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A Bit Fruity with Matt Bernstein

How Candace Owens Left Reality

09 Jan 2026

Transcription

Chapter 1: What is the background of Candace Owens and her rise to fame?

0.031 - 7.844 Unknown

But I wanted to cover this because I just, it's really fake and gay. And I am actually an expert on all matters that are fake and gay.

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13.793 - 23.389 Matt Bernstein

Did you see that 10 people in France were convicted and like jailed under cyberbullying laws for transvestigating Bridget McCrone?

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23.588 - 26.954 Taylor Lorenz

Yes, I covered this. And I think it's insane.

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27.135 - 31.263 Matt Bernstein

Yeah, France doesn't fuck around with online transvestigations.

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31.483 - 46.592 Taylor Lorenz

Take your wins where you can is what, yeah. I know it's bad. We shouldn't want those laws in place, but the people that they're going after are not very sympathetic. You're going to French jail, which I wonder what that's like. Eating baguettes.

48.479 - 70.354 Matt Bernstein

Dear listener, my brain processes Candace Owens the way it does a skin rash that you tried to ignore for a while, hoping it would go away on its own. After all, itchy, inflamed patches crop up all the time. You're not going to go to the dermatologist every time one happens, especially not with these new insurance premiums. Hey!

Chapter 2: How did Candace Owens transition from liberal to conservative views?

71.736 - 94.602 Matt Bernstein

Okay, I'm just trying to cope. I'm just trying to cope with my increased premiums that I just learned about. All right. But now you've been living with this rash for a long time, and it hasn't faded, just keeps getting bigger, more annoying, more harmful. Ignoring it is no longer an option. It's time to go to the dermatologist. And by that, I do mean time for a podcast episode.

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94.97 - 115.695 Matt Bernstein

Hello, hello, and welcome back to A Bit Fruity. You probably already have a million thoughts about Candace Owens as we arrive into this episode. And if you're just learning about her for the first time, that's okay too, and I'm sorry. But let's start with the facts. Candace Owens uploads a podcast episode five days a week,

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115.675 - 136.637 Matt Bernstein

And each episode averages three to five million downloads between YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts and the like, putting her at a higher daily reach than Fox News, CNN and MSNBC combined. She has a level of fame that even watching from afar kind of terrifies me.

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136.617 - 145.594 Matt Bernstein

I'm resistant to the idea that anyone should have this much power, and especially someone who's demonstrably as untethered from reality as Candace Owens is.

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Chapter 3: What controversies surround Candace Owens and her conspiracy theories?

146.436 - 167.853 Matt Bernstein

Over the years, Candace brought tons of people into MAGA. More recently, she's also brought tons of people away from MAGA, but not necessarily to a better place, put a pin in that. She's gone from liberal to conservative to what I would describe now as like full-on digital cult leader. And as Candice Land, I thought that was funny, like Candyland.

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168.133 - 191.734 Matt Bernstein

As Candice Land gets more confusing for those of us who look away from it, her audience and influence only grows. and her conspiratorial rebrands keep drawing unsuspecting people into the fold. Like, when I announced this episode, many of you sent me messages that your siblings, who might not identify as conservative or even political, have become avid Candace Owens fans.

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191.714 - 220.708 Matt Bernstein

So today I want to demystify this 36-year-old who's built an underworld much, much, much bigger than herself, but is also at the same time just a girl from Connecticut. And to do that, I am so excited to welcome back Taylor Lorenz to the podcast. Taylor... I talk a lot on this podcast about figures that become my fixations, my sort of like obsessions that I'm not proud of.

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220.748 - 240.61 Matt Bernstein

The most notable example of this was Deborah Messing, who for like a really long time, I was just unable to look away from, even as she was going down this Zionist spiral that like nobody else really paid attention to or cared about because she hadn't made work. And multiple decades, but it's neither here nor there. I feel like Candice is this person for you.

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Chapter 4: How does Candace Owens utilize social media to influence her audience?

240.811 - 248.215 Matt Bernstein

When I reached out about making this episode, you straight up were like, yes, let's do it. I watch Candice Owens every single night.

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248.262 - 268.967 Taylor Lorenz

Yeah. I'm also just another girl from Connecticut. I grew up literally five minutes away from Candace, although I think she was a freshman when I was a senior in high school. We went to rival high schools. I mean, I've become so fascinated with her because I think she's emblematic of like so many things in digital culture. And I go through phases.

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269.108 - 289.166 Taylor Lorenz

I always watch a lot of right-wing content to keep tabs. But I think that since Charlie... Kirk was killed, she's been on this like generational run. And I think she has established herself in online culture in a way that I'm not seeing any other conservative influencer do. Like she's just been able to amass unprecedented levels of engagement.

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289.206 - 295.178 Taylor Lorenz

She often has hundreds of thousands of people concurrently watching her live stream when she does her live streams.

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295.158 - 301.405 Matt Bernstein

In the last few days, while I've been outlining for this episode, I watched some of her live streams.

