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Candace Amber Owens Farmer ( Owens; born April 29, 1989) is an American political commentator and author. Her political positions have mostly been described as far-rightRefs for "far-right":
or Conservatism. She has promoted numerous conspiracy theories.
Owens has gained recognition for her conservative activism—despite being initially critical of President Donald Trump and the Republican Party—as well as her criticism of Black Lives Matter. Owens was the communications director for the conservative advocacy group Turning Point USA from 2017 to 2019. In 2018, Owens co-founded BLEXIT Foundation along with former Tucson police officer Brandon Tatum.*
After working for PragerU, in 2021 Owens joined The Daily Wire and began hosting Candace, a political talk show. She was dismissed in March 2024 following a series of comments regarded as Antisemitism, and months of tensions with co-host Ben Shapiro and other Daily Wire staff.
Owens has expressed skepticism about the extent of white supremacy's impact on society and has voiced opposition to both COVID-19 lockdowns and COVID-19 vaccines.
She is a graduate of Stamford High School in Connecticut. In 2007, while a 17-year-old senior at Stamford High School, Owens received three racist death threat voicemail messages, totaling two minutes, from a group of white male classmates which included the son of then-mayor and future Democratic governor Dannel Malloy. 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, saying she had an issue with her student loan. After leaving college, she worked as an intern for Vogue magazine in New York. She took a job in 2012 as an administrative assistant for a private equity firm in Manhattan, later moving up to become its vice president of administration.
In response, people began posting Owens's private details online. With scant evidence, Owens blamed the doxing on Progressivism. 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. 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 Internet troll ... Social Autopsy is why I'm conservative." Kickstarter suspended funding for Social Autopsy, and the website was never created.
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. Turning Point's hiring of Owens occurred in the wake of allegations of racism at Turning Point. In May 2019, Owens announced her departure as communications director for the organization. While at Turning Point USA, Owens received the support of prominent figures in the Republican Party. President Trump called her a "very smart thinker," while Republican National Committee chair Ronna Romney McDaniel said at CPAC "People like Candace Owens, like Charlie Kirk, we need more leaders like that." Ted Cruz expressed his admiration for Owens by jokingly suggesting in 2022 that she be appointed to the Supreme Court of the United States.
In April 2018, Kanye West tweeted: "I love the way Candace Owens thinks." The tweet was met with derision on the part of many of West's fans. In May 2019, Owens hosted The Candace Owens Show on PragerU's YouTube channel.
In April 2020, Owens announced her intention to either run for office in the U.S. Senate or to be a governor, and that she would only run against an incumbent Democrat, not a Republican. She did not reveal which specific office she would run for, or in which election cycle. In February 2021, Owens tweeted that she was considering a run for president in 2024.
Jeremy Boreing announced Owens would be leaving The Daily Wire in March 2024, a move believed to be related to a string of comments considered to be antisemitic culminating in Owens liking a tweet referencing blood libel.
In late 2018, Owens launched a separate organization, the BLEXIT Foundation, which featured a social media campaign to encourage ethnic minority, including African Americans and Latino people, to leave the Democratic Party and register as Republicans. At the time, 8% of black Americans identified as Republicans.
At the launch in October 2018, Owens said that her "dear friend and fellow superhero Kanye West" designed merchandise for the movement; the following day, West denied being the designer and disavowed the effort, saying: "I never wanted any association with Blexit ... I've been used to spread messages I don't believe in." After an apology, West continued to support Owens .
In 2023, BLEXIT Foundation merged with Turning Point USA, the non-profit organization for which Owens had formerly worked.
In August 2022, Owens promoted GloriFi, an "anti-woke" Startup company bank, at a Conservative Political Action Conference event, and promoted it on her social media accounts that October. The bank shut down in November after failing to secure additional funding.
In February 2025, she announced working on a media series titled "Harvey Speaks" on Harvey Weinstein. She said she had been in contact with him by phone since his second conviction. Owens has said Weinstein was "wrongfully convicted" of rape and sexual assault.
