people whose work I read online and stuff.
00:21:54.080It's like there was a period, I think, especially in like the latter portion of the 2010s where people were really invested in like what makes someone transgender and like I need you to explain it to me.
00:22:04.080And that's kind of where that whole like born in the wrong body, like brain doesn't match my body, where like language like that started to come out as an argument of like why someone is transgender.
00:22:14.280But the most consistent thing that I see is like, well, you're transgender because you are, you know, in the same way that like I'm like I'm gay because I am.0.62
00:22:21.760and like they can run all the studies and try to find the gay gene and whatever they want. But0.58
00:22:25.120it's like at the end of the day, it doesn't really matter. It's just you are and it is
00:22:30.660exhausting to explain. And it's so wild to see Candace explain this perfectly.
00:22:37.200I guess I mean, 10 years makes such a difference, right?
00:23:02.560We just think everything men do is creepy.1.00
00:23:05.560And this is an article where basically Candace argues that like women are being too sensitive about misogyny and about like catcalling and that kind of thing.
00:23:12.340I mean, it's funny because this is still before Me Too, but it was written during the peak of0.91
00:23:18.400liberal feminism. And I do think that like that sort of corporate girl boss feminism0.99
00:23:24.160was starting to aggravate people. I mean, like that blog post is written in February 9th, 2016,1.00
00:23:32.000which is ironically still when Bernie was in the running for president and people were starting to
00:23:37.480kind of voice their frustration with Hillary. And you just started to see the emergence of,
00:23:43.820I think people feeling like, wait a minute, we don't love this brand of feminism. You can see
00:23:50.760the inklings. But I empathize in the sense that like, I think if you asked me about my thoughts
00:23:55.680on feminism during that same time, I think Hillary Clinton was being so shoved down our throats.
00:24:02.420she was so positioned as like this is feminism this is what you better get on board you can bomb
00:24:08.240Libya as a woman yeah and so like even I'm an avowed feminist but but that year I just remember0.99
00:24:14.400being like is that what feminism is because maybe I don't like it does feminism mean I have to become0.99
00:24:19.700a boss and yeah the man can't open the door like I don't know it's just like I think there it was1.00
00:24:24.520in the discourse sure sure but regardless of any of this still consistently Candace was very anti-Trump
00:24:31.580And this is in the lead up to Trump 1.0 election.
00:24:35.540And so famously in this one article titled The Republican Tea Party is led by the mad
00:24:41.860hatter, Candace wrote, I can't believe that she wrote this.
00:24:45.720The good news is Republicans will eventually die off peacefully in their sleep, we hope.
00:24:51.740And then we can get right on with the all caps obvious social change that needs to happen
00:24:58.460So people tend to know this quote, but what is less often discussed is the following list that she makes of the things she thinks will happen after the Republican Party is like crushed forever, as she says, die off.0.97
00:25:11.920The first of which is the gay, transgendered, bi, straight, anything else conversation will be instantly over, deleted, done because us millennials literally never even gave a shit about this.0.89
00:25:26.940I actually remember being in third grade and piecing together in my head that one of my guy0.98
00:25:31.320friends was homosexual. I didn't give a shit then. I don't give a shit now. And the fact that he0.99
00:25:36.980actually had to give a shit until this year about being himself is the most ridiculously pathetic1.00
00:25:42.220and stupid thing that our government has inflicted upon a group of people for wanting to be themselves1.00
00:25:47.500since slavery. It is not my business who somebody else wants to have sex with or love. Not yours1.00
00:25:54.540either tea party peeps i actually find it creepy that you have cared so much and for so long about
00:26:00.660somebody else's sex life this is someone who in 2015 was saying that after the 2016 election that
00:26:09.720the gay transgender conversation will be over forever because we need to move on this is the
00:26:16.280same person making millions of dollars spreading the craziest theories about the first lady of0.90
00:26:24.920france being transgender in 2025 which we're gonna get to but i mean talk about grift right
00:26:32.080now we're really getting there it's wild and also it just it's like such a sliding doors like
00:26:38.920reality of like if hillary clinton had won what would have happened to the internet you know like
00:26:45.180how because she wouldn't have pivoted right and also what was i think like a good influencer
00:26:50.520somebody that succeeds on the internet all of us like it's like you know you have to sort of read
00:26:55.620the tea leaves of the current vibe and like what's ascendant and like what's culturally ascended in
00:27:00.640terms of belief systems and she she was so liberal at this time because that's what was yes that's
00:27:06.880what was dominating totally but i but i will say like this blog didn't have a readership frankly
00:27:13.200Candace Owens, to be extremely clear, had no audience.0.77
00:27:16.160She was essentially an anonymous person.
