Candace Owens Teaches “Made-Up Professor” Kathleen Belew A Lesson

After the hearing, Candace took to Twitter to reiterate what she said in a summary:

The Washington Post has more to say on Candace Owens slamming Kathleen Belew during the hearing on white supremacy:

Candace Owens took issue with Friday’s congressional hearing on confronting white nationalism right from the start.

 

“White supremacy is indeed real, but despite the media’s obsessive coverage of it, it represents an isolated, uncoordinated and fringe occurrence within America,” she told the lawmakers assembled before her, accusing Democrats of pumping up the issue for political gain while ignoring bigger issues facing blacks in the United States. They were familiar lines from a commentator whom The Washington Post earlier this year called “the new face of black conservatism,” known for urging African Americans to “wake up to the great liberal hoax.”

 

Then, more than two hours into the session held by House Oversight and Reform subcommittees on national security and civil rights and civil liberties, another hearing witness addressed Owens directly. Earlier, Owens had called it “hilarious” that her fellow panelists did not provide specific numbers on the death toll from white supremacist violence.

 

“I just have to say that I object strenuously to your use of the word hilarious,” said fellow witness Kathleen Belew, a University of Chicago professor who studies white nationalism, glancing toward the right-wing pundit two seats down. She noted Owens’s response earlier this year after it was revealed that she was named as an inspiration in writings by the Christchurch, New Zealand, mass shooting suspect — a tweet from Owens that began with “LOL!” was panned by critics as insensitive.

 

The comments set off a spat broadcast later on Owens’s Twitter account and among her supporters, as the conservative blasted Belew as a “Made-up professor” who made a “SEVERE error” and twisted her words.

 

“You knew exactly what I meant when I said hilarious,” Owens told Belew at the hearing. “And you just tried to do live what the media does all the time to Republicans, to our president and to conservatives, which is try to manipulate what I said to fit your narrative.”

 

Belew’s suggestion that Owens laughed at people’s slaughter in Christchurch is “absolutely despicable,” she said.

 

The exchange, tweeted by C-SPAN, came during an already contentious debate over policymakers’ response to white supremacist violence: Some conservatives see political maneuvering in the discussions, while Democrats argue that the GOP and the federal government are not taking the issue seriously enough weeks after a gunman killed 22 people in El Paso. Investigators think the man accused in the case left behind a missive singling out Hispanics and speaking admiringly of the Christchurch shooting suspect, who promoted white nationalist ideas. 

Republican lawmakers came to Owens’s defense Friday, with Rep. Mark Meadows (N.C.) decrying what he said was an attempt to “gang up” on the GOP-called witness and Rep. Jim Jordan (Ohio) saying Belew was behaving inappropriately. For Owens, it also provided a segue back into the skepticism she’d expressed about the day’s proceedings, as she repeated her belief that white nationalism would not crack her list of the top 100 problems facing black Americans. She claims liberals are ignoring problems such as “father absence,” illiteracy and abortion, echoing other conservative focal points.

Real Clear Politics also said:

Candace Owens testifies that a House Oversight Joint Subcommittee hearing on 'Confronting White Supremacy' is part of a "farce" repeated "every four years ahead of an election cycle" by Democrats to get black votes. Owens argued Friday that Democratic policies are what have hurt black Americans, not white supremacy.

"II also found it quite hilarious that when asked for actual numbers, nobody here could actually provide them, because [white nationalism] is not actually a problem in America or a major problem or a threat that's facing Black America. This is, again, just election rhetoric," Owens said.