Chapter 5: What role does Candace Owens play in the current political landscape?

301.985 - 322.347 Matt Bernstein

And the rate at which comments come in is so like, oh, my God, she's so famous. And for a long time, I didn't really and we'll get into this. But like, I didn't really pay attention to Candace Owens, because I understood what she was doing. And I didn't really care about it. Like she was another person who belongs to a minoritized population.

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322.327 - 344.629 Matt Bernstein

who was sort of allowing the right to tokenize that thing about herself. So she could tell these racist white people enacting racist legislation that they weren't racist because look, they have Candace and there's gay influencers who do this. There's trans influencers who do this. I know this game and, And she was playing it really well for a long time. And so I just didn't really care.

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344.669 - 365.074 Matt Bernstein

But then this most recent, as you say, generational run where she's detached herself from reality with these conspiracy theories in a way that I felt like I blinked. And then I looked over and she had like grown her following so immensely. She was spewing the craziest shit I've ever even heard. I mean, it's right wing conspiracy.

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Chapter 6: How does Candace Owens's rhetoric affect her followers' perceptions?

365.054 - 372.668 Matt Bernstein

But it's also a lot of times like divorced from reality to the point where it's hard to even put a political label on it. You know what I mean? It's really hard to make sense of.

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373.008 - 385.631 Taylor Lorenz

It is. It's it's so funny that she's she's recently had this drama with Alex Jones. Alex Jones called her a globalist agent working for the deep state CIA and the Democratic Party.

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385.671 - 388.176 Matt Bernstein

Were they like anti-Semitic to each other?

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390.603 - 412.519 Taylor Lorenz

They're like feuding right now over some of the Charlie Kirk stuff and some of the other Trump stuff. There's so much drama. I mean, we could do a whole other episode on just like the current meltdown happening in the right wing world. Like we've seen so many different factions emerge. Yeah. But I think of her as kind of like a modern day Alex Jones, but far more palpable.

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412.579 - 417.806 Taylor Lorenz

I think what makes her so compelling is she's beautiful. She's put together.

Chapter 7: What are the implications of Owens's views on anti-Semitism and Zionism?

417.866 - 429.522 Taylor Lorenz

She's not sounding like a ranting, raving lunatic when she's saying this stuff. But if you listen to the stuff she's saying, it's conspiracy theories that are completely divorced from reality.

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429.622 - 441 Matt Bernstein

Yeah. I do love the idea of two of the most notorious anti-Semitic conspiracy theorists of our time, Alex Jones and Candace Owens, beefing with one another over who's the real globalist.

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441.02 - 442.723 Taylor Lorenz

Who's the real deep state actor?

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442.763 - 447.99 Matt Bernstein

You're a Jew. No, you're a Jew. What are we doing, guys?

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448.01 - 468.989 Taylor Lorenz

There's been, as a lot more conservatives have become disillusioned with Trump, and especially the far right, the QAnoners. You've seen this sort of backlash with Epstein stuff, with Israel. A lot of those people on the far right and people on the left are looking for guiding voices. And they're turning to people that are very anti-establishment.

469.009 - 484.628 Taylor Lorenz

And Candace was able to seize on that so effectively because she doesn't identify as pro-Trump anymore. She talks about, you know, sort of almost leaving the MAGA movement. And now she's just this, like, anti-institutionalist and positions herself against power in this way.

Chapter 8: What does the future hold for Candace Owens and the right-wing movement?

484.688 - 487.312 Taylor Lorenz

Her stream on Monday was unreal.

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487.713 - 488.173 Matt Bernstein

What happened?

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488.414 - 510.671 Taylor Lorenz

She talks about how people aren't real. And, like, she talks... She's so good at weaving all these narratives together, but she's talking about the rise of AI and how things don't feel normal and how people don't seem real. And she's basically insinuating that a lot of people in power are like droids, maybe, or like AI-controlled droids.

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510.691 - 515.76 Taylor Lorenz

But the thing is, if you just stop and listen to her, she's correct at identifying the problem.

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515.8 - 516.762 Matt Bernstein

That people aren't real?

517.082 - 517.523 Taylor Lorenz

No, no.

518.465 - 528.375 Matt Bernstein

Just kidding. Just kidding. I mean, I'm not real. I'm a I'm a lizard in like a Jewish body or I don't even know what the correct theory is. Sorry. Keep going. Sorry.

528.636 - 543.291 Taylor Lorenz

She's correct that like we're feeling this crushing weight of like technology and like sort of tech surveillance being like enacted on us without our consent. There is mass. I mean, she's been one of the few people that's talked about the restrictions on free speech that are happening that frankly doesn't.

543.271 - 561.563 Taylor Lorenz

No one on the left and a lot of people on the right are not even addressing, but people feel, people see this in this very visceral way. And ultimately she's talking about the problems of capitalism, but she's ascribing them to all these other crazy things. But that idea where she says everything since 2020, everything feels fake and gay. Everything feels like not real, whatever, whatever.

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