00:27:19.060So, like, I do think this was actually an honest reflection of what her politics were at the time.
00:27:23.940And I don't mean necessarily that she was approaching it from that internet standpoint.
00:27:27.840I just think that you see her ability to kind of be this chameleon.
00:27:31.620Where, like, I mean, I want to believe that she believed this stuff back then, and she probably did.
00:27:36.740But how much of it is just her going along with whatever?
00:27:39.800Yeah, I mean, she does never come across as someone with like a super firm backbone.
00:27:44.780I really am so grateful for whoever internet archived the entire Degree 180 website because
00:27:50.340one of the other gems I found on it is this video interview of her.
00:28:42.480Yes. This is when she came on my radar.
00:28:44.680This is when things begin to go off the rails.
00:28:48.540So in 2016, as a 26-year-old, with the help of her team at Degree 180,
00:28:55.020Candice launches a Kickstarter for a new website she plans to call Social Autopsy.
00:29:01.260Do you want to explain the premise of what Social Autopsy was?
00:29:04.220Social autopsy wanted to end cyberbullying. And it wanted to do that by essentially doxing
00:29:12.100everyone. It's so funny because this is literally what she actually speaks out against now,
00:29:18.020which is mass surveillance and doxing and all this stuff. She was claiming bringing transparency to
00:29:25.040the internet and making it easier to get someone fired from their job, basically, if they said
00:29:31.400something bad online. And it was a terrible idea. And a lot of people said it was a terrible idea
00:29:37.480that kind of just made her like dig her heels in harder. Yeah, the idea was that she would make
00:29:42.700this website that connected people who left anonymous mean comments online to their actual
00:29:48.980identity and their employers so you could get them fired, which in a lot of ways, like, you know,
00:29:54.640rest in peace, social autopsy, you would have loved Palantir. It's amazing that people were
00:30:00.340against that idea back then because it's like like she was so early to like this cancel culture
00:30:04.560idea you know candace puts up a kickstarter campaign to raise $75,000 to create this
00:30:10.240website i have no idea how she could have established the technology she was trying
00:30:15.640to get with $75,000 but regardless that kickstarter is also still up today and it did
00:30:21.680raise $4,000 from 54 people i wonder where that $4,000 went peter teal didn't see it he would0.98
00:30:28.100have funded that shit immediately. Peter Thiel would have been all over that. Well, they found0.98
00:30:32.520each other eventually. Immediate backlash ensued from people who recognized that there was no way
00:30:37.680of ensuring that this would work as intended and not turn into, like we said, a doxing website for
00:30:43.140anyone and everyone. People start to pile on online on this idea. And again, they're piling
00:30:49.180onto Candace, who at the time is not a woman that people know. She's not a public figure.0.82
00:30:54.280And instead of taking the L for a bad idea, Candace starts to buy into this conspiracy that the people leading the criticism to social autopsy were two women named Zoe Quinn and Randy Lee Harper, who were two of the main victims of Gamergate, which was a mid-2010s misogynistic online harassment campaign against women video game developers.
00:31:19.480this gets a little bit like thorny and confusing so try to stay with me i scripted my part out here
00:31:26.600so you can hopefully follow along but basically let's talk about these two women zoe quinn was a0.74
00:31:32.280video game developer and she was one of the main victims of this online harassment campaign called
00:31:37.960gamer gate which some of you probably know about and as a victim of online harassment and doxing
00:31:42.840herself she had voiced her opposition to the social autopsy website and zoe had also reached
00:31:48.960out to Candace privately, as they were now both victims of online hate, Candace becoming a victim
00:31:54.740of it because of her website idea. Instead of uniting through their shared experience, Candace
00:32:00.500started a conspiracy, mostly for herself. Keep in mind, she had no audience, that Zoe Quinn was
00:32:08.260directing all of the hate towards her and against social autopsy. Randy Lee Harper, another Gamergate
00:32:14.460victim wrote a blog post of her own where she exceptionally tore into candace owens and social1.00
00:32:21.600autopsy in this blog post randy lee harper called candace a goddamn train wreck and a fucking idiot0.99
00:32:27.520this was probably unnecessary but also these were all women who were so traumatized and dealing with1.00
00:32:35.480so much online hate like these were essentially private citizens who had become the target of one
00:32:41.320of the biggest online hate campaigns of all time and so i'm gonna try to give everyone grace but0.94
00:32:46.060because of candace owens's feud with zoe and randy over social autopsy candace fell into the arms of0.98
00:32:53.100the people who were harassing zoe and randy who were these gamer gate harassing mostly young very
00:32:59.640online men they were basically all misogynistic young men who then convinced candace that these
00:33:04.760gamer gate targets were lying about the abuse that they faced that they were making money off the
00:33:09.940controversy etc etc none of which was true it's interesting because within gamergate there are
00:33:16.360vaguely like anti-semitic undertones of like these minoritized and oppressed people are actually your
00:33:23.260overlords who are responsible for everything bad that happens to you and they're making money off
00:33:28.060of it so it's interesting that from the beginning candace has the shape of an anti-semitic conspiracy
00:33:32.880theory that she seems very susceptible and open to you mentioned these like men that she fell in0.97
00:33:38.060with those were the earliest conservative influencers right exactly candace's anti1.00
00:33:43.800zoe and randy crusade left her with a ton of right-wing bedfellows who also hated women in
00:33:49.800video games they hated women in general and she soon found herself on the phone with some of the
00:33:56.820earliest far-right influencers milo yiannopoulos and mike cernovich who offered candace support
00:34:03.000and told her to, quote, keep her head up.
