Candace Owens is the latest conservative influencer to give up on former president Donald Trump after the Republican candidates he endorsed for the midterm elections failed to win their seats.
Owens, speaking on her Daily Wire show after the midterms, said that she’s been suspicious of Trump since he was rude to her following an interview where they clashed on the COVID-19 vaccine.
The conservative firebrand said that Trump reached out after she said he was in favor of the COVID vaccine because he’s ‘too old’ to understand the internet.
Owens denied the statement was a criticism of Trump at the time, saying: ‘He comes from a generation – I’ve seen other people that are older have the exact same perspective, like, they came from a time before TV, before internet, before being able to conduct their independent research.
‘And everything that they read in a newspaper that was pitched to them, they believed that that was a reality.’
She was told by mutual friends that Trump had someone ‘egging him on’ to be angry with Owens – and that he eventually said: ‘Yeah, I’m so mad at Candace.’
The pundit said that the next time she saw Trump: ‘He was actually rude to me. I’m telling you this personal story because I think it is something that made me for the first time question me as a person.’
Candace Owens appears to be the latest conservative influencer to have given up on former President Donald Trump in the wake of candidates endorsed by the ex-commander in chief failing to give the Republicans a ‘red wave’ in the midterm elections
Owens, speaking on her Daily Wire show after the midterms, said that she’s been suspicious of Trump since he was rude to her following an interview where they clashed on the COVID-19 vaccine.
Owens – who claims she’s defended Trump for ‘years’ – said that she was trying to explain that Trump’s pro-vaccine comments were ‘something that your base did not like’ and he ‘transformed that into something I did wrong.’
She said that ‘this is not being a leader’ and that he refused to believe that his base was not in favor of the COVID-19 vaccine.
The commentator continued: ‘After the 2020 election and because the shock of all the things that happened and the answers that we never really feel that we got, this sinking realization that we might be actually losing our country, I think that it pushed him into an angry space where he doesn’t trust anybody.’
Owens described the president as ‘almost likely to believe that everybody’s trying to turn their back on him and stab him in the back.’
She went on to say that conservatives have been having discussions about Trump in private that she now feels ‘should be also had with the public as well.’
While arguing that Trump is still right to be angry about the suppression of the Hunter Biden laptop scandal and even the long-dismissed possibility of election fraud in Arizona, she says ‘if you stay at a place of anger, you are ignoring everything that is going on around you.’
She added: ‘You are no longer looking and assessing things the way you should.’
Owens doesn’t believe that Trump will ever get over the ‘trauma’ of 2020 and be able to painting a vision for 2024, saying that his ‘paranoia’ and ‘trepidation’ is now reflected in his MAGA movement.
She then criticizes Trump as ‘not helpful’ for his various ‘swipes’ at Florida Governor Ron DeSantis: ‘He’s not running against DeSantis right now. Why take a random swing?’
Despite the criticism, Owens said: ‘I am not under any impression that Trump can’t win in 2024. What I am saying is that Trump needs to take a good look in the mirror and a good look in the room and he needs to read the room accurately.’
‘He needs to exercise a tiny bit more humility when he gets something wrong. Trump is not perfect, I am not perfect.’
Candace Owens reached out to her followers on Instagram and told them that Trump only praised vaccines because he is not savvy enough to do better research
Owens doesn’t believe that Trump will ever get over the ‘trauma’ of 2020 and capable of painting a vision for 2024 and thinks that his ‘paranoia’ and ‘trepidation’ is reflected in his MAGA movement
She then criticizes Trump as ‘not helpful’ for his various ‘swipes’ at Florida Governor Ron DeSantis: ‘He’s not running against DeSantis right now. Why take a random swing?’
Kentucky Representative Thomas Massie would join with Lake on Owens’ ‘dream team’ for 2024
She ultimately argues the results of the midterms show that Trump ‘isn’t sure’ and therefore his followers ‘aren’t sure’ about where the movement is right now.
Owens later said in a tweet that neither Trump nor DeSantis is her preferred candidate for 2024, claiming a ticket of Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake and Kentucky Representative Thomas Massie would be her ‘dream team.’
In the story she’s referencing from December 2021, Owens asks that conservatives go easy on Trump because he is ‘too old’ to do ‘independent research’ on vaccines following an interview where he encouraged vaccinations and said he’d gotten a COVID booster.
The conservative pundit reached out to her followers in an Instagram video posted after interview with Trump and told them that Trump, 75, only praised vaccines because he is not savvy enough to do better research.
This came after Trump pushed back against Owens anti-vaccine rhetoric during an interview.
Trump told Owens that people unvaccinated against coronavirus are the ones getting ‘very sick’ and encouraged all Americans get the jab all while taking credit for its creation.
‘I came up with a vaccine – with three vaccines,’ Trump told the Daily Wire host, referring to the development of the Moderna, Pfizer and Johnson & Johnson vaccines while he was still president. ‘All are very, very good. Came up with three of them in less than nine months. It was supposed to take five to 12 years.’
Owens interjected: ‘Yet more people have died under COVID [in 2021], by the way, under Joe Biden, then under you and more people took the vaccine this year. So people are questioning how –’
But the former president interrupted Owens, assuring: ‘Oh no, the vaccines work, but some people aren’t the ones. The ones who get very sick and go to the hospital are the ones that don’t take the vaccine. But it’s still their choice.’
Candace Owens has defended Kanye West for his ‘White Lives Matter’ stunt, saying black Americans should be more outraged that obesity, abortion and ‘black on black’ crime kill more people in the community than cops. The pair wore the t-shirts at his Paris fashion show
‘And if you take the vaccine, you’re protected,’ he continued. ‘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.’
Owens has been one of the loudest conservative leaders of the anti-vax movement and has said she will ‘never ever’ get the COVID-19 vaccine.
She was most recently in the news for a controversial decision to wear a ‘White Lives Matter’ T-shirt alongside Kanye West at West’s show during Paris Fashion Week.
West has aligned himself with right-wing figures such as Owens, as well as former President Trump, regularly sporting a Make America Great Again baseball hat in public.
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