Far-right troll Candace Owens baselessly suggested on Tuesday that beloved comedian Bob Saget may have suddenly died last week because he was vaccinated against COVID-19, adding that she has “a right to ask the question.”
Saget, best known for his lead role on Full House, was found dead last week in an Orlando hotel room. Local authorities have said they “found no signs of foul play or drug use in this case,” and that the 65-year-old actor appeared to have died in his sleep. As of now, the cause of death is still unknown, and results from a final autopsy could take three months.
Nevertheless, as one of conservative media’s loudest anti-vaxxers, Owens decided to use Saget’s tragic death to yet again peddle conspiracy theories about the coronavirus vaccines, which have been proven to be overwhelmingly safe and effective.
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During the Tuesday night broadcast of her self-titled online talk show, in a segment first flagged by Media Matters, Owens rhetorically asked whether she was a “conspiracy theorist” or “Nostradamus” when it came to denouncing vaccines as dangerous and ineffective. (Candace is produced and published by The Daily Wire, the Ben Shapiro-centric outlet founded by Ben Shapiro.)
“The answer is neither,” she exclaimed. “I’m just not on Big Pharma’s payroll and I refuse to peddle in their lies. And so to that end, today, I’m going to point out another truth and it will likely be deemed a conspiracy theory until it’s not.”
From there she immediately tied Saget’s death to the fact that he was vaccinated and had received his booster shot.
“There are too many healthy individuals, like Bob Saget, who we know have received their vaccinations, who are dropping dead, suddenly and unexpectedly with no further explanation,” Owens proclaimed. “Healthy athletes, young students in their physical prime—the majority of them males—dropping dead suddenly and unexpectedly in the middle of games from heart issues. What we know for a fact is that these people are being mandated to take the vaccine.”
Though she didn’t actually identify any young healthy vaccinated athletes that have been “dropping dead suddenly” following vaccinations, she claimed the media is “gaslighting the public” and treating this “very alarming trend” as a conspiracy theory. (While the CDC has noted that myocarditis and pericarditis are potential side effects of the vaccines among people age 30 and younger, these reports are rare. Furthermore, there are very few reported instances of death directly caused by the vaccines.)
And yet, according to Owens, who was “just asking questions,” Saget, who was a strong proponent of vaccines, may have died from the jab.
“All of this to say I don’t know why a healthy man, who was in the middle of a comedy tour, suddenly and unexpectedly drops dead in his hotel room. But I do know that we have a right to ask the question,” she concluded. “All of us do. In fact, when the entire world has suddenly and unexpectedly been prescribed an injection that we don't need, it is not only our right to ask questions but also our right to demand answers.”
Owens’ unhinged hypothesis came on the heels of QAnon trolls flooding social media with anti-vax theories blaming Saget’s death on the COVID-19 vaccines. Some of those accounts actually attacked the late comedian for his vaccine advocacy.
Having recently said she’d rather die of COVID-19 than get a shot, the Daily Wire star’s stance on vaccines has even resulted in her getting directly rebuked by former president Donald Trump.
After she attempted to peddle her anti-vax talking points in an interview with the ex-president, Trump declared “the vaccines worked” and that “the ones that get very sick and go to the hospital are the ones that don’t take the vaccine.” Owens later reacted to Trump’s defense of vaccines by claiming he’s “too old” to understand the internet.
