The Harvey Weinstein apologist

Summary

Today, Explained: The Harvey Weinstein Apologist

Episode Release Date: May 5, 2025
Hosts: Sean Rameswaram and Noel King
Part of the Vox Media Podcast Network

---

Introduction

In this episode of Today, Explained, host Noel King delves into the resurgence of Harvey Weinstein in the public eye following the overturning of his 2020 conviction. The episode explores the intriguing rise of Candace Owens, a prominent far-right commentator, who has taken up Weinstein's defense, sparking significant discourse and garnering a substantial following.

---

Harvey Weinstein's Conviction Overturned

The episode opens with Noel King highlighting the legal developments surrounding Harvey Weinstein:

Noel King [00:01]: "Harvey Weinstein is back in court this week. An appeals court overturned his 2020 conviction in New York, saying he hadn't gotten a fair trial and so his accusers must now testify again."

The overturning of Weinstein's conviction marks a pivotal moment, questioning the integrity of the initial trial and reopening the door for new testimonies from his accusers.

---

Candace Owens: Background and Rise

Candace Owens, known for her provocative stances, emerges as a central figure in this narrative. Originally identifying as fairly liberal, Owens' trajectory took a sharp turn post-2016, influenced by personal experiences with bullying and her foray into combating online harassment. Her early venture, Social Autopsy, aimed to expose online bullies by linking their abusive comments to their real-life identities. This approach, however, attracted significant backlash and aligned her with far-right personalities like Milo Yiannopoulos and Mike Cernovich.

Owens' personal history includes traumatic experiences that shaped her worldview:

E.J. Dixon [02:22]: "One night I was sitting on a couch with my boyfriend... I was out of school for about six weeks."

These formative events propelled her into the spotlight, leveraging her experiences to build a platform that resonated with a growing audience disillusioned with mainstream narratives.

---

Owens' Shift to Defending Weinstein

Transitioning to a more conservative stance, Owens began leveraging platforms like YouTube and PragerU to disseminate her views. Her outspoken defense of controversial figures, including Kanye West and Andrew Tate, set the stage for her latest advocacy: defending Harvey Weinstein.

Her rhetoric often challenges prevailing movements like MeToo and Black Lives Matter, positioning herself as a counter-narrative:

E.J. Dixon [05:05]: "Women are not an oppressed class in the West. There is no rape culture in the West."

Owens' alignment with Weinstein stems from her belief in his wrongful conviction, mirroring arguments presented by his legal team.

---

Strategies and Content Style

Owens employs a strategic content creation approach, blending journalistic language with sensationalism to captivate her audience. She adeptly distills complex issues into digestible narratives, often utilizing user-generated content from platforms like Reddit and TikTok to support her claims.

Constance Grady highlights Owens' effectiveness in shaping her message:

Constance Grady [11:25]: "She's very good at distilling very complicated ideas into very simple packages."

This method not only broadens her reach but also fosters a sense of credibility, despite criticisms regarding the reliability of her information.

---

Audience and Cultural Shifts

Owens' growing popularity is reflective of broader cultural shifts, particularly a backlash against feminist movements and the MeToo movement. Grady attributes Owens' success to tapping into anti-feminist sentiments among Gen Z women, who express frustration with perceived overreach of previous feminist waves:

Constance Grady [12:50]: "The metric is who is keeping eyeballs on the page. Who's saying the most shocking thing, who's saying the most extreme thing, who's packaging this in the best way."

This cultural undercurrent creates fertile ground for Owens' narrative, positioning her as a voice for those disenchanted with traditional feminist discourse.

---

Impact and Broader Implications

The episode examines the implications of Owens' defense of Weinstein, noting how it aligns with Susan Faludi's concept of backlash against women's progress. Each advancement in women's rights is often met with swift resistance aiming to reinstate traditional norms.

Noel King [25:32]: "Every time that in American culture it looks as though women are making some sort of social or political progress, that's very rapidly followed by a period of intense backlash."

Owens' influence extends beyond her immediate audience, affecting public figures such as Joe Rogan, who admits to rethinking Weinstein's guilt after engaging with Owens' arguments.

---

Conclusions

Today, Explained concludes by contextualizing Owens' actions within the larger framework of media evolution and societal resistance to change. The erosion of traditional media ecosystems has empowered figures like Owens to command significant influence, not necessarily through reliable information, but through compelling and provocative content that resonates with specific audience segments.

