Candace Owens Once Ran A Website That Posted Liberal Content
The Claim
Candace Owens once ran an anti-Trump and anti-conservative website.
News posted on
Emerging story
In May, 2021, conservative media personality and author Candace Owens made news when she criticized the model Chrissy Teigan on Twitter. This was the latest of a range of disputes between Owens and a number of celebrities.
In the wake of the criticism, social media accounts have stated that Owens, well-known for being a prominent supporter of former President Trump, had run an anti-Trump and anti-conservative website as recently as 2015. Owens became well known in 2017 after posting a viral video which announced that she was conservative.
These rumors have circulatedin the past, however, they appear to be more widespread in 2021 than ever before.
Social media posts highlighting Owens’s liberal past have gained hundreds, and in some instances thousands of interactions.
Misbar’s Analysis
Misbar’s investigation has found that reliable news sources confirm that Candace Owens was the CEO of a website that mocked Donald Trump and conservatism.
Her website, Degree180, no longer exists. However, the site is documented on the Internet Archive Wayback Machine. Technically, it was not thematically anti-Trump and anti-conservative, but was more of a women’s lifestyle blog that frequently featured criticism of conservatism, including Trump’s policies. But stating that the social media claims are false would fall into the category of nitpicking, as there is plenty of anti-Trump, anti-conservative rhetoric on the site.
For instance, one of the last articles to appear on the website was a sarcastic thank you letter to Donald Trump for using social media in the manner of a teenage girl.
Another page on the archived site shows Owens’s articles. The majority of these articles fit into the lifestyle and/or self-help categories. However, Owens did author one article in 2015 that overtly criticized the Republican Tea Party, calling it a party “led by the mad hatter.”
One more minor point of inaccuracy with the social media posts is that many imply that Owens closed Degree180 in 2015. Owens’s final post actually dates to April 7th, 2016, and the final post on the entire website dates to April 12th, 2016.
It is not entirely implausible that Owens changed her political views. Many people have done and continue to do so. For example, Donald Trump has switched political parties at least five times over the course of his life.
