“I never once called Trump too old. I did never once say that Trump could not understand the internet,” she said. “And yet somehow he got that information and believed it to be true. He thought that I said that he was too old and he couldn’t understand the internet and did not quite get the information that actually what I was saying was in defense of him so that his supporters would still believe in him.”

The host shared that she learned the former president was upset with her through the grapevine.

“Not only was he just mad, by the way, he then, during a golf session with some mutual friends of ours, had a person next to him who was egging this on, saying to Trump, and I know this because, again, this is a mutual friend, ‘Aren’t you mad at Candace? Aren’t you mad at Candace? Aren’t you mad at Candace?’ And eventually, he was like, ‘Yeah, I’m so mad at Candace. I’m so mad at Candace,'” she recalled. “And this got back to me that he was upset with me, that he was angry at me.”

The depths of Trump’s disdain for Owens clicked when she later saw him.

“The next time that I saw him, he was quite rude to me,” she said. “He was actually rude to me.”

His switch-up has made Owens question his character and the importance of her past devotion to him.

“I’m telling you, this personal story because I think it is something that made me for the first time question him as a person,” she said. “So you have an individual that spent years defending you, right? And that individual gave you a completely kind and fair interview. You said something yourself that your base didn’t like and you somehow transformed that into something that I did wrong.”

Owens said Trump’s treatment of her is “unacceptable” and not the mark of a true leader.

“He should have tried to understand why the base was so upset with him, which would have led to the fact that his base is not pro-Covid vaccines, that simple,” she explained. “I understood that. I could have told him that. But at that moment, I realized that he’s not listening.”

Not only is Trump’s behavior not fitting of a leader in the 33-year-old’s eyes, but it’s also not fitting of a friend, either.

“That’s what it means to be a person. That’s what it means to be a friend. That’s what it means to be a colleague and even a friend,” she said. “What it means to be a colleague is to actually have relationships with — to honor the relationships that you have with people that don’t take place in the public sphere.”

Moving forward, Owens thinks that Trump “needs to take a good look in the mirror” and needs “to read the room accurately.”

 

 

Ultimately, Owens believes that accountability is key.

“Trump is not perfect. I’m not perfect. I get things wrong. I edit. I say, ‘Thank you guys for bringing me this new information. I hadn’t realized that,'” she continued. “And there’s still a period where he could transform but I think the results of last night’s election, which are still coming in, show that we aren’t sure, that he’s not sure, and therefore we aren’t sure. And that’s all I have to say about that.”