Candace Owens tears into Democrats for ‘faux concern’ over white nationalist terrorist threat

Conservative commentator Candace Owens on Friday blasted Democrats’ “faux concern” about the terror threat from white nationalist groups while ignoring more pressing issues facing the African American community.

“[White supremacy] is a fringe occurrence that is being used, in my opinion, by Democrats to scare Americans into giving up their votes to a party that can no longer win based on simple ideas, which is why we are seeing so many of these hearings back-to-back, despite other threats that are facing this nation,” Ms. Owens said at a hearing before the House Oversight and National Security committees.

Ms. Owens, who is African American, was invited to speak at the hearing to address the transnational terror threat from white nationalists. It was the third hearing Democrats have held on the issue of white supremacy.

The hearings came after a number of high-profile mass shootings in recent months by alleged white supremacists, including last month’s shooting at an El Paso, Texas, Wal-Mart that left 22 people dead and two mosque shootings in Christchurch New Zealand that killed 50 worshipers earlier this year.

But Ms. Owens charged that Democrats on the panels weren’t interested in actually addressing white nationalist terror, which she described as “real,” but “uncoordinated, isolated.”

Instead, she said, Democrats were trying to scare African Americans into supporting their party in the upcoming 2020 election.

“Terms like white nationalism, which today and in this room and upon this floor, most nearly means that it is election time, America,” she said. “It is time for the left to do what they do best, divide, distract and and hope to keep the most important voting block to their party — African Americans — angry, emotional and reactive enough to keep voting for the same party that has systematically destroyed our families, sent our men to prison and deferred all of our dreams.”

In her remarks, Ms. Owens called for Democrats to hold hearings on topics she said posed greater threats to the African American community, including absentee fatherhood, illiteracy and abortion.

“White nationalism also sounds a lot better than abortion as a threat, which has resulted in the slaughter of 18 million black Americans since 1973. … In major cities like New York, we have more black babies being aborted than being born alive. If we are talking about white supremacy, we should probably have a conversation about that,” she said.

FBI Director Christopher A. Wray said in July the agency has made about 100 domestic terrorism-related arrests since October and the majority were tied to white supremacy.

Ms. Owens was one of three panelists speaking at the hearing, which included testimony from two terrorism experts.