00:34:05.740She would later describe this experience as, quote,
00:34:09.140what turned her conservative overnight.
00:34:12.000So I want to take a beat here because I think in examining her earliest kind of online output,
00:34:18.500even though it had no audience, you can see that she was susceptible.
00:34:22.300Like my understanding of Candace Owens before I looked into all of this
00:34:26.200was that like a conservative guy was nice to her and offered her a bunch of money0.87
00:34:30.560and like power and influence and access.
00:34:32.300And then she was like, OK, well, I guess I'm conservative then.
00:34:57.980But it's also just really hard to be a person online who's getting a lot of heat for anything, even if it is a bad idea. And conservatives love to take the grievance and angst you might be feeling as someone getting a lot of heat and being like, you know who you can blame it all on? The people with the least power in society.
00:35:16.460Mm-hmm. It's intoxicating to, you know, to, to feel so validated in your lowest moments. I mean,
00:35:22.420there was that article that came out years ago about like this, like canceled men's club. And
00:35:26.960it's like, basically anytime a man was getting canceled online, you had all these like, you
00:35:31.520know, reactionary figures, like reaching out to them and being like, Hey, come, you know,
00:35:35.880join our group. Oh, like the woke mob got you too. You know, like, don't worry. Like we support
00:35:41.020each other. And I mean, it is so hard, like in those moments, as we have all dealt with,
00:35:46.720it's like when you are getting piled on online, like there's like these times when it's like,
00:35:51.420yeah, the media is clearly like kind of all coalescing around someone. Everyone is attacking
00:35:57.060someone. Maybe it's justified. Maybe it's not. I remember so clearly when the social autopsy thing
00:36:03.100was viral because to anybody with two brain cells, like it did, it was the worst idea ever.
00:36:07.560And I think Candace herself would probably recognize that now, given her comments about
00:47:08.140I don't I don't really often say those words in that order, but you know.
00:47:11.180so naturally in 2017 amid allegations of racism at turning point usa i can't imagine why turning
00:47:22.200point usa would would end up being a racist workplace but it's neither here nor there
00:47:27.280charlie kirk hires candace owens to become the organization's director of urban engagement even
00:47:35.040that title feels racist it does it sounds like some 85 year old like white man and it's interesting
00:47:43.520because at this point candace who one of the very good things and one of the few good things that i
00:47:49.900would say about candace owens is that she is an incredible talent on camera but at this point
00:47:55.040she's still not doing on camera work she is essentially like in the corporate ladder at
00:48:00.000turning point usa she works there for two years and while there she really blossoms into a public
00:48:06.600figure she is recognized by donald trump who calls her a great thinker and this is crazy i mean0.99
00:48:12.640candace went from catstagramming from like some shitty new york city apartment that we've like
00:48:18.000we've all been there to being recognized by the president of the united states in like a year
00:48:24.240And in 2018, the following year, Kanye West tweets, quote, I love the way Candace Owens thinks. Put yourself in her shoes. Like, that's got to feel crazy. And this is also before Kanye became a full Nazi, but it's also before Candace became a full Nazi. So, you know.0.92
00:48:41.020this was such an interesting time because turning point was such a different organization
00:48:47.480it didn't have the power it had now it really was this upstart thing i say upstart thing it
00:48:53.580was funded by billionaires okay this is the most astroturfed thing you've ever seen which is funny
00:48:59.080because you know people think of charlie kirk as the founder of turning point he didn't found it
