Candace Owens: What She Was Like in High School and Political Evolution

Who were you in high school, in 10th grade? I'm actually curious. Gosh, that is a totally different Candace. I mean, I would say I was probably who everybody was in 10th grade. You know, I was definitely just trying to figure out who I was. I was skipping classes. I was always in good classes, though, but I was skipping them. I had a boyfriend who I was obsessed with, you know, and so we were always skipping and going other places. Definitely not conservative, but I would say not politically inclined at all, which is important to state because people have kind of shifted the narrative and said I was like a radical leftist or something. I just didn't care about politics, never voted, wasn't following it at all. But yeah, always loved communication, excelled at English and writing and things of that nature. And yeah, I mean, teachers would probably say I was a bit of a smartass. I'd be surprised if I said that. No way. They call you smart. I was always consistently a smartass. I can see it, Candace. Absolutely. I can see it. What do you think your fellow classmates are saying about you now? Like, I can't I didn't see this coming or I totally saw it coming. Totally. I think they would say the opposite. Yeah. And my parents, I mean, just I've always been very sure of myself even when I was wrong. Do you know what I mean? Does that make sense? Like I have a two year old toddler and he's I have a two year old toddler son who's got that same characteristic where he's always very sure of himself, even when he's completely wrong. So were you to a 4.5 GPA? Were you to 4.2 GPA? I was like of the 3.5. OK, because I just didn't care. Got it. And that was 3.5 without trying at all. Were you playing sports? Were you an athlete? Cheerleader. Cheerleader. OK. Big high school or small high school? 2000 people graduated in my high school. So relatively big. More English, less math. Did you like science? Hated math and science. Loved English communication. So kind of makes sense. I'm doing it in communication. And when I graduated, I majored in journalism and English. So words always just came very easily to me. I loved to read, which was my dweeb habit that I developed from the time I could pick up a book. What did you read back then? What were you reading? I was actually reading all fiction. My mom was a part of some weird book club where she'd just get like Nora Roberts and Dean Kuntz, you know, and it was just what I was reading. Obviously, the books were bigger than my head when I was younger, but it was just what was on our bookshelf. So I read through everything my mom read through. I was very into Harry Potter. Forget it. Like racing home to try to, yeah, to try to beat my mom to read the books when they came out, like very into the wizarding world of Harry Potter. Have you ever met him? I haven't met him yet. Yet. I like that. Meaning like you plan. I plan to meet Harry Potter. Nice. Yeah. Maybe we can arrange some Hogwarts action. Candace, what house would you be in? Did you guys read Harry Potter? No. That is deeply upsetting to me. Every person should actually read it. It's a really good. It's a really good book. I mean, it's not didn't become this whole thing as it was a bad book. I'm telling you, it's really good. What house are you? I bet. You know what? I don't. Wow. So this is a big deal. Gryffindor. Yeah. I feel like I would be like Harry, like it would be like between Gryffindor and Slytherin, and then I would be able to pick my house. That's a reference to that. Watch Harry Potter. Do you know anything that she's talking about? But people that are watching this show do because Harry Potter was sensational and they should place you in a house. I want to actually know. Yeah. Rob, can you ask them what house? What house they would put him in? That's very important. If you had to guess, they're going to guess. What do you got? What do you guys think? Gryffindor or Slytherin? They're going to say Pat. There's more. No, there's more houses. Oh, it could be. But I'm saying they're going to pick out of those two main ones. He has to be Gryffindor. Now I have to go. What are you doing? Ravenclaw. Oh, Ravenclaw. Now you're just blowing his mind. Yeah, I don't know. I got to hear. I got to hear people. Rob, why don't you first of all, why don't you do this? Do a poll to see what percentage of the audience has read the books, if we can kind of get an idea on read or watch the movie. I think it's both counts. Both counts. OK, both books are amazing. But movies and Candace got your question. So, so, you know, high school, he asked your high school. You're getting older. Slytherin. What's Slytherin? Slytherin is the bad. It's the bad one. But they're good. Which is. Yeah. There's good people in there. So Candace, in your high school, Pat asked, like, you know, you're getting older, you're getting older. At what moment was the political thing hit in your head? Like at what moment were you like, I got to kind of get involved? It recently, I mean, I guess it's not that recently anymore, but not until Trump came down the escalator in 2015. And I think it's because it was Donald Trump. He made everybody, even if you weren't politically inclined, you suddenly had an opinion. Yeah. I mean, sure. Couldn't look away. Yeah. So I didn't have there was no political inclinations in my house. My