Candace Owens Links Memphis Kidnapping to Trans People

Far-right media personality Candace Owens on Thursday tried to link the acceptance of transgender people into society to a deadly kidnapping in Memphis.

On Tucker Carlson Tonight, the namesake host described the kidnapping and murder of kindergarten teacher Eliza Fletcher. Carlson also informed viewers that a teenager in Memphis had been arrested early Thursday after allegedly going on a 20-hour shooting rampage through the city that left at least four dead and at least three injured. The suspect, Ezekiel Kelly, had been sentenced last year to three years in jail but was released in March after serving 11 months.

“Criminal justice reform was a popular notion,” began Carlson. “There were hundreds of millions of people in prison for possession of marijuana, they were all doing life, they all needed to be let out immediately. This was kind of going around, and some Republicans apparently still believe it. What has been the effect of it?”

Owens, an anti-vaxxer who also contributed to a baseless theory that the Uvalde, Texas, school shooter was transgender, said that overly compassionate policymakers and mental illness in the form of transgender acceptance were to blame for Fletcher’s kidnapping and murder.

“Obviously what we are seeing around us is, under the guise of compassion, we are letting violent criminals back on the streets, and people that are following the law and abiding the law—going out for a jog—are suffering because of it,” Owens said, noting that the kidnapping was “absolutely horrific.”

“And this is, by the way, the product of what we are seeing when we celebrate—in our culture—mental illness,” she continued.

That, she said, not only takes the form of those who “convince us we should feel compassion towards criminals and yet feel that the real criminals are the patriots,” Owens claimed, “but it’s also the perverse elements that are encouraging mental illness like telling men they can be women, telling women they can be men if they just mutilate their bodies.” She added: “Mental illness in our society is abundant, and what we are seeing right now is we are in the late stage of a cultural disease.”

Carlson, no stranger to attacking the trans community, agreed.

“That’s such a smart point,” the Fox host said. “The rise of mental illness is inextricably tied to this.”

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