00:49:02.080alone he founded it with this old ass you know billionaire guy who died of covid in 2020 and
00:49:07.800it's been he then you know charlie died of gun violence the irony there but um turning point was0.87
00:49:12.440just getting started and they weren't seen as cool either like this is like before the like
00:49:17.580owned lib stuff like had gone viral like 2017 it was actually peak resistance like it was pink
00:49:24.880pussy hat women's march girl boss i think that she was able to position herself as countercultural
00:49:32.480at that sort of pivotal time. And she started to ride that MAGA wave.0.99
00:49:37.220Yeah. And it's also like part of her success is that she did this early because now everybody
00:49:43.580knows that if you are part of a minoritized group, you can slot yourself into this ecosystem so much
00:49:49.700so that I've spoken about this on this podcast. It's become oversaturated. Candice being Candice
00:49:55.160as pretty as she is and as good as she is on camera, if she were to try to become Candice now,
00:49:59.940I don't think it would work because the slot has been filled so many times over.0.62
00:50:05.160A hundred percent. She was right place, right time. Now it's just this well-trod path and
00:50:12.220you have to be so compelling. Like it's really hard. I just think of the way the influencer
00:50:17.040landscape has like fragmented and it's become so like nichified. It's so hard to amass the amount1.00
00:50:54.700where is Tommy Lahren from? Tommy Lahren, I mean, that's a whole other episode. Let me know if you
00:51:00.500want it. But she, I mean, Tommy Lahren at one point in her ascendance to conservative media
00:51:05.380royalty was like, I think I might be a little bit pro-choice. And they were like, we will never hear
00:51:10.540from you again. That's where she went. Also, she was so tied to Facebook video. And I think Candace
00:51:18.760tied herself to youtube very early and i think that was also very smart candace leaves turning
00:51:25.840point usa in 2019 to join prager you where she launched the candace owens show and officially
00:51:33.780became an on-screen talent powerhouse one year later she leaves prager you to join the daily
00:51:42.080wire which is ben shapiro's online publication where she hosted her own live political talk show
00:51:48.200called candace which had like a live studio audience and stuff now these years when she
00:51:53.760was bouncing between turning point and prager you and the daily wire and like all of the right-wing
00:51:58.660networks this is when candace came onto my radar because when social autopsy happened i was like
00:52:03.380in high school and did not know what was going on and i mostly ignored candace because like i said
00:52:08.800at the beginning like i knew what she was doing and i knew why she was succeeding it was like a
00:52:13.440pretty standard grift that we've described where like a minority can do this on the right and she
00:52:18.180was just doing it particularly early and particularly well so as she ascended the ranks
00:52:22.920and became incredibly wealthy and well watched among republicans to me it kind of became
00:52:28.720background noise and this would change but before we get into how it changes
00:52:33.760i want to talk about the freedom phone oh my god let's do it
00:52:38.860because these people are at the end of the day about their wallets and that can take them into
00:52:50.980some pretty funny places candace is no exception so in 2022 while at the daily wire doing her show
00:52:58.380candace began promoting the freedom phone which taylor reported on at the time taylor take it away
00:53:05.660First of all, it was just a shitty Chinese Android. Let's just be clear. So throughout Trump 1.0, we saw the beginnings of the tech lash and you started to see liberals be like, why did Donald Trump win? Not because of our broken economic system and we ran a, you know, historically unpopular candidate and all, you know, haven't done anything for our base in years.
