A recent report from BuzzFeed sheds new light on Candace Owens, the melanated darling du jour of the “Make America great again” crowd, revealing that the rising conservative star ran a blog that frequently mocked Donald Trump throughout the 2016 presidential campaign.
Among the stories that ran on the site: A critical look at Trump’s Muslim ban titled, “Serious Question: Is Donald Trump a Social Experiment?,” in which the writer compared Trump to Hitler; an explainer on how Trump can still be a racist even if he’s married to an immigrant; and a satirical “investigation” into the size of Trump’s penis (spoiler: probably small, the story concludes).
BuzzFeed was able to view posts from the now defunct site, Degree180, through the Internet Archive.
As reporter Joseph Bernstein writes, Owens’ rise from political nonfactor to swapping free thoughts with Kanye West and getting Twitter-endorsed by Trump is due to her “forceful disavowal of liberal narratives around structural racism, systemic inequality, and identity politics.”
Yet these kinds of topics and themes popped up often on Degree180.
From BuzzFeed:
One story, “The Problem With Humanism and All Lives Matter,” made the case why the counter–Black Lives Matter slogan was misguided. Another story begged Caitlyn Jenner to reconsider her support for Ted Cruz—who, the author claimed, wouldn’t be a good advocate for transgender people. And a self-explanatory story is called “Your Issues With Dating Shorter Men Are Misogynistic.”
The report does note that Owens’ own posts on the site tended to shun the political; instead, she usually opted to write personal essays, including one about her struggle with anorexia—which, according to a recent report from The Root, Owens has attributed to the virulent racism she experienced while living in Stamford, Conn.
She also advised readers on how to get prescription stimulants “without so much as a doctor’s evaluation,” and wrote a piece titled, “Fuck Girl Code: I Can Hook Up With Your Ex-Boyfriend if I Want.”
One exception was a 2015 column Owns wrote for the site that roasted conservative Republicans, writing that it was “good news” that the “Republican Tea Party ... will eventually die off (peacefully in their sleep, we hope).”
The last post on the site dates to December 2016—about a month after Trump won the presidential election. Roughly seven months later, Owens “came out” as a conservative in a YouTube video.
Interesting timing.
As for what Owens has been up to lately, she was in Jerusalem this week rubbing elbows with Jared Kushner, Ivanka Trump and her new boss, founder of Turning Point USA Charlie Kirk, at the opening the of the U.S. Embassy there. As Owens and Kirk posed for the camera, Israeli troops were gunning down Palestinian protesters in a brutal massacre on the Gaza Strip.
What a difference a couple of years makes.