Candace Owens Gets An Apology From Twitter After The Conservative Pundit Got Banned For A Day
Conservative commentator Candace Owens is back on Twitter, following the social media platform’s decision on Sunday to lock her out for allegedly violating its terms and conditions through a series of controversial tweets.
According to Fox News, Owens was emailed by Twitter’s support team on Sunday, which issued an apology for temporarily banning her from the platform and for “making an error” in doing so. This was followed by a tweet from Owens on Monday afternoon, where she thanked the people who supported her while she was locked out of her account. She also announced that she will be discussing the “debacle” in a live stream.
“BLOWN AWAY by the amount of patriots that just came to my side to make this happen. I will be periscoping LIVE about this entire debacle, in 30 mins. I am blessed to know you all.”
The news of Candace Owens’ Twitter ban was first posted by her fellow conservative activist, Turning Point USA’s Charlie Kirk, who tweeted on Sunday that Owens was locked out for copying, then editing old tweets from Sarah Jeong, an editorial board member at the New York Times. The original tweets were unearthed and published last week by Jim Hoft, founder of the right-wing blog The Gateway Pundit, and reportedly showed Jeong making offensive comments about white people, according to The Guardian.
Twitter apologizes after conservative commentator Candace Owens was briefly locked out of her account https://t.co/iWip3YSD0m
— Fox News (@FoxNews) August 6, 2018
Despite her earlier social media activity, the New York Times prepared a statement defending Jeong and its decision to hire her, as she regrets her past tweets that “[imitated] the rhetoric” of the people who harassed her online for her Asian heritage.
“Black people are only fit to live underground like groveling goblins. They have stopped breeding and will all go extinct soon. I enjoy being cruel to old black women,” read one of Owens’ tweets, which substituted the race of the people Jeong had allegedly targeted and included a further disclaimer explaining that her comments were a parody.
Fox News noted that Owens had made another post where she referenced Jewish people in her own version of Sarah Jeong’s original tweet. This tweet was eventually deleted.
In the aftermath of Candace Owens’ ban from Twitter, a number of conservative figures, including Kirk, tweeted in her defense, with Kirk complaining that it was “unreal” that his colleague was banned for several hours, while Jeong wasn’t given any sanctions by the microblogging platform. Katina Pierson, an advisor to President Donald Trump’s 2020 campaign, accused Twitter co-founder and CEO Jack Dorsey of “[approving] of racist attacks against white people,” adding that Owens had directly quoted Jeong except for the race swap.