00:53:26.400No, it was because Facebook, Facebook is why Trump won and social media is bad. And actually,
00:53:33.360the government needs to be regulating speech and all this stuff. Conservatives were nasty0.94
00:53:38.060platform. Like, right. We saw Alex Jones kicked off like we saw a lot of conservatives lose their0.97
00:53:42.580audience for for good reason. Right. Milo. Exactly. So they really invested heavily in building an
00:53:48.280alternative tech ecosystem, which included sites like Rumble, you know, the YouTube alternative
00:53:53.680d live a competitor to twitch gab parlor truth social like basically like a mirror conservative
00:54:00.920universe for like everything there's a conservative amazon right now as well like everything that you
00:54:06.760can think of that's a major american tech company which is funny because now all the major american
00:54:10.460tech ceos are just conservatives but the phone stuff started after this because like basically
00:54:14.840so gab was it gab that couldn't be downloaded in the app store or parlor parlor which is just like
00:54:20.300a right wing like social media app yeah so parlor is like gab or to social or any of these other
00:54:25.300right wing social media apps you couldn't download it in the app store because of the role that it
00:54:30.380played in january 6th organizers right like they were all on it and then after january 6th the app
00:54:37.280stores the mainstream app stores were like we're not going to offer this anymore long story short
00:54:41.840they already built this alternative app ecosystem and around this time is when you start to see
00:54:48.820conservatives be like wait a minute if they can ban this app what else can i take from us right
00:54:54.060like you are they gonna take our phones are you gonna be like china where they determine what
00:54:59.320apps go on your phones but the freedom phone was the beginning of a lot of these conservative0.99
00:55:03.040phones like we have the trump phone now which again is just they're all just like shitty androids
00:55:08.240but it was a way to it was like it was like you can have this freedom phone and download whatever
00:55:13.260apps you want and i think it came pre-installed with parlor or something right they offer this
00:55:18.480phone for $500, but $450 if you use the code Candace, by the way. They're positioning it as
00:55:29.880in opposition to like woke Apple and like woke Google. They pre-installed the phone with an
00:55:39.780uncensored app store that included Parler and the apps that were banned elsewhere, which are now
00:55:46.040no longer banned because like you said these tech companies just became far right when it became
00:55:49.580economically expedient for them to do so as you said the actual physical phone which they were
00:55:55.680charging five hundred dollars for first of all it took eight months to end up shipping it out to
00:55:59.580people which was a whole controversy because people ordered it and then it just never came
00:56:03.200and then eight months later it arrived and it's an umidigi 89 which is a chinese smartphone that
00:56:09.320you can buy for 120 running on an android system of course which is just awesome but my favorite
00:56:16.500part of this candace was like the face of this because she was very famous already and she
00:56:23.300tweeted about buying the freedom phone on uh july 14th 2021 i just did a live on instagram
00:56:30.720talking everyone through the new freedom phone which is now trending so excited that i partnered
00:56:36.260with a solution against apple and google use code candace for 10 off this was when on twitter you0.88
00:56:42.280could still see what type of device someone was tweeting from and it was fucking sent from iphone0.92
00:56:49.160of course of course i love it it's so ridiculous because nobody wants to use these crappy android0.97
00:56:58.960phones just the way trump is not using his trump gold phone or whatever it's so funny and now of
00:57:04.320course they all have their own like wireless network too that's like another grift it is just
00:57:08.500interesting how like a core part of these conservative grifter business models is creating
00:57:13.260like a conservative version branding wise of every product that is otherwise like just a normal
00:57:19.200product like i remember during the dylan mulvaney bud light controversy yes when one of these
00:57:24.960influencers came out with ultra right beer and it was just beer that you could buy for like an
00:57:32.740extraordinarily high price for a six-pack and it was like just beer but they were like0.96
00:57:37.060this beer is never gonna be trans or like you know fucking whatever but it's like it's just0.99
00:57:42.540such a bullshit it's the like the razor what's the uh you know when dollar shave club went woke0.99
00:57:48.500or whatever you had like the freedom razors literally oh man but what i will say about this1.00
00:57:56.740Matt. The right has an ecosystem of brands to support conservative influencers because
00:58:04.180conservative influencers couldn't for a long time get mainstream brand deals. Now,
00:58:09.320conservative influencers have the entire right wing brand ecosystem, which is flourishing,
00:58:16.080and the entire mainstream brand ecosystem. Liberals have the mainstream brand ecosystem.
00:58:22.120People on the left have no brand. People on the left have Patreon.
00:58:25.380yeah like there's no like leftist amazon and i don't mean patreon the company i just mean like
00:58:31.960we have patreons we have to beg no we have to beg our audiences to subscribe to us and like
00:58:38.360give us you know whatever amount a month because we don't have a fake woke phone company that can0.85
00:58:44.620sponsor us yeah yeah what would the leftist phone be um guys use code matt for 10 off the gay phone0.73
00:58:52.420yeah yeah it would be just like rainbow i don't know you can set your pronouns pre-installed with0.56
00:59:01.180grinder yeah exactly but it's like also it's so funny because like they were so early to
00:59:07.880identifying those problems with tech too like they were so early to identify all these speech
00:59:12.980problems and all these de-platforming issues and all of that stuff and they just they capitalized
00:59:17.600on it so well yeah it's just another example of them identifying the momentum of like a real
00:59:24.160problem and a real feeling that people are having of surveillance of free speech of all of this sort
00:59:29.820of like collapsing on itself frankly as a result of free market capitalism and then being like
00:59:34.900we're gonna give you something worse yeah i would like to give a shout out to factor for sponsoring
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01:01:52.520fruity50off. Thank you so much to Factor for sponsoring this episode. And now let's get back
01:01:57.920to the show. Anyway, back to Candace Owens. So she is at the Daily Wire, which is Ben Shapiro's1.00
01:02:06.420publication for a number of years. And in March 2024, Ben Shapiro, head of the Daily Wire,
01:02:14.540fires Candace Owens for reportedly anti-Semitic comments she made and engaged with on Twitter.