The episode underscores the complexity of justice and public opinion, especially in high-profile cases like Harvey Weinstein's, and highlights the enduring impact of cultural narratives on legal and societal outcomes.

---

Notable Quotes:

• Noel King [00:01]: "Harvey Weinstein is back in court this week..."
• E.J. Dixon [05:05]: "Women are not an oppressed class in the West..."
• Constance Grady [12:50]: "The metric is who is keeping eyeballs on the page..."

---

Key Takeaways:

• The overturning of Weinstein's conviction has reopened debates about the MeToo movement and the justice system.
• Candace Owens' shift from a liberal to a far-right commentator showcases the influence of personal trauma and backlash against feminist progress.
• Owens' strategic use of media platforms and sensational content has significantly expanded her audience.
• Cultural shifts, particularly anti-feminist sentiments among younger generations, have created an environment where figures like Owens can thrive.
• The episode highlights the ongoing tension between societal progress and conservative backlash, emphasizing the role of media in shaping public discourse.

---

For more insights and detailed analyses, visit Vox.

Transcript

[Noel King]

Harvey Weinstein is back in court this week. An appeals court overturned his 2020 conviction in New York, saying he hadn't gotten a fair trial and so his accusers must now testify again. Weinstein has always had very good lawyers, but the court of public opinion was against him until now, it seems.

[E.J. Dixon]

After looking over this case, I've concluded that Harvey Weinstein was wrongfully convicted and was basically just hung on the MeToo thing.

[Noel King]

The commentator Candace Owens, who has previously defended Kanye and Andrew Tate Andrew Tate.

[E.J. Dixon]

And his brother Response to a misandrist culture Women that hated men. Before Andrew Tate there was Lena Dunham.

[Noel King]

Has taken up Weinstein's cause and it seems to be gaining her followers. Coming up on today explained When Candace Met Harvey.

[E.J. Dixon]

With HubSpot's built in AI.

[Noel King]

You can get more done than ever before. Breeze agents help you do things in seconds that used to take hours and Copilot keeps you two steps ahead, giving you the right insights at the right time. Get started [e-mail] AI support for Today Explained comes from BetterHelp. Did you know it is Mental Health Awareness Month? Better Help says Mental Health Awareness Month is a great time to take the first step toward getting the mental health support that you need. Better Help says they make therapy accessible and affordable. They say you can find the right therapist from a iverse network of 30,000 plus licensed professionals and you can get convenient support on your own time. We're all better. With help you can head to betterhelp.com explain to get 10% off your first month. That's betterhelp. Hlp.com explained it's so messy.

[E.J. Dixon]

It's so obvious. Everyone knows what you're doing.

[Noel King]

You're listening to today explained. Candace Owens is a 36 year old far right commentator who made her bones taking positions that are reliably aimed at owning the libs and occasionally spin out into country crazy. E.J. dixon, a writer for New York Magazine's the Cut, recently profiled Owens, whose telling of her own story begins with a terrible experience when she was quite young.

[Constance Grady]

She had a pretty high profile experience with bullying when she was in high school.

[E.J. Dixon]

One night I was sitting on a couch with my boyfriend and I received anonymous phone calls and at the end of watching Talladega with my boyfriend, I picked up the phone, I listened to the voicemails and they were people, four boys that were screaming back and forth calling me a dirty saying we're going to try and fight your family, saying we're going to do to you like we did to Martin Luther King put a bullet in the back of your head, made references to Rosa Parks. It was really probably the nastiest thing that I've ever heard in my entire life.

[Constance Grady]

And it became like local news.

[E.J. Dixon]

Long story short, this was categorized as a hate crime. The FBI was involved. I was out of school for about six weeks. And just imagine, like, I didn't even want to report it. And then having, like, what felt like your entire life. It was front page of Connecticut newspapers for two months.

[Constance Grady]

So that was sort of like her origin story was that she was actually the victim of bullying. And at first, she kind of has a pretty standard trajectory for somebody that's interested in communications. Like, she got a journalism degree, she interned for Vogue. And it seems like politically she self identified as fairly liberal. But then what happens? In 2016, she launches this company called Social Autopsy. Essentially publishes like the online footprint of anonymous people online. The goal is to sort of hold bullies and trolls accountable.

