What Exactly Is Going on With Candace Owens and Harvey Weinstein?

As he stands retrial on multiple charges of rape, stemming from accusations of misconduct from dozens of women, Harvey Weinstein sat with right-wing provocateur Candace Owens, who has been a voice of unlikely sympathy for the convicted criminal. Weinstein engaged with her in a wide-ranging conversation released this week Owens’ website.

Amid other dubious Hollywood commentary and denials of wrongdoing, Weinstein repeatedly said he has spent his time in prison reading, mostly, claiming he is still somehow involved in Hollywood.

“I have friends who are still in the industry who slip me, sometimes, their screenplays and, you ask me for notes, you know, can I do something for it? You know, can I help? Can I improve it?” he told Owens. Obliging guy that he is, “I just give them my honest thoughts. I’m not doing anything for me, but I’m doing things for others.”

He also shared his thoughts on his initial statement denying the accusations of sexual misconduct all those years ago, which he characterized as, “Everything was consensual, blah, blah. Two lines. That was it.”

Instead, Weinstein said, “I should have just done a press conference and handled each situation and said, ‘This girl is full of shit, and this one here and that, and this and that.’ And I ran away from it.”

Now, he sees himself as an arbiter of justice. Owens, as she has said many times on her platforms, again openly stated that she thought Weinstein was being punished by the woke masses.

“It definitely looked like the Me Too movement got so big, that they needed to sort of hang somebody, you know?” she said. “Somebody’s gotta die so that we can move on and think that we’ve achieved social justice. And I think that that’s somebody who is definitely you.”

While incarcerated, Weinstein has “decided to do my high school curriculum over,” including reading classics. “Catcher in the Rye, Farewell to Arms, Great Gatsby. And God, how in the world could I have understood those books the way I understand them now? You know, if I wasn’t in prison, I wouldn’t have read those books again,” he marveled. “Farewell to Arms, believe me, they should let me out for a year immediately and let me remake that movie, because they’ve done two versions of them. One was okay, the first one with Gary Cooper and Helen Hayes, black and white, you know, Paramount. But it was all right. But the other one with Rock Hudson and Jennifer Jones, David Selznick’s one of my favorite producers. This one just sucks, you know what I mean? What I could do with that material.”

But one of the “best books of all time” is more contemporary fare: When the Going Was Good, by former Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter, who made headlines writing that he “banned” Weinstein from the Oscar party.

“I’m the villain in the piece, you know what I mean?” Weinstein said of the recently published memoir. “Because I always used to try to sneak in more guests into the Vanity Fair Party. They never told me that I was banned for life, but apparently in the book, [Carter] said I was banned for life. I used to get, like, a guy would come to me and say, ‘If you can get me into the Vanity Fair Party, I’ll donate to any one of your charities.’”

Weinstein last attended the Vanity Fair Oscar Party in February of 2017, Carter’s final year hosting. Numerous women came forward with accusations of assault and misconduct in October of 2017.

In Weinstein’s retelling, he claims he negotiated a quarter-million dollar donation to amfAR in exchange for sneaking the guy into the party. “I brought the extra person with me and Georgina [Chapman], and they said, ‘You only have two. You brought three.’ You know, I argued a little bit, got him in and got that quarter of a million dollars for charity.” (A representative for Carter did not respond to Vanity Fair.)

In addition to Owens, Weinstein has Joe Rogan in his corner. “I can’t believe I’m on Harvey Weinstein’s side,” the podcaster said. Weinstein’s retrial is ongoing in New York.