Conservative radio host and first-time politician, Larry Elder, appeared on The Candace Owens Show and made an argument in favor of reparations for slave owners whose “property” was taken from them after the Civil War.
The July 18 comments— which came to light recently— followed Elder making the July 16 filing deadline to run against Gov. Gavin Newsom, who is attempting to fight his removal from his seat of power. Elder, 69, never sought office before this year, telling anyone within earshot that someone with his libertarian views was simply not electable.
Yet with days to go before the Sept. 14 vote, he has emerged in a dual role: a possible replacement of Gov. Newsom and the lynchpin behind the next wave of GOP politics. When Elder sat down with Owens to share views on the current state of race relations, Insider cited how the former argued that enslaved Black people were “legally deemed property” at the time.
“When people talk about reparations, do they really want to have that conversation?” he asked. “Like it or not, slavery was legal. Their legal property was taken away from them after the Civil War, so you could make an argument that the people that are owed reparations are not only just Black people but also the people whose ‘property’ was taken away after the end of the Civil War.”
The Candace Owen Show is usually where the Black conservative is spouting misinformation to further an agenda, and in response to Elder, she incorrectly stated that the U.S. was “one of the first countries that banned the slave trade.” (PoliticFact states that the U.S. was actually one of the last to do so.)
In response, Elder threaded the end of the Trans-Atlantic slave trade in the U.K. with avoiding a Civil War there thanks to its government “compensating slave owners” with “substantial amounts of money after they lost their property.”
Per the Centre for the Study of the Legacies of British Slavery (via The Grio/Yahoo!), after the Slavery Abolition Act of 1833 was passed in the U.K., former slave owners received £20 million in compensation from the British Slave Compensation Commission.
“You look at the amount of money adjusted for today’s dollars, it’s a great deal of money that the former slave owners got, which is one of the reasons they didn’t fight a war,” Elder speculated, following suit with the show’s premise of not providing any evidence to verify claims.
The frontrunner among California Republicans has gotten behind any- and everything in his attempt to convince voters that he is someone akin to Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) and should win the recall election. Another issue that he has thrown his support behind is banning critical race theory in public schools.
During an interview on Fox News, he said, “My preference is for local school boards to decide what the curriculum is, but I think this is so bad and so insulting that I would look into some legislation like that.” According to him, critical race theory “teaches little white boys and girls that they are oppressors and little [B]lack boys and girls that they are eternal victims.”
As of press time, 54.3% of voters would keep Gov. Gavin Newsom in office. If, by chance, Newsom falls below that number, Elder would only need to win more votes than any of the other 45 replacement candidates on the second recall question. So far, polls have found him doing the latter easily, by consolidating the conservative vote. And appearances on Fox News and The Candace Owens Show only heighten his numbers.
He has also raised nearly $8 million for his campaign, which pales in comparison to what Democrats are spending to support Newsom.
The recall date is set for Sept. 14.