On May 25, Floyd was killed while he was in police custody in Minneapolis. Since then, protests demanding police reform have been held in over 400 cities across the country, according to USA Today.

Former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin, who was caught on video kneeling on Floyd’s neck for nearly nine minutes, has been arrested and charged with second-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter. The three other former officers who were also on the scene are in custody and have been charged with aiding and abetting second-degree murder, and with aiding and abetting second-degree manslaughter.

In a controversial 17-minute long video shared on Twitter on June 3, Owens said that she does not “support George Floyd and the media’s depiction of him as a martyr for black America.”

She explained that “it has been weighing very heavily” on her heart and her mind. “There was so much pressure for me to go with the popular opinion about who George Floyd was. We are being sold a lot of lies at the detriment to the black community, at the detriment to the white community and at the detriment to America as a whole.”

Owens continued, “Our culture is unique from other communities because we are the only community that caters to the bottom denominator of our society. Not every black American is a criminal. Not every black American is committing crimes. But we are unique in that we are the only people that fight and scream and demand support for the people in our community that are up to no good.”

The controversial commentator noted that what she was saying was not any defense for Chauvin, and that Floyd’s family deserves justice of the way that he died. “Just because he was a criminal does not mean you deserve to die at the knee of a police officer. I can’t say it enough, no, he did not deserve to die in that manner.”

She added: “But I also am not going to accept the narrative that this is the best the black community has to offer,”

“For whatever reason it has become fashionable over the last five or six years for us to turn criminals into heroes overnight. It is something I find despicable. George Floyd was not an amazing person. George Floyd is being upheld as an amazing human being.” Owens alleged that Floyd was high at the time of his death, and pointed to his criminal history. Floyd’s criminal past included spent five years behind bars for robbery and assault.

“We shouldn’t be buying T-shirts with his name on it,” she said. “He was a violent criminal,” she said of Floyd.

Owens added, “Everyone is pretending that this man lived a heroic lifestyle. We are embarrassing in that regard. Nobody wants to tell the truth in black America. Our biggest problem is us.” She concluded the clip by saying, “Anyway, this is just a rant because I have been feeling super, super annoyed by these depictions in society. I have no apologies to make. George Floyd is not my martyr. He can be yours.”

Owens also took to Twitter on June 4 during the broadcast of Floyd’s emotional memorial service. She called out Piers Morgan in a series of scathing Tweets, slamming him for “treading to remain relevant by pretending to care about black American issues that he knows nothing about.”

She also said that black lives only matter to white liberals every four years before a presidential election.

Newsweek did not receive comment from Candace Owens at the time of publication.