Ted Lieu, a U.S. Representative for California’s 33rd congressional district, masterfully called out Conservative provocateur Candace Owens during a congressional hearing on white nationalism. Lieu didn’t have to say much, but he still masterfully roasted and discredited Owens by simply playing back her old words on Adolf Hitler and nationalism.
“Of all the people Republicans could have selected, they picked Candace Owens,” Lieu said. “I don’t know Ms. Owens. I’m not going to characterize her. I’m going to let her own words do the talking.”
The audio played by Lieu was from a December 2018 conversation where Owens used Hitler as an example of why “nationalism” is greater than “globalism.” First of all, you should never use Hitler to try to prove something in your favor. Second, you probably shouldn’t give him credit for his ideas.
“I actually don’t have any problems at all with the word ‘nationalism.’ I think that the definition gets poisoned by elitists that actually want globalism. Globalism is what I don’t want. … Whenever we say ‘nationalism,’ the first thing people think about, at least in America, is Hitler. You know, he was a national socialist, but if Hitler just wanted to make Germany great and have things run well, OK, fine,” Owens said in the clip.
“The problem is that he wanted — he had dreams outside of Germany. He wanted to globalize. He wanted everybody to be German, everybody to be speaking German. Everybody to look a different way. That’s not, to me, that’s not nationalism. In thinking about how we could go bad down the line, I don’t really have an issue with nationalism. I really don’t. I think that it’s OK.”
Yikes. Here is the moment it all went down, and you can see that Owens is less than pleased.
And to pour salt on Owens’ wounds, Lieu then asked Eileen Hershenov, senior vice president of policy at the Anti-Defamation League, if Owens’ comments could feed into the rhetoric spewed by white nationalism.
“It does, Mr. Lieu,” Hershenov said. “I know that Ms. Owens distanced herself from those comments later, but we expressed great concern over the original comments.”
Brilliantly done, Mr. Lieu.
