Candace Owens: 'Trump thinks his base is stupid'

Conservative commentator Candace Owens said on Monday that President Trump thinks his "base is stupid" and that "people around him" think he is "stupid" during the latest episode of her show.

Owens accused Trump of "gaslighting the public" after the FBI and Justice Department (DOJ) published a memo earlier this month stating there’s no evidence Epstein had a “client list” and reaffirming that he died by suicide in a jail cell while awaiting trial on federal sex-trafficking charges in 2019.

"The Epstein scandal is definitely terminal cancer to Trump's MAGA movement," she said in the video, which was first highlighted by Mediaite. "There's no question about it."

Owens, a staunch supporter of Trump during his first White House bid, compared the administration's move to the Hunter Biden controversy, which included his stolen laptop that contained a massive record of documents, including business dealings, personal photos and emails. It was seized on by Republicans as a campaign issue after it was disseminated to the public. 

Owens, who has shifted her tone on Trump through out his second term in office, said the Biden case was dismissed by the “Deep State," accusing those around Trump of being "people who hate him and have infiltrated his base."

“It seems like you think your base is stupid. That’s how I feel," Owens said. "I feel like Trump thinks his base is stupid, or, again, because I don’t think he’s pressing send on these messages, the people around him think that Trump is stupid. And that shouldn’t surprise you given the fact that all of these people were ‘Never Trump.’ They were ‘Never Trump.’"

Owens also accused the administration of sending more weapons to Ukraine as a way to distract the public from the Epstein files, calling it "Operation: Just Give Them More War."

“Look at this headline: Trump announces an aggressive, or Trump is to announce an aggressive Ukraine weapons plan. Yeah, he already indicated that in that same press conference that there’s just going to be more weapons sent to Ukraine, they’re going to attack Russia. We’re just going to have to have a world war and another reset, I guess. So, you guys just stop talking about Jeffrey Epstein,” she said.

Owens asserted that she would be "very last person that will stop talking about Jeffrey Epstein."

“I will do his entire genealogy backwards and forwards, including everybody around him, get their genealogy, before we let go of this," she added.

The former supporter turned critic of Trump said last month that she's "embarrassed" after campaigning for the president during the 2024 election cycle.

“He’s been a chronic disappointment. And I feel embarrassed that I told people to go vote for him because this wasn’t going to happen, and it is happening,” Owens said before criticizing Trump's decision to engage in the Israel-Iran conflict.