01:02:21.460This is where things start to get to the Candace we know today. At the time, this is five months
01:02:27.760after October 7th. Israel had already killed 30,000 people in its genocide on Gaza. And Candace
01:02:34.360was, like many of us, critical of U.S. aid to Israel, but was simultaneously going on rants
01:02:41.720about Jewish people more broadly. She said common sense things like, American taxpayers shouldn't
01:02:48.820have to pay for Israel's wars or the wars of any other country. And she said that Benjamin
01:02:54.040Netanyahu is committing a Holocaust on Palestinian children and women, which are things that I agree1.00
01:02:59.900with and things that people across America broadly agree with. But then Candace also says things like0.96
01:03:06.560she compares Jews in Hollywood to the Bloods and Crips gangs. Candace very intentionally doesn't0.98
01:03:13.840separate Jews from Zionism and uses like the very real violence of Zionism and understandable0.93
01:03:20.720anger towards Israel as a way to do audience capture for her anti-Semitic conspiracy theories.
01:03:27.120And this is why I have said this a number of times on this podcast. She and people like Tucker and
01:03:32.460Nick Fuentes, they are some of the most infuriating things as an anti-Zionist Jew. And I think for0.99
01:03:39.340anti-Zionists in general, who come from a place of humanitarian concern and wanting equality for
01:03:45.840all people. And they exploit these desires that, by the way, the Democratic Party has spent two
01:03:52.420years leaving wide open on the table. And again, it's another example of there being like a really
01:03:58.660real gap in solutions for like, I have all of this anger towards a colony of the United States
01:04:05.740committing a genocide on people with my tax dollars. And with no real solutions coming
01:04:10.820from the government we still send aid to israel regularly uh here comes candace owens to to sell0.97
01:04:17.360you whatever she wants to sell you including conspiracy theories about jewish people that are
01:04:21.920wildly untrue and bastardize the palestinian cause bastardize the fight against anti-semitism
01:04:28.880but but also israel and zionists paved the way for someone like this to flourish by insisting
01:04:35.760that there's no distinction between Judaism and Zionism. So yeah, I'm ranting. It's just really
01:04:41.960frustrating. I think like the last point you made is really crucial here, which is that ultimately
01:04:46.920it's the Zionists that are continue to force this narrative that there is no difference between
01:04:53.920Jewish people and Zionism and that these two things are interchangeable. And I mean, this
01:04:59.240is something that Netanyahu and again, the Zionist government Israel continues to point to, or they
01:05:03.500say, you know, well, look, the majority of Jews do support Zionism, right? These things that make0.68
01:05:09.960it very hard for people to separate the two. And I think that when you, you know, look at someone
01:05:17.000like Candace Owens or whatever, yeah, they want people like her to exist. They want to conflate
01:05:23.340Judaism with Zionism and then be able to point to a conspiracy theorist or somebody saying hateful
01:05:28.960anti-Semitic things and say, like, look, see, like, look at how bad that is. Look at how
01:05:33.240dangerous the world is. This is why we need Israel, right? Israel needs anti-Semitism to1.00
01:05:38.400exist and needs anti-Semitism to flourish around the world in order to justify its weaponry and0.98
01:05:44.320its very existence. Exactly. And it's around this time that Candace makes what now seems like a0.92
01:05:50.960pretty obvious bedfellow in the neo-Nazi Nick Fuentes. It's also around this time that she
01:05:56.760starts blaming Jews for everything in eerily similar ways that very early on she blamed Zoe
01:06:03.040Quinn and the Gamergate victims for leading a secret war against her in the social autopsy days
01:06:09.440that's one of the really interesting aspects of the exercise we do on this podcast is like going
01:06:14.880back and finding these moments where you're like oh yeah like you don't understand how power works
01:06:21.560And you're very willing to like ascribe crazy conspiracy theories to anything that like, I don't know, satiates your feelings of persecution and hatred of minorities, I think.
01:06:32.900Yeah, I mean, it's very funny. First of all, as many have pointed out, very ironic that Ben Shapiro kind of ultimately turned on her over Israel when this is sort of why I think Ben Shapiro and a lot of these people are ultimately losing in the conservative movement.
