Candace Owens joined Turning Point USA’s 2019 Black Leadership Summit on Friday at the White House where she discussed black voters’ “blind allegiance” to the Democrat Party.

“I want to really take a serious moment to talk about something that pulled at my heartstrings this morning and almost brought me to tears,” Owens said.

“I was reading a story about Tyshawn Lee, a name that people won’t be familiar with because it’s not a name that’s spread across the nation instantly,” Owens, said, continuing:

Tyshawn Lee was a 9-year-old boy living in Chicago. He left his grandmother’s house because he wanted to go play basketball in the park. He was playing basketball by himself in the park. Tyshawn Lee was approached by an adult man who came up to him playfully and grabbed the ball and began playing with him and then eventually this older adult man lured him away from the park with the promise that he would take him to the store and buy him whatever he wanted. So, he followed this adult man into an alleyway and he was instantly, Tyshawn Lee at 9-years-old, shot point-blank and murdered. It was gang-related. They were after his father so this was a gang hit to go after this young boy. Disaster. An absolute sad, sad disaster that brought tears to my eyes because he was only in the fourth grade. Unbeknownst to most of the world, this story happened, and the reason that we don’t know about it, the reason that there was no wall-to-wall coverage and national sensation about this story by the people who claim to care about the senseless ending of black lives, is simply because it didn’t fit the media narrative. That’s it. He was killed by another black man. So it didn’t fit the media narrative to be outraged by this story.

“Black on black crimes is something that our media tells us that we’re not allowed to talk about,” Owens continued. “Over 93 percent of black homicide victims are killed by other black people, but we are not supposed to be outraged and we are not told to remember the names of those victims.”

She added, “If we start to focus on that area, something that is causing real harm and devastation to our communities, we might uncover the truth. The truth is that this is all by Democrat design. Our inner cities are all by Democrat design.”

Owens went on to state that Democrats have made black Americans believe that the conditions of inner cities are “normal.”

We have been made to believe that the conditions in our cities are normal. We’re supposed to turn a blind eye to the corruption, to the crime, to the gangs, and instead focus on what our media deems of more importance. We’re instead told we should be focusing on white people. We’re supposed to be reactive and angry and fearful about white supremacy when, in fact, it is liberal supremacy that is harming our communities. I say this all the time: You show me a neighborhood where their are liberal policies that reign supreme and I will show you a neighborhood where black Americans are struggling in this country. For decades, we have been disrespected by the Democrats. We have empowered their party, lined the pockets of their politicians, and we have gotten positively nothing in return for our blind allegiance and faithfulness.

Owens also spoke about her love of Martin Luther King Jr. and highlighted a 1964 interview he gave where he discussed the “problems that were in black America” at that time, including “school dropouts, crime rates, illegitimacy, rioting, and other social evils.”

“I find that list to be really interesting because he spoke that list 55-years-ago,” Owens said of King’s remarks. “Yet today, across all of those categories, we not only have the exact same problems, but the problems have worsened.”

“Democrats have looked at us in the face and they have sold us worthlessness,” Owens continued. “They have told us that we cannot, that we need more government assistance, more handouts. We handed them power and in return, they further diminished our sense of pride.” She continued:

We allowed their governments to victimize us through the expansion of welfare policies, we allowed them most importantly to remove the fathers from our homes, removing the backbones of our families. The Democrats knew without stable households our children would pursue that paternity elsewhere. They knew that our children would run to the streets. They knew that our youth would grow up and begin to mirror themselves after rappers and basketball players rather than men of high intellect and morals and more attainable goals. … They knew exactly what they were doing. They were resetting our goals. But what they didn’t know, what they could have never predicted, was that we might wake up to it one day.

Owens discussed President Donald Trump and how she was skeptical of his candidacy for president at first. Owens said her skeptical opinion of Trump changed into a positive feeling when he “boldly looked black America straight in the face and he asked us, ‘What do you have to lose?'”

Owens went on to discuss particular politicians who have lined their pockets, and she commended Vice President Mike Pence for “talking about God again” on the national stage.