Conservative commentator Candace Owens said she was denied service by a COVID-19 testing facility in Aspen, Colorado, over her political beliefs in a video posted to Instagram on Wednesday night.
After booking a testing appointment, Owens said, “My assistant comes to me and her face is white, and she’s like, you are not going to believe this, we just received an email from the COVID facility that they are declining to give you a test because of who you are.”
“As the owner of this business [I] am going to refuse this booking and deny service,” read a screenshot of the email Owens posted to her Instagram account. “We cannot support anyone who has pro-actively worked to make this pandemic worse by spreading misinformation, politicizing and DISCOURAGING the wearing of masks and actively dissuading people from life-saving vaccinations,” continued the email apparently from a woman named Suzanna Lee.
Candace Owens was denied service by the owner of a privately owned COVID testing center
“It would be unfair to [my team] and to the sacrifices we have all made this year to serve you” pic.twitter.com/RuIlvPaDtk
— philip lewis (@Phil_Lewis_) September 2, 2021
Owens, who noted she has made a personal decision not to get the COVID-19 vaccine but has not told others not to get vaccinated, said she has been required to “constantly get tested for COVID to do anything” and has “complied with it all.”
“I probably have gotten literally something like 50-plus COVID tests since the beginning of this pandemic,” she said.
Owens criticized the writer of the email for politicizing the virus while accusing Owens of doing the same thing. “If I knew someone didn’t get the vaccine and I worked for a COVID testing facility, I would obviously be happy that a person without the vaccine was doing the right thing and complying by getting a test to make sure they didn’t have COVID,” Owens said. “If [Lee] cared about people in Aspen she’d be like, ‘I hate Candace Owens, but thank God she’s gonna make sure she doesn’t have COVID because she’s here.”
“She would rather Candace, who she knows is unvaccinated, walk around Aspen unsure if she has COVID-19 because she needs to make a moral statement that unvaxxed people shouldn’t even be able to test for COVID.”
Owens also noted that her test was booked under her married name and speculated that Lee must have looked up her name to find out who she was. “The last time a white Democrat refused a black person service and said, ‘It’s because I don’t like your thoughts and ideas,’ we were in the Jim Crow era,” Owens added.
In a response to the email, Owens wrote, “Nothing screams ‘this virus isn’t political’ quite like googling the names of the people who book tests with you and determining on a case by case basis whether or not you will let them comply with your community covid measures.”
Just finished my live on Instagram here: https://t.co/lPjhqVYaGO
As promised— here is the email from the rabid activist declining to give me a test, plus my response to her. She clearly isn’t stable enough to work in health and is a danger to the Aspen community. pic.twitter.com/nV7xMGqVN3
— Candace Owens (@RealCandaceO) September 2, 2021
Requests for comment sent to both emails listed on the website of Aspen Covid Test, the name Owens used to identify the facility, were returned with responses noting the addresses are no longer active.
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