In less than a year, Candace Owens has gone from a rising political YouTube personality to one of the leading faces — and voices — of the conservative effort to win back the votes of young and minority Americans.

Owens, 28, spends her days zigzagging across the country, speaking at GOP fundraisers and on college campuses as the communications director of Turning Points USA, the country’s most prominent and contentious conservative student group.

She became the new darling of President Donald Trump at lightning speed last month when a video of her berating black protesters at the University of California, Los Angeles, as “privileged Americans” obsessed with “shouting about slavery” went viral. Shortly after, rapper Kanye West tweeted, “I love the way Candace Owens thinks.”

I love the way Candace Owens thinks — KANYE WEST (@kanyewest) April 21, 2018

Trump called in to “Fox and Friends” and said Owens was “the hottest thing out there right now.” And this month, Trump followed a 20-minute face-to-face meeting with Owens at the White House with a tweet about the “big impact” she was having on politics: “so good for our Country!” he wrote.

The plaudits she’s received from the right have been met with equal loathing from the left, which has called Owens out on social media, labeling her "stupid," "token" and "exclusively reactionary, rage fueled and hyper emotional."

It’s been a stunning ascent for a person who now loudly advocates for Trump but didn’t vote for him, or anyone, in 2016. She didn't vote for Barack Obama in 2012, either.

“Yeah, I didn’t vote exactly,” Owens said in an interview with NBC News. “This is the first time I’ve been politically inclined and active, and I think Donald Trump is a tremendous president. And I wanted to be educated. I wanted to do a deep dive before I started going out there and saying stuff as opposed to other people who mindlessly vote.”

The platform

Owens’ conservative awakening embodies what the Republican Party hopes to see across the country — young people, minorities and women embracing the ideas of Trump’s America.

But she’s not doing that by softening any of the platform that has emerged on the far-right. Owens has called Black Lives Matter advocates “whiny toddlers,” advocated for the end of all welfare programs, and likened black Democrats to slaves on plantations.

For Owens, climate change is a lie used to “extract dollars from Americans,” abortion is the “extermination” of black babies, undocumented immigrants brought to the U.S. as children should be immediately deported, and concern over rising white nationalism is “stupid,” an opinion she expressed after a white nationalist drove through a group of counterprotesters last summer in Charlottesville, Virginia, killing a woman.

Owens cites George Soros and “globalists” among the country’s most looming threats and has called for the imprisonment of Hillary and Bill Clinton, former FBI director James Comey, special counsel Robert Mueller and the TV anchors Jake Tapper, Rachel Maddow and Anderson Cooper, among others.