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Candace Owens Unpacks Everything From Blake Lively to Harvey Weinstein to Emmanuel Macron's Wife on Keeping It Real

April 7, 2025

Candace Owens sits down with Jillian Michaels for an explosive conversation covering media manipulation, Hollywood power plays, and controversial investigations. From dissecting the Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni lawsuit to defending Harvey Weinstein's guilt and re-examining the George Floyd case with unseen evidence, Candace holds nothing back. She also dives into why she believes Emmanuel Macron's wife Brigitte was born male, backed by journalists being detained and the French president sending her legal threats. This episode reveals the cultural force behind one of the most polarizing voices in modern journalism.

The Cultural Force That Is Candace Owens

Whether you love her or love to hate her, there is no denying Candace Owens' influence. She has become one of the most recognizable and controversial voices in modern journalism, resonating deeply across pop culture and politics. From her viral takes on social media to her unapologetic commentary on everything from race to gender to government overreach, Candace is a force.

In this episode of Keeping It Real with Jillian Michaels, nothing is off the table and everything is up for grabs. The conversation covers vaccinations, Harvey Weinstein, Blake Lively, Justin Baldoni, and why people are suddenly obsessed with Emmanuel Macron's wife. Candace brings her signature meticulous research and fearless perspective to every topic.

House in Habit Drama and Media Manipulation

The conversation begins with an unexpected twist: Jessica Reed Kraus of House in Habit putting what Candace describes as a hit on her. After a pleasant interview, Kraus's writer Emily Hagen revealed text messages showing Kraus wanted to "take out" Candace and "ruin her entire life and her family's."

What shocked Candace most was the writer's refreshing honesty. Emily admitted, "Yeah, I wanted to take you down. I wanted to ruin your life. I don't know why I got completely crazy. Sometimes I think I have bipolar disorder and that's why I like Kanye." The reason? Kraus believed Candace was trying to copy her brand by covering the Blake Lively trial.

Candace found the middle-school nature of it all baffling. "There's nothing in my brain that would ever go, 'Why did Jillian Michaels talk about Blake Lively? Is she trying to be me? Does she want to be me? Candace Owens, I'm going to take her down.'" For Candace, this epitomizes the bizarre culture of Los Angeles and social media-driven feuds.

The Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni Lawsuit

What draws Candace to certain stories isn't gossip but genuine evil and injustice. The Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni lawsuit is one such case. This isn't about celebrity drama, Candace explains. It's "one of the most evil Hollywood plots. You couldn't even write this in a movie."

The lawsuit reveals what appears to be a couple with tremendous power—Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds—attempting to destroy a man's entire life because they wanted to put her name on a movie. Taylor Swift's involvement, according to Blake's own messages, adds another layer. "You're finally able to see what Hollywood tells you someone is, like their brand, the Taylor Swift brand of goody-two-shoes, versus what's maybe going on behind closed doors," Candace says.

Martha Stewart tried to warn everyone about Ryan Reynolds. On a game show, when asked who she'd want to cook with, Stewart said of Reynolds, "I know everybody thinks he's funny, but he lives in my building and he's really not." She heavily implied he wasn't a nice guy.

According to Candace, Reynolds uses his Deadpool character to bully people. "He's not playing Deadpool. He's playing Ryan Reynolds. He's totally insane, controlling, demented, and he went through great lengths" to destroy Justin Baldoni, whom Candace calls a "sweet little soul who just wants everybody to be happy."

The lawsuit exposed collusion with the New York Times to ruin Baldoni's life. WME, led at the time by Ari Emanuel, dropped him. "This was like some A-list WME. Getting WME to drop him because I'm friends with Taylor Swift and she's our kids' godmother—it's like watching a scary movie," Candace explains.

The case has united left and right, with people demanding justice for Justin Baldoni. It's also exposed media complicity. The New York Times, traditionally trusted by the left, is now being sued for $200 million. "Why would the New York Times partake in this? Why would Megyn Kelly partake in destroying? It's just powerful people calling each other, and this is what they wanted to do," Candace says.

Hollywood's Dirty Business

Jillian Michaels, who grew up in Los Angeles, confirms the vicious nature of Hollywood. She recalls Paul Telegdy, who ran NBC and was ultimately ousted by Brian Freedman, Justin Baldoni's lawyer. "He was a monster," Jillian says.

What facilitates this behavior? "It's the culture," Jillian explains. "Think about who's going to be drawn to that kind of power and that kind of individual will exert their will in whatever way necessary to maintain power and to maintain wealth."

What makes Hollywood particularly nefarious is the virtue signaling. "There's all this virtue signaling that you're a really good person when it's the exact opposite," Jillian says. "Everybody who's a really good person has subsequently had things come out about how they're not a really good person."

Re-Examining the George Floyd Case

Candace challenges widely accepted narratives, including the George Floyd case. She asks Jillian if she's seen the full arrest tape, which the Minnesota prosecution locked down. Most people have only seen the nine minutes shot by Darnella Frazier from the sidewalk.

