Right-wing political commentator Candace Owens speaks during an event held by national conservative political movement ‘Turning Point’, in Detroit, Michigan, US, June, 14, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Rebecca Cook

American political commentator Candace Owens has suggested that far-left New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani is an Israeli plant, one of several comments made by the far-right provocateur and media personality over the past week amid her intensifying rhetoric against Israel and Jews.

In response to an X post by anti-Zionist commentator Max Blumenthal that alleged “[US Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s] career was launched by two Israeli venture capitalists,” Owens claimed that the same is likely true of Mamdani.

“Thinking this might be the same deal with Zohran Mamdani given the fact that his mother was married (just before she became pregnant with him) to a Jewish New Yorker named Mitch Epstein for 10 years,” Owens wrote. “Oh, and she attended Harvard which is effectively a Mossad base.”

Mossad is Israel’s national intelligence agency.

Thinking this might be the same deal with Zohran Mamdani given the fact that his mother was married (just before she became pregnant with him) to a Jewish New Yorker named Mitch Epstein for 10 years.
Oh, and she attended Harvard which is effectively a Mossad base. https://t.co/CC1e1it9nF

— Candace Owens (@RealCandaceO) July 20, 2025

It is unclear, however, what incentive Israelis would have to prop up Mamdani, who recently won New York City’s Democratic mayoral primary but has been accused of antisemitism and made anti-Israel activism a cornerstone of his political career.

When in college, Mamdani started his campus’s Students for Justice in Palestine chapter. On Oct. 8, 2023, one day after Hamas’s invasion of and massacre across southern Israel, he released a statement that did not condemn Hamas’s attacks.

Mamdani has also repeatedly defended efforts to boycott Israel and vowed to arrest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu if he visits New York.

However, Owens has intensified her rhetoric against Jews and Israel in recent weeks, accusing both the Jewish state and the Jewish people of wielding outsized influence around the world and pursuing nefarious goals.

In addition to alleging that Mamdani may be an Israeli plant, she has also claimed Israel is the “master of the universe” who plants characters into stories so that it can control them.

Candace Owens’ INSANE RANT calling Israel “THE MASTER OF THE UNIVERSE” & an “OCCULT NATION!” “This is a state that has a hexagram as their flag! Everything they’re involved in is occult. And that’s why we have to wake the world up to this very quickly.” pic.twitter.com/r65P0hvL1T

— Nathan Livingstone (MilkBarTV) (@TheMilkBarTV) July 18, 2025

Additionally, Owens falsely claimed that famous Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel was not actually in the Holocaust.

“The Holocaust debacle he [Wiesel] got into. People were saying you weren’t actually in the Holocaust,” she said. However, there is a picture of him in the Buchenwald concentration camp, and the person whom Owens cites as evidence for her claims lost his defamation case against Wiesel rejected by a Hungarian court.

After parting ways with The Daily Wire, a politically conservative media company, last year amid controversy over her comments regarding Jews and Israel, Owens has made those subjects top priorities on her own show.

In January, for example, Owens attacked the Babylon Bee — a conservative Christian satire organization — for making a joke about her fixation on Jews.

“It’s just very obvious they are worshipping Israel,” Owens said. “That they base their jokes on people who don’t worship Israel and ‘Bibi’ Netanyahu.” She also referred to them as the “Zionist Bee” and the “Babylonian Talmudic Bee.”

Last July, Owens claimed that the Star of David originated from an evil, child-sacrificing, pagan deity and has only become associated with Judaism within the past few hundred years.

In a June episode, Owens argued that “it seems like our country [the US] is being held hostage by Israel.” She lamented, “I’m going to get in so much trouble for that. I don’t care.”

In the same episode, Owens claimed US Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) was “wading into some dangerous waters” when, during an interview with host Tucker Carlson, he spoke about how effective the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) is at lobbying members of Congress and suggested the group should have to register as a foreign agent that is acting on behalf of Israel.

The reason it was dangerous, Owens said, was because “we know there was once a president that wanted to make AIPAC register, and he ended up shot … so Thomas Massie better be careful.”

Owens was referencing the fact that former US President John F. Kennedy wanted the American Zionist Council, a lobby group, to register as a foreign agent.

However, there is no evidence the group had anything to do with Kennedy’s assassination.

Weeks later, Owens promoted a series of talking points downplaying the atrocities of the Holocaust and said experiments by Nazi doctor Joseph Mengele performed on Jews during World War II sounded “like bizarre propaganda.”