[E.J. Dixon]

What we do is we attach their words to their places of employment and anybody in the entire world can search for them.

[Constance Grady]

And a lot of people get really mad about it because they think it's like a doxxing tool.

[E.J. Dixon]

What we are doing is figuratively lifting the masks up so nobody can hide behind, you know, Twitter handles or privatized profiles.

[Constance Grady]

This is around Gamergate. Doxxing is very much like OMN in the culture. So she gets a lot of backlash for it. And there are some major far right figures, like Milo Yiannopoulos, if you remember that guy.

[Noel King]

I sure do.

[E.J. Dixon]

I like to think of myself as a virtuous troll.

[Gabrielle Burbay]

You know, I'm doing God's work.

[E.J. Dixon]

Women are not an oppressed class in the West.

[Gabrielle Burbay]

There is no rape culture in the West.

[Constance Grady]

Yeah, and Mike Cernovich. And they offer her their support and they defend her. And so she kind of gets it into her head. It seems that, like, a lot of the backlash was led by leftists, which may or may not be true. But she said, like, them offering their support is kind of how she became radicalized. Like, virtually overnight, I realized that liberals.

[E.J. Dixon]

Were actually the racists, that liberals were actually the trolls.

[Noel King]

Once she takes a turn to the right, what kind of opinions does she begin espousing? And where does she begin espousing them?

[Constance Grady]

So she launched her own YouTube channel, which got pretty popular.

[E.J. Dixon]

Mom, I'm still black and I still like Hispanic people. I simply think that we should maybe put the economical future of this country ahead of the social issues. That is all.

[Constance Grady]

And then she went to this website, PragerU which is a right wing conservative think tank slash website.

[E.J. Dixon]

I'm Candace Owens, author of How Black America Can Make Its Second Escape from the Democrat Plantation for Prager University.

[Constance Grady]

And then she kind of climbs the ladder to the Daily Wire, which is sort of like the ur conservative media outlet at the time. And she kind of says a lot of pretty controversial things, like since the very beginning of her career.

[E.J. Dixon]

Oh, my God, Charlottesville, white supremacy is alive and well. Run. Stop.

[Constance Grady]

She was very anti me too.

[E.J. Dixon]

There's no. Not a shred of evidence. Right. There's no proof. You say something and then you get to just walk away.

[Constance Grady]

Right.

[E.J. Dixon]

It's like doing a drive by. It is a drive by. It's a drive by. Right?

[Constance Grady]

She was anti lgbtq. She's called LGBTQ people like a sexual plague on society. She's been very critical of the Black Lives Matter movement.

[E.J. Dixon]

They turned me into public enemy number one for accurately talking about George Floyd, not in the capacity of a hero, but in the capacity of a person who was addicted to drugs and who had enough fentanyl in his system to kill a horse at the time that he died.

[Constance Grady]

She's also, weirdly, very focused on Jews and Jewish people. She has said that Josef Mengele's experiments. Josef Mengele, you know, the famous doctor during the Holocaust in Germany, which are very well documented, she said, just slice.

[E.J. Dixon]

A person in half and sew them together. That just sounds like bizarre propaganda.

[Constance Grady]

She's good friends with Kanye West. She defended many of his anti Semitic remarks. She wore a White Lives Matter T shirt in public with him in 2022, at the time that it was thought to be sort of like a white supremacist slogan.

[E.J. Dixon]

We put on a T shirt to actually do something that was inclusive to say, actually, white Americans, you are allowed to be a part of this too, because literally all lives matter.

[Constance Grady]

So, yeah, the list kind of goes on and on. She's sort of just like a professional provocateur.

[Noel King]

Once upon a time, a person spouting these kinds of takes would have been broadly viewed as kind of deranged and probably not given a lot of oxygen. It's 2025 and it's been 2016 for about a decade now. How do people respond to Candace Owens? Like, who's in her audience? And do they think she's crazy but funny, or do they think, yes, this woman's a truth teller?

[Constance Grady]

Well, it seems like her audience has changed a lot. I mean, what's weird about this whole thing is that a lot people on the right Traditionally have thought she was quite extreme. Like, as recently as last year when she was at the Daily Wire, she very publicly split with Ben Shapiro over some of her tweets, which he viewed as anti Semitic, and her views on Israel and her liking a tweet alluding to the blood libel conspiracy theory. She definitely has surprisingly gotten a lot more mainstream since she split from the Daily Wire over the past year or so and started her own podcast.

