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On WNYC’s On The Media, Brian Tyler Cohen explains how creators like Candace Owens reach people who “aren’t going to seek out overtly political content,” but are “interested in cultural content”
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On WNYC’s On The Media, Brian Tyler Cohen explains how creators like Candace Owens reach people who “aren’t going to seek out overtly political content,” but are “interested in cultural content”
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From the April 18, 2025, edition of WNYC's On the Media
MICAH LOEWINGER (HOST): I watched Candace Owens, a creator who gained prominence as a political commentator on Ben Shapiro’s network, The Daily Wire. But last year, the two had a falling out in part over her defense of a antisemitic Kanye West tweet. She still defends him regularly, by the way. She’s since built a massive audience on her own. Over 16 million followers across YouTube, Instagram, and X.
(AUDIO BEGINS)
CANDACE OWENS (RIGHT-WING PERSONALITY): We have an update in the Blake / Ryan / Justin saga. It’s weird. It involves a fake subpoena. I think it’s definitely fake.
(AUDIO ENDS)
LOEWINGER: This was her latest podcast, partly about the Blake Lively / Justin Baldoni feud that’s transfixed, like, half the Internet.
...
LOEWINGER: All throughout this protracted drama, Candace Owens has been on top of the story, documenting what feels like, you know, every incremental update and morsel of new information.
(AUDIO BEGINS)
BRIAN TYLER COHEN (YOUTUBER): She’s doing this for a very specific reason.
(AUDIO ENDS)
LOEWINGER: This is Brian Tyler Cohen, a liberal YouTuber with 4.3 million subscribers. I spoke to him earlier in the week, and we’ll actually hear from him later in the show as well. He thinks there’s a lot to learn from how Candace Owens is making content out of all of this.
(AUDIO BEGINS)
COHEN: She’s able to touch people that aren’t going to seek out overtly political content, but rather bump into her because they’re interested in cultural content. And so they subscribe and then offer some right-coded or overtly right-wing positions on other stuff. And that’s how people kind of build up their worldview.
(AUDIO ENDS)
LOEWINGER: That’s exactly what I heard on this episode of her podcast. The first half features the Lively / Baldoni update, but this is where she took it in the second half.
(AUDIO BEGINS)
OWENS: You can’t say that the Jews had anything to do with Christ, killing Christ, which is — You know what that is? It's not antisemitism. It’s anti-Catholic. It’s anti-Christian to tell me that we can’t discuss how Christ was murdered. In a country that has free speech, if you say, I think the Holocaust numbers were exaggerated or I think they were underreported, that should be a matter of academic debate. That shouldn’t be a matter of you being suspended from campus. Somebody could say, no. Let me rebut that. This only exists for the Holocaust. If you go Google right now Bolshevik Revolution, how many people died, they’ll give you a range, 40 million to 60 million.
(AUDIO ENDS)
LOEWINGER: All this for a podcast that was advertised as being about celebrities?
...
COHEN: People are flooding into the independent media space.
LOEWINGER: According to a study from Pew Research Center last fall, around one in five Americans now get their news from influencers. Cohen says that the Democrats have neglected the independent media landscape for as long as it's existed.
COHEN: They always just viewed legacy media as our message distribution system. Why would we spend time validating content creators on the left when we've got Anderson Cooper and Rachel Maddow? And, of course, now we have no infrastructure because there's never been any money invested into it.
LOEWINGER: Meanwhile, billionaires like Farris and Dan Wilks have poured millions of dollars into outlets like PragerU and The Daily Wire, which helped conservative pundits like Ben Shapiro and Candace Owens reach huge audiences.
COHEN: It's incumbent on folks who do care about democracy to start investing in building up content creation on the left.