Candace Owens, host of The Daily Wire’s “Candace,” said the verdict in the trial of former police officer Derek Chauvin is a product of “mob rule,” not justice.
Owens, along with The Daily Wire’s Ben Shapiro and Matt Walsh, slammed the verdict, as well as the media and Democrats’ calls to gin up unrest in advance of the jury’s decision on a Tuesday episode of The Daily Wire’s “Backstage.”
“It’s the wrong verdict, in my opinion. And I think it’s indicative of the fact that we now live in mob rule,” Owens said, adding that Chauvin’s trial was “polluted from start to finish.”
A Minneapolis jury convicted Chauvin on Tuesday of second-degree murder, third-degree murder, and second-degree manslaughter. The jury concluded that Chauvin had murdered George Floyd while arresting him for attempting to pass fake currency at a convenience store last year.
Owens said that the media began manipulating the facts of the case and building a false narrative around Floyd almost from the moment he died. She expressed surprise that the Minneapolis Police Department held on to police bodycam footage of Floyd’s arrest while video shot by a bystander echoed around the internet and the media for months playing into the false narrative.
“When I watched the full tape, I was astonished that they didn’t think to just at least add this context so that people understood, yes, this person was high out of his mind. He asked to be put on the ground. He was resisting arrest,” Owens said.
“The media said he was just getting his life together … He had moved to Minnesota. Yes, he had been in prison in the past, but he was just helping the youth. And everyone was crying and, oh my gosh, this man is getting a second chance at life, and maybe had the wrong idea or whatever it was, was using counterfeit bills and somebody called the police and was killed. He was brutally murdered on the basis that he was black,” Owens said, summarizing the dominant media narrative. “And then they successfully hid every piece of evidence that would have transformed public opinion.”
“To me I think, the saddest part of this is that, what we need to acknowledge is that right now, mob rules,” she added. “The media creates the mob, and the mob rules, and that’s what we just saw play out.”
Earlier in the show, Shapiro and Walsh pointed out how the trial could have been compromised and how the jury’s decision suggests that it was.
“You don’t have to say that you love what Chauvin did. You don’t have to say that Chauvin acted appropriately. You don’t have to say any of that stuff. What you do have to say is to not even believe there’s reasonable doubt on the murder charges – on the murder charges where you would have to have intent – that suggests to me that this was far less about the actual facts of the case and far more about all of the hubbub surrounding the case,” Shapiro said. “This trial never should have taken place in Minneapolis. It should have immediately been transferred in terms of venue. You were not going to find an impartial jury in Minneapolis in the single most publicized criminal justice case of our lifetime, at least since Rodney King.”
Walsh then pointed out that the jury was never sequestered, or shut off from any outside news or commentary, going into deliberations in the case. Before the trial ended, Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA) traveled to Minneapolis and called for protesters to be “more confrontational” unless Chauvin was found guilty. After the jury entered deliberations, President Joe Biden said the evidence was “overwhelming” in favor of conviction.
“The irony is the only verdict we could really trust is an acquittal on all counts. I think that would have been the right verdict, but it’s also the only one you can trust because it’s the only one that could not have been motivated by anything but a look at the evidence,” Walsh said. “But with this verdict, you have to obviously wonder, is that how they saw it when they investigated the evidence or are they coming to this decision because they know their lives might be over, might be ruined if they came to any other decision. They know the media is going to leak their identity and they are going to be looking over their shoulders for the rest of their lives.”
Related: Jury Finds Derek Chauvin Guilty