[Noel King]

Yeah. In your piece, you talk about a turn that she made into new territory that surprised a lot of people.

[Constance Grady]

Yeah. So she has been very focused on covering pop culture. And like, to be clear, she always has covered pop culture to some degree. And she starts putting out these episodes about the Justin Baldoni Blake Lively scandal that just go ridiculously, ridiculously viral. Okay, so basically it centers around this movie. It ends with us, stop showing up.

[Noel King]

At my flower shop and sending me flowers.

[Gabrielle Burbay]

Stop walking through this party, following me around. You just shut up one second, okay?

[Constance Grady]

And when the movie came out last summer, there was a lot of negative press around Blake Lively and around the movie. But basically, last December, Blake Lively filed a lawsuit against her co star and the director of the movie, Justin Baldoni, accusing him of improper workplace conduct. She said he made some inappropriate comments about her body, made her feel uncomfortable. She alleges that he walked in on her while she was nursing and a bunch of other things. But she also alleges that the negative PR that she was getting when the movie came out last summer was actually orchestrated by Justin Baldoni's PR team because she had filed an HR complaint against him, and he had anticipated that she would go public with her allegations. So she basically alleges that Baldoni launched, like, a preemptive smear campaign against her before she publicly came forward. Baldoni has really, really strongly denied these allegations. And he's also launched a countersuit claiming, no, he never did any of this. Like, this was all a fight over creative control over the movie, and that B.L. and her husband, Ryan Reynolds, are trying to destroy his career and get him blacklisted from Hollywood. Essentially, it's all super, super complicated and thorny and difficult to sit through, and everyone in Hollywood is taking sides.

[Noel King]

And whose side is Candace Owens on?

[Constance Grady]

So Candace Owens is very firmly on the side of Justin Baldoni.

[E.J. Dixon]

Blake Lively is not a good person. So no matter what happens in this lawsuit, no matter who wins in the end, do not let distract you from the fact that she has proven herself not to be a kind person. Okay?

[Constance Grady]

Her belief has essentially been that any woman who accuses a man of harassment likely has an ulterior motive, and women should not be automatically believed.

[E.J. Dixon]

She is a modern feminist, which means that she grew up wealthy, her life has been perfect, and so she has to create struggle where there just isn't any. Okay.

[Constance Grady]

The videos go wildly, wildly viral. Like, just for context, I pulled up some data from the site Social blade. She had 1.5 million YouTube subscribers last May, which is a lot. Right. But now she has a little more than 4.2 million. And a lot of it has to do with the success of these videos. Last year she had 132 million views total on her channel. This year she has a little more than 688 million. So it's just been tremendous, tremendous growth.

[Noel King]

Why do you think her pro Baldoni message is so popular? Like, popular enough to just jack up her YouTube following?

[Constance Grady]

Yeah, I mean, I think it's part of a larger cultural shift rightwards. I think that she is capitalizing on this very strong anti feminist streak among Gen Z in particular. I think that there's a lot of justifiable, frankly, frustration with my gener. I'm a millennial, like my generation's brand of feminism, which was essentially very like, girl, bossy, lean in, like, if you work hard, you can have it all type of feminism. I think, I think that Gen Z women are sort of seeing that correctly to be a sham and sort of leaning into the opposite direction, like just going totally further on the other side of the pendulum. And that's where a lot of this is coming from. I think a lot of, a lot of the increasing conservat for Gen Z women, it's this frustration with MeToo, this backlash against MeToo. And it's also this, I think, in some ways justifiable backlash against the version of feminism that they have been that, that they have been inculcated with.

[Noel King]

So she's representative of something that is bigger than her and her videos. The appeal of her videos goes beyond, hey, here's a woman saying a provocative thing about Blake Lively or a mean thing about Blake Lively.

