Like many of her ideological counterparts, far-right pundit Candace Owens has repeatedly promoted disinformation regarding the lifesaving COVID-19 vaccines, which have been proven safe and effective at minimizing the spread and severity of the virus that's killed more than 800 thousand Americans.
Recently, she interviewed former President Donald Trump, who corrected Owens when she falsely suggested that the vaccines were killing people.
Watch below.
Candace Owens’ vaccine misinformation is so ridiculous that even Donald Trump pushed back:
“The vaccine worked, but some people aren’t taking it. The ones that get very sick and go to the hospital are the ones that don’t take the vaccine.” pic.twitter.com/tk0Uj5U57T
— The Republican Accountability Project (@AccountableGOP) December 22, 2021
Trump said:
“The vaccine worked, but some people aren’t taking it. The ones that get very sick and go to the hospital are the ones that don’t take the vaccine.”
Owens was widely mocked after having her disinformation corrected in real time by the GOP's kingmaker, who himself told over 30 thousand lies during his four years in office.
She soon posted a video insisting that Trump was too "old" to understand why vaccines are supposedly harmful.
Watch below.
Candace Owens is doing damage control after “so many donors and supporters” are upset over Trump’s vaccine comments. She says he is old, isn’t tech savvy, doesn’t keep up with or read obscure internet conspiracies, and only follows the main stream media so doesn’t have the facts. pic.twitter.com/XAuTFfellE
— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) December 24, 2021
Owens said:
“People oftentimes forget how old Trump is. 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, and one of those things was this push for vaccines and believing that people were gonna die without vaccines.”
She scrambled to convince her followers that Trump's support for vaccines wasn't insidious.
"I believe that his support of the vaccine is genuine and it's not based in any corruption at all. ... I don't think that there's anything evil going on there, I just wanted to say that, because so many donors, supporters of his are kind of like questioning where this is coming from."
Owens went on to suggest that Trump supports the vaccines because he doesn't do enough research on "obscure websites" and claimed he needed to have a "larger conversation" about that support.
Owens' video didn't do much for her credibility.
I find everything about this equal parts hilarious and pathetic. https://t.co/O3170MRuey
— Ana Navarro-Cárdenas (@ananavarro) December 25, 2021
LOL. I really don’t know who Owens is, but wow, she’s peak idiot. https://t.co/5C5ougNkgY
— Peter Staley (@peterstaley) December 25, 2021
So Candace Owens basically called Donald Trump old, dumb, and unsophisticated. Is Donnie just going to take it? #CandaceCalledDonaldDumb https://t.co/qvDxqk15aM
— Don Lewis (@DonLew87) December 25, 2021
Donald Trump regularly plugged the most obscure, most online people as long as they complimented him. This idea that he’s simply not “online” enough to get the right information is laughable. https://t.co/lsAk7cdHyr
— Stephen Michael Davis (@ScubaMySteve) December 26, 2021
I love it when Trump supporters tell us that Trump is, in fact, an idiot. https://t.co/zQfN23TfJx
— THEE dr. emigre80 (@emigre80) December 24, 2021
So in other words "The man I've been supporting all this time and propped up over and over again is actually pretty ignorant" https://t.co/tUEw33Gu2g
— Anton Chigurh (@AntonCh2021) December 25, 2021
Some thought Owens represented a growing number of Trump supporters turning on the former President for not being extreme enough.
Calling Trump an old hag, illiterate ignorant fool because he used his brain for a change is what MAGA really excels in. https://t.co/vLeXcuxhVZ
— Tintin Speaks (@samajdarn) December 25, 2021
Trump's disinformation army is now being forced to turn on him because he said one smart thing https://t.co/u3iuYDzLMf
— Zenrotto #Endwalker (@Zenrotwo) December 25, 2021
A troubling possibility—a big chunk of MAGA breaks with Trump not because he went too far (i.e. January 6 and the election lie) but because he doesn’t go far enough. https://t.co/NeQE4zJva2
— David French (@DavidAFrench) December 25, 2021
Hopefully more of Trump's supporters will be convinced by his calls to take the vaccine, rather than repelled by them.