01:06:45.560it's because like you've aligned yourself with fascists you can't say that you're fine sacrificing0.70
01:06:50.660the rights of you know gay people trans people uh women black people right oh but then jewish0.97
01:06:57.180people are this protected class and oh but you can't say no like again you're gonna get nick0.73
01:07:02.460fuentes you're gonna get these people that fundamentally don't believe in the rights of
01:07:05.620minorities and do believe in hate speech and do believe in all this stuff so i kind of i'm not
01:07:10.420sympathetic to candace but it is ironic right because it's like she's like oh here's where you
01:07:14.760draw the line. But this is what you've been paying me to say for the past few years, right? About her
01:07:19.580own race of people, black people. So it's just ridiculous. This is what drives me crazy about1.00
01:07:23.620right-wing Zionists like Ben Shapiro. I mean, I think Zionists in general are right-wing and I've0.67
01:07:28.520made that case on this podcast before, but like people who explicitly align themselves with the0.94
01:07:34.100right, with Trump, with MAGA, with fascism, but then they think that their interests in the nation
01:07:40.780state of israel which is like a geostrategic military outpost for the u.s they think that
01:07:45.660is going to also serve their interests as jews and like you said i mean white christian nationalists
01:07:51.520they will come after every other minority eventually they're going to come for you too
01:07:54.880and a lot of people ask me especially like other jews with zionist families who are struggling with
01:08:01.800how to talk to them and who i get it like i i've had to have conversations within my family of
01:08:08.160especially older jews who have existed for decades and decades and decades with this idea that the
01:08:14.760only thing that can keep jews safe is the state of israel we've seen demonstrably how israel is
01:08:19.660endangering jews globally but then they ask like what do i tell my parents when they ask like0.92
01:08:25.120how do i convince them of this and what is what is it that keeps jews safe and the answer is what
01:08:31.780keeps jews safe is what keeps every other group of minorities safe which is a respect for other
01:08:37.440human beings in a political sense, which is political equality, which is a recognition of
01:08:42.860multiculturalism and everybody's ability to practice their religion, to exist in their body,
01:08:48.900to love who they love, like equal rights and the enshrining of equal rights into law and making
01:08:55.620that the norm in society. That's what keeps Jews safe the way that it keeps every other minority0.99
01:09:00.480group safe. And when you refuse to recognize that, you find yourself in the position of Ben Shapiro
01:09:06.420firing Candace Owens for hating Jews. Well, yeah, I mean, both of you agree that every other0.72
01:09:11.380minority is a reasonable target. So of course, of course, Jews would end up being one too.1.00
01:09:16.000100%. And this is why Ben Shapiro is losing 1000 subscribers a day on YouTube and Candace Owens'0.98
01:09:22.240descendant. In the wake of Candace Owens' breakup with Benny Boy Shapiro, she goes nuclear on Jews,
01:09:31.680soaking up her newfound ability to do so without consequences.0.79
01:09:36.540She begins singing the praises of Nick Fuentes.
01:09:40.100She blames, there's like a lot of things she said about the Jews.
01:09:59.360she said that jfk was assassinated by apac and and in that way she is always weaving her anti-israel0.68
01:10:06.060sentiment with anti-semitic sentiment also despite candace feeding into some like anti-semitic0.72
01:10:10.960conspiracy theories like let's be clear she was fired for daily wire in part because she tweeted0.90
01:10:16.240like genocide is always wrong like she did come out really strong in support of palestinians and
01:10:22.700children and focused a lot on children and i think that set her up to be this like martyr where i
01:10:29.340think a lot of people were suddenly looking at her like well wait a minute ben shapiro why do you
01:10:34.100have a problem with this stuff the comments that got her ultimately fired it was a lot about gaza
01:10:38.940well and this is the thing she always is saying both of these sort of anti-zionist things and the
01:10:45.280anti-semitic things like in the same breath in a way that makes it really hard to disentangle and
01:10:50.500like she was saying really anti-semitic stuff but i agree that like she could have just been
01:10:54.420for example like calling it genocide and ben shapiro would have fired her exactly ben shapiro
01:10:59.140can say antisemitism is bad. And he's right about some of the things that she was saying. But
01:11:03.980ultimately, working at Ben Shapiro's company will not give you room to criticize Israel. And that's
01:11:08.320what she was doing. Exactly. So outside of this kind of stuff, one of Candace's first big beats
01:11:14.460after Ben Shapiro fires her is her crusade against Blake Lively in the legal battle that she had
01:11:21.440with Justin Baldoni. Taylor, could you explain just a little bit about how Candace used the0.99
01:11:27.600anti Blake Lively crusade to become president of the misogyny slop ecosystem. Yes. And sort of her0.65
01:11:34.780pivot from like conservative recruitment through hard politics and like talking about political
01:11:39.980issues to this sort of like cultural news celebrity gossip thing that she got into.