[Constance Grady]

Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. She's very good at what she does. Like, she's amazing at market. She has a way of distilling very complicated ideas into very simple packages. Another thing that she's really good at is she can sort of like adopt the language of journalism without actually doing traditional journalism. So she'll do research, as she puts it, which is essentially like culling together a lot of different stuff that she finds on Reddit or stuff that like she calls them her TikTok mommy sleuths, her fans center from TikTok. And she sort of presents them with the veneer of facts, even though she doesn't really like do the fact checking or the reporting to bear it out. So it's very persuasive. The fact that she's mainstream, I think, or bordering on mainstream now is, I think, really reflective of the direction that the culture in general is going. And I also think that a lot of what we should take away from it has to do with the erosion of the traditional media ecosystem and creators like Candace becoming more empowered. She's not delivering like the best information or the most reliable information, but it doesn't really matter because reliability is not really the metric anymore. The metric is who is keeping eyeballs on the page. Who's saying the most shocking thing, who's saying the most extreme thing, who's packaging this in the best way.

[Noel King]

Justin Baldoni and Blake Lively. That story has kind of peaked. It's now on the downswing. So presumably she wants to continue capitalizing on this. What is she covering now?

[Constance Grady]

When I spoke to her, she was just launching a series that was sort of investigating the claims against Harvey Weinstein.

[E.J. Dixon]

I believe he was wrongfully convicted. I don't want to say Harvey Weinstein is a moral or an innocent man because that sounds like I'm saying he behaved well. But there is a difference between being immoral and being a person who abuses their power and being a person who was running the peninsula like his own personal brothel and being a cold blooded rapist.

[Constance Grady]

She sort of frames it as like, I'm the one journalist who's brave enough to like, listen to his side of the story.

[Noel King]

E.J. dixon of the Cut. Harvey Weinstein back on trial in New York. But this time the momentum behind MeToo has stalled and it may even be running in reverse. Coming up, Candace owens and the MeToo backlash.

[E.J. Dixon]

Support for Today explained comes from Bombastic the spring cleaning.

[Gabrielle Burbay]

Ditch all your old mismatched socks. The ones with holes in the big.

[E.J. Dixon]

Toe, the ones that lost their mate.

[Gabrielle Burbay]

In the dryer, and the ones that lost all their elasticity.

[E.J. Dixon]

Refresh your collection with some fresh Bombas.

[Gabrielle Burbay]

Nisha Chital, our colleague here at Vox.

[E.J. Dixon]

Is a Bombus user.

[Noel King]

I love Bombas.

[Gabrielle Burbay]

I have several pairs.

[Noel King]

I find them to be really comfortable, really high quality. My favorite ones are actually the, the calf socks.

[Gabrielle Burbay]

They fit great.

[Noel King]

They probably come up to like mid calf and they're definitely my go tos that I pull out of my sock.

[Gabrielle Burbay]

Drawer in the morning.

[E.J. Dixon]

Bombus now is going international. You can get worldwide shipping to over 200 countries. You can go to bombus.comexplained and use.

[Gabrielle Burbay]

Code EXPLAINED for 20% off your first purchase. That's B O M B A S.

[E.J. Dixon]

Dot com code EXPLAINED for 20 percent.

[Gabrielle Burbay]

Off your first purchase.

[E.J. Dixon]

Bombus.com explained code EXPLAINED.

[Noel King]

Support for today's show comes from Delete Me. More than likely. There is a lot of your personal information online. Some of you may have even willingly posted it. But having your name, address, phone number and family members names hanging out on the Internet can have actual consequences in the real world and makes you vulnerable, says Delete Me. According to Delete Me, you can protect your personal privacy or the privacy of your business from doxing attacks before sensitive information can be exploited. Our very own Claire White has tried Delete Me. Here's what she has to say.

[Gabrielle Burbay]

Since I joined Delete Me, I've really noticed a drastic drop off in the amount of spam calls, spam texts, spam emails. Especially since joining Delete Me, that has been much less of a problem for me. I don't find my phone ringing with a random number at all hours of the day, y'all.

[Constance Grady]

I think this thing works.

