Candace Owens
Candace Amber Owens Farmer is an American political commentator and author. Her political positions have mostly been described as conservative or far-right. She has promoted conspiracy theories on a wide range of subjects throughout her career.
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 the 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 antisemitic, 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.
Early life and education
Candace Amber Owens was born on April 29, 1989, in White Plains, New York, and grew up in Stamford, Connecticut. She was raised mostly by her mother and grandparents from around the age of 11 or 12, after her parents divorced. She is the third of four children. Her paternal grandfather was Robert Owens, an African American who 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 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. During her first year, she was named to the University of Rhode Island Dean's List for the Fall 2007 semester. In 2022, she completed the requirements for a bachelor's degree at the University of Rhode Island under the name Candace A. Farmer, her married name at the time, and was listed among the university's graduates. 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.
Early career
Degree180 and anti-conservative blog
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, and then we can get right on with the OBVIOUS social change that needs to happen, IMMEDIATELY." She was also critical of Donald Trump. In 2016, the blog featured an article mocking Donald Trump's penis size.Privacy violation, Gamergate, and political transformation
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 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. 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.
Conservative activism
By late 2017, Owens had started producing pro-Trump commentary and criticizing notions of structural racism, systemic inequality, and identity politicsall 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. 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.
The Daily Wire
Owens left PragerU in 2020 to host Candace, a show on The Daily Wire. The show premiered on the platform on March 19, 2021. Its episodes were filmed in front of a live studio audience and aired weekly. Notable guests included Donald Trump, UFC president Dana White, and U.S. Representative Jim Jordan.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. There had also been months of tensions with co-host Ben Shapiro and other Daily Wire staff.
BLEXIT Foundation
The original Blexit movement was started in 2016 by Me'Lea Connelly to achieve Black economic independence by encouraging Black Americans to leave the traditional financial systems that have historically disadvantaged the Black community. Owens co-founded an unrelated BLEXIT Foundation along with former Tucson police officer Brandon Tatum.In late 2018, Owens launched the BLEXIT Foundation, which featured a social media campaign to encourage ethnic minorities, including African Americans and Latinos, 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 as of 2020.
In 2023, BLEXIT Foundation merged with Turning Point USA, the non-profit organization for which Owens had formerly worked.
Product promotion
In July 2021, Owens announced the launch of a device named the Freedom Phone, which sold for $500, was marketed toward Trump supporters and which she claimed was "not controlled by Apple or Google". The device's launch was criticized by tech publications for a lack of transparency about the device, as well as security concerns. The device was later revealed to be a white-label version of the Umidigi A9 Pro, a Chinese smartphone available for $120, and its "uncensorable" PatriApp store is a rebranded version of Aurora Store, an open-source frontend for the Google Play Store.In August 2022, Owens promoted GloriFi, an "anti-woke" startup 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.
Post-Daily Wire career
Following her firing from The Daily Wire, Owens began a new YouTube channel, running it independently. It had over 3.8 million subscribers as of February 2025.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.