Cardi B and Candace Owens were once again back on Twitter sparring after the conservative author and commentator offered a stern rebuke of the rapper’s WAP performance at the Grammys during a discussion on Fox News’s Tucker Carlson Tonight on Monday. Owens said songs and performances like that are contributing to the destruction of the American empire.
Since its release last year, the single, which features fellow female rapper Megan Thee Stallion, has been a target of criticism by conservatives who say its sexually explicit lyrics propagate immorality.
During the sit-down, the show’s host condemned the Grammy-winner’s performance, claiming it was hypocritical for it to be lauded as art while six Dr. Seuss books had been recently pulled off the shelves due to racist imagery, Insider reported.
“It’s hard not to conclude they’re intentionally trying to degrade our culture and hurt our children,” Carlson said, with Owens concurring with his “assessment that this feels more sinister.”
“I mean Dr. Seuss, gone. Mr. Potato Head [now gender neutral], problematic, not enough genders available,” she said. “We’ve seen going through the supermarket as a traumatizing experience. We lost Aunt Jemima last year. We lost Land O’Lakes butter last year. We lost Uncle Ben and his rice last year because everything is so traumatizing for children to look at.”
“But this? This spectacle? Virtually what we were looking at last night was a lesbian sex scene being simulated on television, and this is considered feminist. It’s iconic. It’s forward. It’s progressive,” Owens added.
“This is starting, to me, to seem like it’s not even left or right. It’s not a political issue. This seems like an attack on American values, American traditions, and you’re actually actively trying to make children aspire to things that are grotesque,” she said. “We are celebrating perversity in America.”
Asked by Carlson if she would want her newborn son to grow up in “a world like this”, Owens said no, adding that she is exploring the possibility of homeschooling to prevent him from being “polluted with this,” Insider reported.
“This is not the patriarchy that’s keeping young women down. It’s displays like this, displays of blatant nudity and sexualization, that is keeping women down in this society,” the author said. “We are seeing the destruction of American values and American principles, and it’s terrifying. I think parents should be terrified that this is the direction that our society is heading towards. We are weakening America — that’s really what we should be talking about. This is a weakening of American society.”
She added: “We are about to see the end of an empire. America cannot survive, it cannot be sustained, under these sorts of values and principles.”
The multi-platinum selling rapper got wind of what transpired on the show and responded with a sarcastic tweet on Tuesday, writing: “Yaaaayyyyyyy WE MADE FOX NEWS GUYS!!! Wap wap wap.”
“Matter fact I’m just going to thank Candy [referring to Owens]. She put my performance on Fox News giving it more views that boosted the views on YouTube and is counting towards my streams and sales,” she wrote in a follow-up tweet, adding: “STREAM UP AND WAP .REMEMBER GROWN PARENTS ONLY YOU CAN MONITOR WHAT YOUR KIDS WATCH NO1 ELSE.”
Owens responded to Cardi B’s tweet, saying she did not have an issue with the award-winning rapper’s success, but she has a problem with her “being used to encourage young women to strip themselves of dignity.”
The rapper responded by sharing an edited nude photo of former first lady Melania Trump, saying she was inspired by her. Owens subsequently questioned the rapper’s “obsession with the Trump family”, claiming Melania had evolved while Cardi B hadn’t.
“I’m obsessed she’s my idol. She showed me I can be naked, perform ‘WAP,’ and still be a First Lady one day !,” Cardi B replied, adding: “Wait so only White women can be naked and show their sexuality and evolve in their 30s but I can’t ? Wow America is soo unfair .To think this was the land of the free.”
The back-and-forth between the two continued throughout the night, with both parties threatening to sue each other.