[Noel King]

You can take control of your data and keep your private life private by signing up for Deleteme now. At a special discount for our listeners, you can get 20% off your delete me plan when you go to JoinDeleteMe.com today. Use promo code today at the checkout. The way to get 20% off is to go to JoinDeleteMe.com today and enter code today at checkout. That's JoinDeleteMe.com today code today day Support for TODAY Explained comes from Fresh Air. From npr. Terry Gross, the host of Fresh Air, pushes public figures to reveal personal motivations behind extraordinary lives. I didn't write that. NPR didn't write that. Former President Barack Obama wrote that. He is a fan. Fresh Air is an award winning podcast hosted by Terry Gross and Tanya Mosley. They've interviewed Jeremy Strong, Selena Gomez, Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, Billie Eilish, so many more. One episode I will never forget is where Terry is interviewing Jay Z and she asks him why so many hip hop artists grab their crotches like cover up their junk when they perform. It is. It is an amazing question, but hear me, it is actually an even more amazing answer from Jay Z. Google that one. Fresh Air has an enormous archive and with Fresh Air plus you can get curated lists of interviews spun forward for the issues of Today With FRESH Air, you can stay in the loop and dive deep into conversations on culture, crotches, news, and other issues. You can tune in FRESH AIR from NPR to hear some of the most insightful interviews anywhere, wherever you get your podcasts. This is GAY TODAY Explained. This is dead. You're listening to LCC Today. Explain Today. Explain. Constance Grady, Vox senior culture writer. What's going on with Harvey Weinstein?

[Gabrielle Burbay]

Weinstein is currently facing retrial in New York State. He was found guilty of rape and sexual assault here in 2020. But last year, the verdict was overturned because of a procedural issue.

[Constance Grady]

Some breaking news now.

[E.J. Dixon]

New York's highest court this morning overturning.

[Constance Grady]

Harvey Weinstein's 2020 rape conviction.

[Noel King]

Today's legal ruling is a great day for America because. Because it instills in us the faith.

[E.J. Dixon]

That there is a justice system.

[Gabrielle Burbay]

In the 2020 trial, the judge allowed prosecutors to present testimony from women who had accused Weinstein of sexual assault, but who weren't pressing charges against him in that trial.

[Noel King]

While the trial centers on the accusations of two women, many other women who were victimized by Weinstein have attended the trial.

[Gabrielle Burbay]

Each time an accuser is on the.

[Constance Grady]

Stand, they break down into tears. It's a consistent theme.

[Gabrielle Burbay]

To see that, they had to take a pause. So at the time, the argument was that their testimony would establish a pattern of behavior from Weinstein. But in the appeal last year, the judge was like, if you don't have enough evidence to actually charge him with the specific crimes that these women say he committed, then you really just shouldn't be presenting testimony about it at all. So now the whole trial's been invalidated, and they're doing it over again without that corroborating testimony.

[Noel King]

All right, so Candace Owens is making the argument for him. Is she making the same argument that his lawyers are making?

[Gabrielle Burbay]

In a lot of ways, she is making a very similar argument to the one his lawyers are making.

[E.J. Dixon]

This woman spoke out, and she hates Harvey, and he said he grabbed her butt, and she said, blah, blah, blah. None of these people brought us into the courtroom.

[Gabrielle Burbay]

They both involve a lot of just like the most spurious bad faith possible interpretations of everything that the women accusing Weinstein have done.

[E.J. Dixon]

And the ones that brought brought it into the courtroom. They were getting their cases dismissed for very valid reasons because they couldn't describe his penis, which is unique and one of a kind because he had gangrene and he had his balls removed. So they were all saying, he made me fondle his balls. But Harvey Weinstein doesn't have Balls.

[Gabrielle Burbay]

Candace owens has basically two central arguments in Weinstein's defense. The first one is 130 women.

[E.J. Dixon]

I mean, I was like, something's just basic odds here. Someone's got to be telling the truth. And then I realized I didn't even know why he was in prison. I didn't even real recognize how many women actually put him in prison. And it came down to just three in all of those cases.

[Gabrielle Burbay]

Three women I do want to quickly name. She has said that he was convicted on the basis of three women's stories. That's not correct. He was convicted on the basis of three women's stories in New York and five stories in la. So that's eight women's total for most people. That would be a lot. But it is true that for Weinstein, that's only about 10% of his accusers who made it to the courtroom.

[E.J. Dixon]

You know, I'm beginning to believe that we might need an entirely separate judicial system to look at cases that involve sex workers. Because the details of this next woman's relationship with Harvey Weinstein, for which he earned, by the way, three years in prison, are absolutely offensive to my senses.

[Gabrielle Burbay]

She is making a lot out of the fact that a lot of the women who have accused Weinstein stayed in contact with him after their alleged attack.