parents were not politically engaged. My grandparents, who I grew up for a good portion of my childhood in their home, weren't politically engaged. So I would say I came from a very apolitical family. But of course, left leaning because you're black and you're supposed to be a Democrat. So that's just kind of the cultural poisoning that goes on. And in 2015, Trump came down the escalator. I remember thinking, like, I don't want this guy to win because not because of any reason other than he's an entertainer, you know? So to me, it was it was like if someone like Hulk Hogan was running, I would just be like, oh, no, you know, it didn't feel appropriate after Obama was in office. And then I watched a speech that he gave in Dimondale, Michigan, and he made this very interesting elevator pitch to black America. And he was kind of just listing through all of the actual factual statistics in black America of like, this is the poverty rate. This is whatever it is. And at the end, he's just like, I mean, try something different. What do you have to lose? And I was like, that's a pretty good business pitch. You know what I'm saying? Like, I'm the greatest person. Everybody's saying, look around you. You've been doing the same thing. Democrats, 50 years, nothing's gotten better. Why don't you just try something different? And after I finished watching it, I remember turning on whatever I was normally used to watching MSN, CNN, and they completely pretended that he attacked black Americans, called him a racist, that he gave the most racist speech, said black Americans were all living in poverty. And it was just such a blatant lie that I was confused about why my trusted sources were lying. And then I kind of started wondering what the racist side was saying. And I just got curious. So we were just talking about about high school. You left high school. You graduated high school and you went to Rhode Island. Not exactly a bastion of conservatism. No, it's not. And then from there, you went to work for Vogue magazine, which was even further left than the University of Rhode Island. So where were you like on political spectrum and just thinking maybe you didn't think if it was political, but where was your thought when you left high school, then to Rhode Island? And where did you come to where you are today? Well, I was I was liberal, but I wasn't crazy liberal. Like, you're never going to find any old pics of me. I had Republican friends that, you know, it was just a different time. I think we were allowed to kind of be like, oh, like I'm left leaning and right leaning and you could be OK back then. That was OK back then. That was totally fine. No, nobody actually really cared. It was college. And I would say I was liberal in the sense that if you had just asked me generally speaking about things like is feminism good? Yes. Just everything. Just the checklist of I had a public school education, you know, and I had a public education. So I would have said yes to this, yes to that. Gay, gay rights, all of these things, but not forcefully. There's no old images of Candace like wearing a pussy hat or marching. It just doesn't exist. I just didn't care. Very disappointing. More of an answer than I was. What about Obama? Did you vote for Obama? This is not straight up. No. So it's so funny as everyone says that because I just didn't care. I mean, I was I shouldn't say that I didn't care. I was so happy when Obama won. Yeah, because everyone was black because he was black or because he's gay. I mean, very simple. Both reasons, because he's black and because he's very much flaming. And I think you're saying Obama wears a pussy hat to go to sleep every night. That's sure. I think it's wonderful. And for those reasons, I remember sitting in my room on my college campus and like crying that I Obama like, oh, yeah, this means America's moving forward. I think tears of joy, tears, tears of joy. And I mean, you could not feel the Obama. Oh, my God. Oh, hey, it was kinetic. Yes, we can. Yeah. Fifteen years ago. How old are you at the time? Fifteen years ago, you were. How old was I when I was in college? I was in college. I remember being my I think it was my sophomore year. 20 years old. So so 2008, he's becoming president. Cannot believe this is taking place. And in the evolution into really get into politics doesn't happen till 2016. Yeah, yeah. And then boom. Yeah, I went and worked in New York. I was working at a private equity firm. I was just like fully trying to get myself out of student loan debt. So it was all about working for me. I was never an idiot. I was always about wanting to get my finances right. I've never not had a job since I was 14 years old. My grandfather was very much impressed upon the Owens. You have a job, you work. And so for me, I just wanted to get my financial life in order. And coming out of college, I had one hundred and fifty K in student loan debts. No money from my family. So it was the pressure to make money was what my focus was. I didn't really care about politics at all. One fifty K. Where did you go to school? Rhode Island. URI. Can you believe that? Thirty five K a year. And then, of course, obviously, a random public salary. Yeah. Yeah. There's like thirty seven thousand dollars per year. So if you like this clip and you want to watch another one, click right here. And if you want to watch the entire podcast, click right here.