The Washington Post has called Owens "the new face of black conservatism". The Guardian has described her as "ultra-conservative", and New York magazine and the Columbia Journalism Review have described her as "right-wing". Multiple media outlets have called Owens a far-right commentator. She was influenced by the works of Ann Coulter, Milo Yiannopoulos, Ben Carson, and Thomas Sowell.
She has said that "black Americans are doing worse off economically today than we were doing in the 1950s under Jim Crow", adding that this is because "we've only been voting for one party since then." She has attributed economic improvements for African Americans, such as a low unemployment rate, to Trump's presidency. On several occasions, Owens has claimed that the effects of white supremacy and white nationalism are exaggerated and would not reach her own personal top 100 list of modern issues facing black America, especially when compared to other issues facing black Americans, such as black-on-black crime and illiteracy rates.
When asked if it was problematic that white supremacist groups, such as the Ku Klux Klan (KKK), support Trump, Owens answered that antifa was more prevalent than the KKK. Owens has said that the media cover the KKK during Trump's presidency to hurt him. In a 2019 hearing on , Owens referred to the KKK as a "Democrat terrorist organization". After the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, Owens said that concern over rising white nationalism was "stupid". She has also called it "just election rhetoric" and "based on the hierarchy of what's impacting minority Americans, if I had to make a list of 100 things, white nationalism would not make the list." In 2018, Owens dismissed reports of a resurgence in hate crimes, saying "All of the violence this year primarily happened because of people on the left." During her April 2019 testimony before the U.S. House Judiciary Committee on the rise of hate crimes and white supremacists in the United States, Owens made the claim that the Southern strategy employed by the Republican Party to increase political support among white voters in the South by appealing to racism against African Americans was a "myth" that "never happened". This was disputed by several historians who said that the existence of the Southern strategy was well documented in contemporaneous sources dating back to the Civil Rights era, with historian Kevin M. Kruse, who writes critically about modern conservatism, calling Owens' statement "utter nonsense". In June 2019, Owens said that African Americans had it better in the first 100 years after the abolition of slavery in the United States than they have since, and that socialism was at fault.
In June 2020, Owens claimed that George Soros paid people to protest the murder of George Floyd. Shortly afterwards, she argued that George Floyd "was not a good person. I don't care who wants to spin that." She said: "The fact that he has been held up as a martyr sickens me." Then-President Trump retweeted Owens' remarks about Floyd. In a Facebook video that garnered nearly 100 million views, Owens called Floyd a "horrible human being", citing his criminal record, and called racial biases among police a "fake narrative". On April 20, 2021, Owens claimed that the trial of Derek Chauvin, the former police officer who was convicted of murdering Floyd, was "mob justice". She added: "This was not a fair trial. No person can say this was a fair trial."
She opposes abortion, which she has called a tool for the "extermination of black babies".
In May 2018, Owens suggested that "something bio-chemically happens" to women who do not marry or have children, and she linked to the Twitter handles of Sarah Silverman, Chelsea Handler, and Kathy Griffin, saying that they were "evidentiary support" of this theory. Silverman responded: "It seems to me that by tweeting this, you would like to maybe make us feel badly. I'd say this is evidenced by effort to use our twitter handles so we would see. My heart breaks for you, Candy. I hope you find happiness in whatever form that takes." Owens responded, accusing Silverman of supporting terrorists and criminal gangs.
In April 2022, she called The Walt Disney Company "child grooming and " and called for the boycott of the company, after Disney announced its opposition to Florida House Bill 1557, officially known as the "Parental Rights in Education Act", and commonly described as the "Don't Say Gay" legislation.
In May 2022, Owens falsely claimed on Twitter that the gunman involved in the Robb Elementary School shooting could be transgender and said that he was "cross-dressing". According to Owens, this was evidence that "there were plenty of signs that he was mentally disturbed". In June 2022, she described Drag Queen Story Hour as "child abuse", arguing that parents who take their children to a drag queen story hour "are underqualified to have children" and "should have their children taken away from them."