[E.J. Dixon]

How does someone get raped over 5 years?

[Gabrielle Burbay]

Some of them sent him friendly or affectionate messages or they asked for professional favors. So Candace Owens take is that this proves that they were being what she calls sugar babies.

[E.J. Dixon]

So she pursued what I would describe as a sugar baby, sugar daddy relationship when she got to la. And she admits that Harvey was very nice to her and that they were.

[Gabrielle Burbay]

They had a quid pro quo set up of asking for. For professional advancement in exchange for sexual favors.

[Noel King]

Who is she convincing with this argument?

[Gabrielle Burbay]

For one thing, she has convinced Joe Rogan.

[E.J. Dixon]

I was eating elk steaks watching Candace Owens on my fucking. On my YouTube. I love her.

[Gabrielle Burbay]

He said that he used to believe that Weinstein was guilty and that Candace Owens has convinced him otherwise.

[Noel King]

It's crazy.

[E.J. Dixon]

So you can't believe I'm on Harvey Weinstein's side, right?

[Noel King]

Crazy.

[E.J. Dixon]

Like, I thought he was like, guilty.

[Noel King]

Of, like, heinous crimes.

[Constance Grady]

And then you listen to it and.

[E.J. Dixon]

You'Re like, wait, what?

[Gabrielle Burbay]

She has two big demographics that are compelled by her story, and they're actually kind of similar to Joe Rogan's audience, but maybe more feminine leaning. So she has a lot of people who identify as sort of quote unquote, free thinkers who don't like the narratives that are offered by the media and are maybe susceptible to some conspiratorial thinking. She's also got an audience of young women who are not particularly engaged with politics and are kind of just there for her takes on celebrities.

[Noel King]

Has Harvey Weinstein said anything about Candace Owens crusade to exonerate him?

[Constance Grady]

Yeah.

[Gabrielle Burbay]

So Weinstein actually said that he originally tried to dissuade her from getting involved because of her history of anti Semitism.

[Noel King]

Oh, wow.

[E.J. Dixon]

And he says, you know, I give a lot of money to the adl and I'm going, okay, here we go.

[Gabrielle Burbay]

But he has said that since then, after having a lot of conversations with. With her, he has changed his mind and he thinks that she's a star.

[E.J. Dixon]

And I said, yeah, well, I'm not your friend, and we obviously have nothing in common in terms of our politics, the causes that we support. But I can guarantee you that if I look into something and I believe that there is something there, I will stand up against the entire world to say something that I believe to be true.

[Noel King]

Around the time that MeToo was in the public consciousness, so seven or eight years ago, I'm guessing that someone like Candace Owens would not have been given a lot of leeway to defend someone like Harvey Weinstein. The public was disgusted. Overwhelmingly, people did not like this man. People wanted to see him pay. But now she's defending him, and she's getting new fans by defending him. What do you think has changed in the culture that's making Candace Owens defense of Harvey Weinstein not only acceptable, but popular?

[Gabrielle Burbay]

This is something that I think we see happen a fair amount. Susan Fillouti is a feminist scholar who first identified this phenomenon. She talks about it in her book Backlash, which came out in the early 90s.

[Noel King]

What I'm telling people is that in the last, at least the last decade, really, ever since, since the modern wave of the women's movement got started, there has been this counter reaction or backlash to put women back in their place.

[Gabrielle Burbay]

Essentially every time that in American culture it looks as though women are making some sort of social or political progress, that's very rapidly followed by a period of intense backlash where people announce that this movement has gone too far, far, it's overreached. We have to roll it back and go back to a time when things are more sensible. One of the things that Susan Faludi says that I think is important to note here is that it really doesn't matter whether the feminist movement actually made any gains in this moment of apparent overreach. It's just that people think that things are changing. So in the MeToo movement, there weren't any real legislative changes. There were a few high profile arrests. There were a lot of think pieces. But it's hard to say that there was a big material shift in how American culture works. But the perception that there might have been is enough to drive this kind of backlash.

[Noel King]

Constance Grady, you can find her [e-mail] Gabrielle Burbay and Avishai Artsy made Today Show. Amina Elsadi edited Laura Bullard Fact checked. Patrick Boyd and Andrea Christensdotter are our engineers. I'm Noel King. It's Today explained.