The full tape reveals that officers tried to peacefully arrest Floyd. He was put in the back of a cruiser but said he couldn't breathe due to claustrophobia. The officers asked, "We just took you out of this car. What do you mean you have claustrophobia? Why are you acting funny?" Floyd himself asked to be put on the ground.

When Floyd called out for "Mama," the media made people think he was calling for his mother. "His white girlfriend was Mama," Candace reveals. "His white girlfriend testified in court that she's Mama. He was calling for his white girlfriend. He had done this in previous arrests where he survived."

Regarding Derek Chauvin's knee placement, Candace explains that in the police academy, officers are trained to place the right knee on the back, not the neck. "If I had you get in that position right now and we recorded this from the front, it would look like you were on my neck," Candace demonstrates. The angle from behind, which the public never saw, shows Chauvin was doing what he was taught.

"What they did to the public by not showing them the full arrest tape to me registers as a crime," Candace says. She acknowledges room for debate about whether Chauvin should have recognized a drug overdose, but insists honest debate requires all the facts.

The Harvey Weinstein Case

Candace, who has been speaking with Harvey Weinstein for two years, believes he was hung on the Me Too movement. "Movements get really big and then they find someone to hang. Derek Chauvin on BLM. Harvey Weinstein on Me Too."

Weinstein was an easy target because "he was immoral. He was running the Peninsula like it was a brothel. The women who were sleeping with him—there's no question he's a scumbag, a legendary scumbag." But Candace insists there's nuance. "He had the power and they wanted roles and they slept with him."

When Candace investigated the actual cases, she was shocked. "How much the media can make you think you're getting information when actually you're getting nothing." Many women who spoke out never brought cases to court.

The women who did bring cases were dismissed for valid reasons. "They couldn't describe his penis, which is unique and one of a kind because he had gangrene and he had his balls removed," Candace explains. "They were all saying he made me fondle his balls. But Harvey Weinstein doesn't have balls."

The three women who put him away for 26 years had questionable cases. "You had a five-year consensual affair with him and you took your mom to meet him. I'm reading these emails and I'm going, 'What is this? Is this all about social justice and not real justice?'"

Candace tells Weinstein directly: "I think you're a bad person. I wouldn't want you to be my husband. I think you're immoral. You put yourself in the circumstance to even let this happen because you were cheating on your wife. You definitely abused your power." But she draws the line at rapist. "His children have to grow up thinking their father was a rapist as opposed to being like, 'My father was immoral and cheated on my mom non-stop.'"

Identity Politics and Excellence

Jillian identifies a theme in Candace's work: "You want women to do better and be stronger and be honest and fight in a very straightforward and fair way. And you want black people to elevate the best of the best and live to that standard."

Candace hates identity politics. "It shouldn't be because you're a woman or because you're black. We should all be aspiring to tell the truth. Being honest fortifies us. Being forthright fortifies us."

When Blake Lively's harassment claims were exposed through video evidence, Candace thought, "Women are pathetic. We don't need this. There are real women who are being assaulted, who did nothing, were walking to their car and a stranger attacked them."

Fake victimhood makes nobody believe real victims. "There are tons of women who have survived sexual assault, who have been raped by their fathers, who survived things in their homes and come out of it. You diminish their stories when you're just a flippant, arrogant, A-list actress who married another person who's arrogant and flippant and you're both narcissists and you just want to take a movie. Shame on you."

BLM and Black Culture

Candace knew from the beginning that BLM would result in black communities being burned down. "Just like the civil rights riots of the sixties, black communities were going to be burned down to the ground and no one was going to be better for it. That's exactly what happened. Go to Minnesota and walk. It's desolate."

She's exhausted with the black community being the only community that riots for drug addicts. "Is there nobody else? Let's do that for Thomas Sowell. Let's do that for Clarence Thomas. We are the only ethnic community that does that."

By contrast, "If there was a Jewish druggie who was high on fentanyl and got into a dust-up with the police and died, Jewish people would be like, 'Please don't even tell the press that he's Jewish. This one's not one of ours.'" Asian culture is similar. "Asians are a whole different breed. They will hit their sons in public. There's no messing around."

Candace dated a Filipino man whose mother once told her, "Candace, I like you, but you big bitch." When her son had a bad mushroom trip and told his mother he thought he was dying, she yelled, "Then you're going to die. I don't want to be embarrassed. Are you kidding me? You will not embarrass me."

"The culture that black people have established is the exact opposite of these cultures, which by the way, who's doing the best in this country? Hands down, Asians," Candace says. "Their culture is significantly better because they don't accept these sorts of things."

Childhood Meanness and Cancel Culture

Discussing her high school experience with racism, Candace provides context. Her best friend at the time left racist messages on her voicemail because he was hurt that she stopped hanging out with him when she got her first boyfriend. "It's actually so childish what happened. Everybody's got a little bit of racism in them. You get mad, somebody cuts you off and he's Mexican at the red light. You're like, 'Stupid Mexican.' You're like, 'Why did I say that? I don't have any bad feelings about Mexicans.'"

The incident involved 14-year-olds having their first beer. "If you're trying to hurt someone when you're young, you try to hurt them in a really petty way. It's a super young perspective to have." Adults could have sorted it out differently, but it blew up. "Those kids grew up and it ruined their whole lives. One of them changed their names when they grew up."