In January 2024, in a post on X (Twitter), Owens accused transgender people of "mass drugging children" and claimed the "LGBTQ movement brought with it a sexual plague on our society". These comments were condemned by LGBTQ rights groups.
In May 2018, Trump said that Owens "is having a big impact on politics in our country. She represents an ever-expanding group of very smart 'thinkers', and it is wonderful to watch and hear the dialogue going on... so good for our Country!" She registered as a Republican in 2018, after the Brett Kavanaugh Supreme Court nomination. She objected to what she termed the "social lynching" of Kavanaugh, on the grounds that to "believe women" was the reason "our ancestors got lynched", as she told a journalist from Philadelphia magazine. She added: "No evidence, but believe all women." After Joe Biden won the 2020 U.S. presidential election and Trump refused to concede, Owens promoted Trump's claims of mass fraud, saying that "the American election was clearly rigged."
In 2025, Owens called Trump "a chronic disappointment. And I feel embarrassed that I told people to go vote for him." Owens said Trump's bombing of Iran is "utterly deranged."
Following heavy criticism for her comments, Owens clarified them on Twitter and in a Judiciary Committee hearing in the U.S. House of Representatives in February 2019. Owens said that "Hitler was a homicidal, , maniac that killed his own people" and "Hitler was not a nationalist, he murdered his own people; a nationalist would not kill their own people". She said that the point of her comments was to say that there is "no excuse or defense ever for ... everything that Hitler did". She also said that her comments were about Hitler's crimes against Jews.
Owens' comments about Hitler were played in April 2019 by Representative Ted Lieu during testimony in front of the House Judiciary Committee about the issue of increasing hate crimes and white supremacy in America. Lieu said that he did not know Owens and was just going to let her own words characterize her, before playing the audio clip. Owens responded that Lieu had deliberately omitted an interviewer's question that provided critical context to her words, with the intent of misrepresenting them as an endorsement of Hitler, to smear her reputation. She concluded this testimony by stating her opinion Lieu was "assuming that black people will not pursue the full two hour clip" and that the full clip had been "purposefully extracted" in order to "create a different narrative." Donald Trump Jr. praised Owens on Twitter for "calling out the Dems on their purposeful manipulation of facts for their narrative".
Rabbi Shmuley Boteach has repeatedly criticized Owens for her friendship with West. Owens condemned Boteach as a "monster", stating that "any person who defends him or his hag daughter is immediately suspicious." Owens has also claimed that in Hollywood, there is "a small ring of specific people who are using the fact that they are Jewish to shield themselves from any criticism" and that this ring "appears to be something that is quite sinister." In March 2024, Owens liked a tweet asking Boteach if he was "drunk on Christian blood again", an apparent reference to the antisemitic blood libel accusation. The Daily Wire announced they were ending their association with Owens a few days after Owens liked the tweet.
In July 2024, Owens suggested that Ashkenazi Jews trace their origin to Khazars and are not related to "biblical Jews". According to her, descendants of Khazars were "so immoral and so corrupt" that they were forced to convert to Judaism by Persians and Russians in the eighth century. However, they did not "meaningfully convert" and "carried on their corruption, carried on their sexual deviancy". She suggested that "their religious teachings tell them to infiltrate everywhere" and "their elites are disgusting, despicable people". Owens implied that the war in Ukraine is linked to the Khazars' desire to seek revenge on Russia and Iran. She went on to blame instances of sexual abuse in the Catholic Church on them.