01:11:46.040Yeah. So Candace was very early to covering the Blake Lively, Justin Baldoni legal feud.
01:11:52.520Obviously, she was pro-Baldoni and anti-Blake Lively. She used it as a way to rail against
01:11:58.860Me Too. Essentially, Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni were filming this movie together. Blake
01:12:03.420Lively made allegations that Justin Baldoni sexually harassed her. There's evidence that
01:12:08.260what she said was true. There's other allegations against Baldoni. I don't want to litigate the
01:12:13.040whole case, but it's about sexual harassment in the workplace, and that should have been
01:12:17.640unacceptable and yet people were so quick to defend Baldoni so you know to say again me too
01:12:24.000had gone too far women make these allegations never mind that Blake Lively had no reason to
01:12:27.800make these allegations right like yeah she didn't she didn't need Justin Baldoni's money1.00
01:12:31.980I don't think Blake Lively was looking for a payday nor is she looking for fame she's way
01:12:37.600more famous than him you know like the whole thing is just ridiculous but Candace hopped on0.97
01:12:42.100that story very early and did a lot of like almost daily coverage of it. And she's always
01:12:48.920used pop culture news to like grow her audience. She covered Megan Thee Stallion. She'll cover a0.93
01:12:53.480lot of these like entertainment-y type stories because she knows that it broadens her audience
01:12:58.140and it gets those normie listeners in and then she can sort of convert them. And of course,
01:13:02.120as she's covering this pop culture news, she's covering it through a conservative bent.0.99
01:13:06.440Yes, like an anti-woman, anti-Me Too, we don't actually need, like, you know, rules and regulations around sexual harassment in the workplace. This has all gone too far. Fascinatingly, echoing some sentiments from her blog post from Degree 180 10 years earlier.
01:13:23.200This was the point that I started hearing something that I hear a lot now, which is people being like, I've never agreed with Candace Owens, but she has some points.
01:13:33.320this bothers me so much because it's like okay so you're falling for reactionary rhetoric i want to
01:13:38.760ask you to talk to that type of person though like in good faith because they are falling for
01:13:43.520reactionary rhetoric but also like i don't want them to i think when you think of conservatives
01:13:47.780or you think of right-wingers you think of these people that have said a lot of like hateful rhetoric
01:13:52.160i think people will be like i could never agree with them right oh i'm so shocked that i agree
01:13:56.320with them on something and it's like with the blake lively justin baldoni thing she's just
01:14:02.120doing the sort of classic anti-Me Too rhetoric. And it's the same thing with the Amber Heard stuff.
01:14:07.540It's the same thing with Meghan Markle. Anybody that falls for these misogynistic hate campaigns1.00
01:14:11.180is like, I can't believe I'm believing with Candace Owens. I hate to be the one to tell you,
01:14:16.960but you have become susceptible to a misogynistic hate campaign. And those campaigns are very
01:14:23.240compelling. And you're not going to realize that you're falling for that. What you're going to do
01:14:27.020is you're going to ingest a very biased and warped stream of information and news that's
01:14:33.460presented in this very sort of warped way. And then your conclusion is going to be like, wow,
01:14:38.000this lying bitch, right? And before you know it, you have fallen for misogynistic hate.1.00
01:14:42.300Which has, I would argue, left you more susceptible to like anything else conservatives say.
01:14:47.060Which leads you more susceptible to that other stuff because you start to, one, you've now fallen
01:14:52.680for a conservative line of thinking. And you're like, well, what else was I wrong about? Well,
01:14:57.000what else do i agree with her secret oh i can't believe i agree with candace owens maybe maybe
01:15:01.680civil rights have gone too far whatever right like suddenly you go down this rabbit hole and
01:15:05.620you just start listening to more and more conservative messaging
01:15:08.120we just took a two-second break and taylor opened her phone and it was0.99
01:15:23.220you're so fucked candace's latest act is i think she's understood i mean she definitely can0.98
01:15:34.860understand those viewership numbers and she knows that tapping into something a little more pop0.99
01:15:40.940cultural and like a little more conspiratorial a little more out there than just like commenting
01:15:47.180on the political news of the day is what her audience wants and what's growing it so she's
01:15:52.840continued with celebrity stuff but it's just gotten off the rails so this is the point where
01:15:57.240i kind of lose my ability to understand what the hell she's talking about anymore but we're so
01:16:04.540lucky to be joined on this podcast today by someone who who's kept up with it every single day