Louis CK has a skit about how phones have taken away the ability to experiment with being mean. "The reason why you experiment with being mean is you say something to someone and you watch the way it hurts them and you don't really like how it makes you feel when you're being mean to that person either. This is what the phones take away."

Candace confesses to prank-calling a girl in middle school, telling her Halloween was coming and she should dress as a pumpkin because she was fat. "We were just mean, trying out being mean. And then you're like, 'I don't really like this.' It's not good for kids to be mean, but it is a normal part of growing up for kids to experiment with being mean."

Now, "You find a kid's tweet from 20 years ago and you're like, 'This is who they are.' We didn't have Twitter, so there was no record of me doing that. I won't give my kids social because they'll ruin their lives. Their brains will ruin their lives."

The Transgender Issue

Jillian discusses why she speaks out against transgender issues, particularly regarding children. "We were fighting for gay marriage. We were fighting to be able to adopt kids. We got those rights. We should have shut up. The medicalization of a 12-year-old is bananas. You are literally making irreversible changes to this child's fertility, ability to have an orgasm, brain development, bone development."

Liberal advocates know nothing about the Cass Review, a four-year systematic review of studies on gender-affirming care. The UK and much of Europe revoked the ability to provide such care to children because "they realized it's causing a lot more issues than it's solving."

For Jillian, it's virtue signaling. "They don't want to do the research and they just want to go, 'Well, I'm an accepting person, so whatever it is you want, I accept it.' Actually, we shouldn't just accept everything. We should not accept people harming children."

Regarding fully developed adults, Jillian is libertarian. "Live your life, man. I support you and I will fight for you to have all those rights." But transgender sports is different. "It's not fair. It's not safe. I owned a sports medicine facility. There's an overwhelming amount of evidence to show that there is a vast difference in the physiological abilities of a biological male versus a female."

Candace notes the hypocrisy of feminists. "When it really came time to do the feminist thing, they couldn't do it. They were just like, 'No, I guess the patriarchy's back.' The patriarchy just had to put on a wig and say, 'I'm a woman, too,' and then all of a sudden they could just spike the ball on all the rights that have been established for women."

The Emmanuel Macron's Wife Investigation

Candace's investigation into Brigitte Macron began with a Daily Mail article stating, "Emmanuel Macron vehemently denies that his wife's a man." Candace thought, "What a strange thing for a president to be denying."

The Daily Mail claimed the rumor was "fully debunked by a childhood photo." Candace thought, "Wait, this is all we got? This should be debunked because she's got like 20,000 photos, she's got three kids, she's got video. One childhood photo? That's a little weird."

Investigating further, Candace found no photos of Brigitte from age four or seven until around age 40. "You allegedly have three kids. You can't show me a photo of you pregnant? Everybody holds their kid in the hospital. You got nothing? This is crazy."

The media called it a "far-right conspiracy theory," but actually, "people on the left, a Vanity Fair reporter was trying to do a puff piece on Mrs. Macron and fell down a hole. She was like, 'I can't find anything about this person.'" Another woman, a Holocaust documentarian working for the BBC equivalent of France, was doing a piece because "this is a historic election. Brigitte Macron has got so much power."

She was called into the Élysée Palace and interrogated about who she was speaking to. "She was like, 'I felt like I was under interrogation.' These were people who were celebrated mainstream journalists who were trying to honor Brigitte who suddenly were like, 'Something is not right. I've never seen anything like this. You feel like you're going to get arrested for asking any questions.'"

Emmanuel Macron sent Candace a 100-page legal threat before she published her series. "The president of France sent me, a pregnant mom in Tennessee, a threat. What? He played the 'I'm the president' card, and I think he thought if she sees it, she's just not going to do this."

Candace was only going to do one episode but decided to do a whole series. "How dare you? Who are you? You don't come to an American on free speech and tell them they can't talk about this topic."

She sent yes-or-no questions: "Was Brigitte Macron born a biological male? Yes or no?" They declined to answer. "After sending the best law firm in DC to send a process server to my house, they did not answer the questions. They can't, because the truth is that she was born a man."

French journalist Natacha Rey did incredible work, moving his family to Milan after living through "literal hell to get this story out." He has an entire book called "Becoming Brigitte" and has never been sued.

The implications are scary. Brigitte allegedly fell in love with Emmanuel when he was 14 years old. "This individual, man or woman irregardless, fell in love with a 14-year-old boy and got away with it. That's the part I find absolutely disgusting. And it's statutory rape. It still holds until the end of this year. Brigitte Macron could be tried for this."

There's also "the pedophile nebula," as the journalist describes it, of people around their administration who were subsequently arrested. "One guy admitted it. He had reached a statute of limitations, but his daughter wrote an entire book about how her brother was raped by him at these weird French political parties."

The series became the most viral thing Candace has ever done. "The reason it's viral is people are hooked on it because all you have to do is look at well-meaning journalists who are like, 'Oh, it's Michelle Obama. I want to cover her because she's amazing,' and then they're suddenly getting called in by the Secret Service and they're in trouble."

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