During a live broadcast on August 18, 2024, Owens claimed that Leo Frank, a Jewish businessman who was wrongly convicted of murder and lynched in the US state of Georgia in August 17, 1915, had killed Mary Phagan as part of a ritual murder on Passover, again referencing blood libel. Owens further claimed there existed a "Frankism Cult...masquering behind Jews" that engages in pedophilia and incest "as sacramental rites". She stated that there are "tens of thousands of pedophiles who hide from justice in Israel". Owens's father-in-law Lord Farmer has publicly repudiated her repeated antisemitic remarks. Owens was disinvited from a Trump campaign fundraiser in the summer of 2024 following criticism from Jewish groups. In September 2024, Owens was temporarily suspended from YouTube for violating YouTube's hate speech policies. One video which resulted in her suspension was an interview with Kanye West, during which West claimed that Jewish people control the media.
Owens has suggested that AIPAC, a pro-Israel lobbying group, was responsible for the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.
Because of Owens' antisemitic statements, she was named "Antisemite of the Year" by StopAntisemitism, a title which she celebratorily accepted on her YouTube channel. Satire website The Babylon Bee has published several articles mocking Owens for her antisemitism. In response, Owens referred to the website as the "Babylonian Bee" and accused it of "worshipping Israel."
Her stance on Israel led to her break with Ben Shapiro, co-founder of The Daily Wire, the website for which Candace Owens then worked, contributing to her departing it in March 2024. Shapiro saw her position as increasingly antisemitic: Owens criticized US support for Israel, saying she did not believe "that American taxpayers should have to pay for Israel's wars or the wars of any other country", but also posted about "political Jews" and a "very small ring of specific people who are using the fact that they are Jewish to shield themselves from any criticism", comments Shapiro described as "absolutely disgraceful".
In 2025, Owens expressed criticism of President Trump's lack of response to the humanitarian crisis in Palestine and of his announcement of building a resort on the ruins of Gaza.
In 2021, Owens attracted media attention when she stated that the United States should "invade Australia", saying that Australia had turned into a tyrannical Nazi-style police state due to its public health precautions against COVID-19. Owens said that the comments were made "in jest" and that they had been misinterpreted by the media. Owens has promoted misinformation about COVID-19 vaccines. In a December 2021 interview, she asked Donald Trump about vaccine mandates, and he explained that he shared her views on mandates but said that "the vaccine is one of the greatest achievements of mankind". He added: "The ones that get very sick and go to the hospital are the ones that don't take the vaccine. But it's still their choice. And if you take the vaccine, you're protected. Look, the results of the vaccine are very good, and if you do get it, it's a very minor form. People aren't dying when they take the vaccine." In December 2022, Owens promoted the anti-vaccine film Died Suddenly.
In December 2022, Owens faced backlash and fact-checking on social media after making unfounded claims about Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's wife Olena Zelenska, with Twitter users debunking her allegations and highlighting the lack of evidence. In a 2023 interview, Owens said "I'm very much a person who has said from the very beginning, 'Fuck Ukraine', you know, and I stand by that" while discussing her opposition to American military aid to Ukraine. In 2024, Owens inaccurately claimed that Zelensky is gay and said she didn't want Ukraine to win against Russia, stating that "No amount of media brainwash in the world could ever make me hope that Zelensky triumphs over an orthodox Russia. Spiritually, I just know that's wrong. You simply do not support a homosexual actor that is locking up churches and bishops."
Klacik denied the allegations and repeatedly asked for Owens to take down the video, which she refused to do. In July, Klacik filed a lawsuit against Owens seeking $20 million for defamation and claiming that the allegations have resulted in Klacik losing political support from donors, being removed from public events, a book deal cancellation, and harassment of Klacik and her family. In a statement, Jacob S. Frenkel, Klacik's attorney, said: "The defendant chose to use her huge social media platform to attack a respected Baltimore political figure" and that "We are using the proper forum — the power of the courts — to respond." The suit was dismissed with prejudice in December 2022 and Klacik had to pay Owens $115,000.
The Macrons are suing for punitive damages and have made claims that the couple has suffered "substantial economic damages" such as the loss of business opportunities. "This has become so widespread in the United States that we had to react," Macron said in French. Owens has told listeners she will "stake her entire professional reputation on this" and "On behalf of the entire world, I will see you in court."
