Candace Owens facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Candace Owens
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Owens in 2022
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| Born |
Candace Amber Owens
April 29, 1989 White Plains, New York, U.S.
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| Occupation |
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| Years active | 2017–present |
| Political party | Republican |
| Movement | Black conservatism |
| Spouse(s) |
George Farmer
(m. 2019) |
| Children | 3 |
| Relatives | Michael Farmer (father-in-law) |
| YouTube information | |
| Years active | 2015–present |
| Genre | Political criticism |
| Subscribers | 2.66 million |
| Total views | 304 million |
| Subscriber and view counts updated as of October 6, 2024. | |
Candace Amber Owens Farmer (née Owens; born April 29, 1989) is an American political commentator and pundit. She is mostly described as conservative or far-right.
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 served as communications director for the conservative advocacy group Turning Point USA from 2017 and 2019. In 2018, Owens co-founded Blexit 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 widely 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. She has promoted numerous conspiracy theories including antisemitic conspiracy theories.
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Early life and education
Born in White Plains, New York, Owens was raised with her siblings in Stamford, Connecticut, by her grandparents from around the age of 11 or 12, after her parents divorced. She is the third of four children. She said her paternal grandfather Robert Owens, a black American, was born in North Carolina. Owens is also of Caribbean American heritage through her grandmother who is originally from Saint Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands. She is a graduate of Stamford High School.
Owens pursued an undergraduate degree in journalism at the University of Rhode Island. She dropped out after her junior year because of an issue with her student loan. Afterwards, she worked as an intern for Vogue magazine in New York. In 2012, Owens took a job as an administrative assistant for a private equity firm in Manhattan, later moving up to become its vice president of administration.
Early career
Degree180 and anti-conservative blog
In 2015, Owens was CEO of Degree180, a marketing agency that offered consultation, production, and planning services which 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 "crazy antics of the Republican Tea Party"; she also added that "The good news is, they will eventually die off (peacefully in their sleep, we hope), and then we can get right on with the OBVIOUS social change that needs to happen, IMMEDIATELY."
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 (doxing) Internet users and violating their privacy. 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 politics – all positions she herself had been publishing two years earlier. In August 2017, she began posting politically themed videos to YouTube. In September 2017, she launched "Red Pill Black", a website and YouTube channel that promotes black conservatism in the United States.
On November 21, 2017, at the MAGA Rally and Expo in Rockford, Illinois, Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk announced that Owens had been hired as the organization's director of urban engagement. 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. She 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 former United States president 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. Since June 2024 she has produced her podcast independently.
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.
BLEXIT Foundation
"Blexit", a term originally coined by Me'Lea Connelly, is a portmanteau of "black" and "exit" that mimics Brexit, the word used to describe the United Kingdom's withdrawal from the European Union. The original Blexit movement was started in 2016 by Connelly with the goal of achieving black economic independence by encouraging black Americans to leave the traditional financial systems that have historically disadvantaged the black community.
In late 2018, Owens launched a different 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. In 2023, Blexit foundation merged with Turning Point USA, the former non-profit organization for which Owens had worked.
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 September 2020[update].
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 she runs independently. It currently boasts over 3.3 million subscribers, and gained notoriety in a video series in which Owens researched then-presidential candidate Kamala Harris's ancestry.
Political views
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Owens has been recognized for her pro-Trump activism. She is known for her criticism of Black Lives Matter and the Democratic Party.
Women's rights
Owens is critical of feminism and embraces the "trad wife" phenomenon of traditional gender roles.
Welfare
Owens has expressed a critical stance on welfare programs, arguing that they can create dependency and discourage self-reliance among recipients. She believes that welfare reform is necessary to promote individual responsibility and empower individuals to break free from government assistance. Owens has said that welfare is a Democratic Party tool to keep black Americans dependent upon the government.
Immigration
Owens is a proponent of the Mexico–United States barrier, and believes undocumented immigrants to the United States should be immediately deported.
Climate change
In July 2018, Owens claimed that global warming is not real, calling it a lie used to "extract dollars from Americans". In 2021, she promoted paid ads on Facebook, calling the U.S. government "modern doomsayers" who have been wrongly predicting climate crises for decades.
Personal life
Owens met her British husband, George Thomas Stahel Farmer, the son of Lord Farmer, in 2018 at the launch event for Turning Point UK, a conservative student organization. The two became engaged in 2019 and were married in August that year at the Trump Winery in Charlottesville, Virginia. Numerous guests were present at the ceremony, including Larry Elder and Charlie Kirk.
Since her marriage, Owens is now also (officially) known as The Hon. Mrs. George Farmer.
Owens gave birth to a boy in January 2021, a daughter in July 2022 and another boy in late 2023. In early 2025, she announced her fourth pregnancy.
In April 2024, Owens announced that she had converted to the Catholic Church and had been baptized in the Brompton Oratory.
