Phelim McAleer: ​Following her instinct has taken Candace Owens to a very strange place on issues such as October 7 and the assassination of Charlie Kirk

She is young, and like many young people, started her political journey on the left. Then she moved to the right, becoming a Trump supporter.

Candace came to prominence through Turning Point USA – the organisation founded by Charlie Kirk who was recently assassinated speaking at a university.

Then she moved to the Daily Wire, a right-centred news/entertainment startup that had a huge audience. She was one of their most high profile and popular presenters, bashing the liberals and boosting Trump.

At this stage it should be pointed out that Candace Owens is black. As such conservatives bent over backwards and into all other sorts of contortions to boost her and her show.

If you think leftists pander to minorities, you should spend some time around American conservatives. They claim to be against affirmative action but are also very, very scared of being called racist. So American conservatives are willing to overlook stupidity, greed and incompetence in some African Americans who claim to be conservative. And so a few are promoted well beyond their ability, often leading to disaster for the organisations stuck with them. Michael Steele was elected chairman of the Republican National Committee and it ended in electoral defeat for the party. He left complaining – you guessed it – that he was a victim of racism. Steele now hosts a TV show on MSNOW, the far left cable TV channel. Similarly, Colin Powell was made chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (the highest position in the US military) and Secretary of State, by a Republican President. He was touted as a possible presidential candidate before he decided not to run. (In a not-very-warrior move he blamed his wife's fears for his decision not to face the voters.)

Powell had a gilded life but when he ran out off road suddenly decided that the political party that promoted him well beyond his ability had a “dark vein of intolerance”.

And so now we have Candace. She is young and attractive and, to be fair to her, combative and articulate – the perfect warrior for Trump who was constantly being falsely accused of being racist and misogynistic. (And no, no matter what the media tells you, Trump did not condone sexually assaulting women in the Access Hollywood tape – but that's another column).

Our paths used to meet at various conferences and I was very unimpressed by her lack of originality and intellectual underpinning but perhaps that was just me. The audiences loved her but then again American conservative audiences do clap extra loudly for black speakers. I was very impressed by Candace’s entourage. She was in her early 20s but already her assistants had assistants.

Since then Candace parted ways with the Daily Wire and has gone independent. The combination of being overpraised too early, and following your instinct not your intellect, which in Candace's case is limited anyway, has led her to a very strange place.

It started after the October 7 massacre in Israel when Hamas invaded the country and massacred 1,200 innocent men, women, children and babies. Suddenly not only were the Israelis the bad guys in the subsequent Gaza war but they were actually behind the October 7 massacres themselves.

"Bibi Netanyahu funded Hamas through Qatar and enabled October 7th,” she wrote on X.

It's never mentioned in the US media but the American black community has a very significant vein of anti-semitism. And I fear that Candace has embraced her roots.

Charlie Kirk was, she told her listeners, assassinated by the Israeli state because he had soured on Israel and was about to withdraw his support for the war.

And, of course, once you start blaming the Jews, you see them everywhere – and Candace soon found that they had infiltrated the US government which was also behind the Charlie Kirk assassination.

She announced on her radio show that plans to honour Kirk with a public holiday or a road being named after him was evidence that they had been part of a plot.

She said:

“What is with them giving them a holiday after they kill them?.....Like oh Martin Luther King …They’re going to give Charlie Kirk a boulevard…….. They did, in Israel they gave him a frickin boulevard it’s like as soon as they give you a boulevard and a holiday, they definitely killed you.

“There's no question - they killed you….it’s the fed signature it’s how they sign off after they murder you.”

More recently she is claiming she is now the target of a French and Israeli assassination plot.

Let's hope Candace Owens popularity is temporary or a result of morbid fascination but not support. If it's real and it lasts, America may be in for some very dark days indeed.

l Phelim McAleer is a Tyrone born journalist/producer living in Los Angeles.