On September 18, 2025, the Macrons' lawyer said that they would be providing "photographic evidence" that Brigitte is in fact a woman.
In April 2022, a class-action lawsuit was filed in Florida against LGBcoin, a cryptocurrency company, Owens, stock car racing driver Brandon Brown, and NASCAR, alleging that the defendants had made false statements about the LGBcoin and that the founders of the company had engaged in a pump and dump scheme.
During the October 2018 United States mail bombing attempts targeting prominent Democrats, Owens took to Twitter to promote the conspiracy theory that the mailings were sent by leftists. After authorities arrested a 56-year-old suspect who was a registered Republican and Trump supporter, Owens deleted her tweet without explanation.
In March 2024, Owens endorsed the conspiracy theory that Brigitte Macron, wife of French President Emmanuel Macron, was secretly transgender. Owens stated: "After looking into this, I would stake my entire professional reputation on the fact that Brigitte Macron is in fact a man. Any journalist or publication that is trying to dismiss this plausibility is immediately identifiable as establishment. (...) The implications here are terrifying." In 2025, Owens released a multi-part video miniseries titled Becoming Brigitte, which promoted the conspiracy theory. She also promoted the book by investigative journalist Xavier Poussard, Devenir Brigitte ( Becoming Brigitte in its English publication), which became a bestseller on Amazon. The Macrons filed a suit in Delaware, against Owens, in July 2025. The 22-count complaint is seeking punitive damages against Owens and her media companies. Owens responded with, "On behalf of the entire world, I will see you in court," while explaining to her podcast listeners that she is ready to take on the battle.
Hours after the shootings, Owens posted a tweet in reaction to allegations that she inspired the mass murder, saying that she never created any content espousing her views on the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution or Islam. Her tweet was criticized as "glib" when it was reported that she actually had posted tweets about the Second Amendment and Islam. She later made formal statements rejecting any connection to the terrorist.
Solomon Henderson, a student who was identified by law enforcement as being responsible for a school shooting at Antioch High School in Nashville, cited Candace Owens and Nick Fuentes as inspirations. In a manifesto published online, Henderson wrote "Candace Owens has influenced me above all each time she spoke I was stunned by her insights and her own views helped push me further and further into the belief of violence over the Jewish question."
Similar calls were echoed by Australian Coalition immigration spokesperson Dan Tehan, who called upon Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke to block Owens's visa application on character groups. New Zealand Acting Race Relations Commissioner Karanina Sumeo criticised Owens's Holocaust denial and said that "freedom of expression must be balanced against people's right to be free from discrimination, the right to safety and security, and the right to religious freedom and belief." By contrast, Juliet Moses of the New Zealand Jewish Council disagreed with calls to ban Owens's entry, citing free speech. Immigration New Zealand said that Owens's visa application would be subject to a character test. During an interview with Sydney radio station 2GB, Owens confirmed that she would not be canceling her travel plans to Australia, saying that her husband had cousins there.
On October 27, Australia's Immigration Minister Tony Burke said Owens's visa had been canceled based on her "capacity to incite discord", stating "Australia's national interest is best served when Candace Owens is somewhere else." A month later, Owens was also barred from entering New Zealand after her entertainer's work permit was refused, with the cited reason being that visas could not be granted to those excluded from another country. However, on December 12, following a request by Owens for Ministerial Intervention, New Zealand's Associate Immigration Minister Chris Penk reversed Immigration New Zealand's decision to deny her a work visa. On March 11, The Spinoff current affairs website reported that the advocacy group New Zealand Free Speech Union had lobbied Penks into reversing Immigration New Zealand's decision to bar Owens entry into New Zealand.
Owens gave birth to a boy in January 2021, a girl in July 2022, a boy in late 2023, and another boy in May 2025.
In April 2024, Owens announced that she had converted to the Catholic Church and had been baptized in the Brompton Oratory.
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