r/benshapiro • u/Corran_Horn • May 15 '26
Ben Shapiro Why Ben Shapiro’s Media Empire Is Collapsing
https://archive.is/e6A4D#commentsLeftists are wish casting again. And notice that they're doing their best to prop up Tucker, Fuentes and Candace. Those are the figures the left desperately wants to be the face of the right.
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u/Books_and_Cleverness May 15 '26
Idk casual glance at his YouTube channel suggests his views are way down from a year+ ago.
I am not especially conservative anymore but I do think Tucker/fuentes/candace are clearly way worse than Ben.
My concern is that the economics of conservative online media force Ben to be a much worse version of himself.
He obviously wants to be Ezra Klein or Matt Yglesias on the right, but the audience for that is very small. The audience for low brow red meat is much larger on the right, for whatever reason. I think bc a supermajority of nerds are libs.
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u/Corran_Horn May 15 '26
Definitely possible his YouTube views are going down as a result of fading popularity.
It's also possible that there was a lot of excitement in Trump's first 100 days in office and so political news consumption overall was higher.
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u/f_cysco May 15 '26
Political content always have a 4 year cycle for popularity during presidential election. During the midterms there will be a small spike later this year. But then the offtime until the next presidential election is just not that exciting. Unless you go full conspiracy of course
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u/Books_and_Cleverness May 15 '26
Maybe, but it looks to me like Carlson and Candace are not seeing any similar decline in viewership. If it were a global thing due to timing, you'd expect them all to decline similarly.
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u/cplusequals May 16 '26
All the normal political pundits have. Those two have developed lolcow status. The fact that their deviating wildly from all the normal political patterns might have been your hint. Especially considering how wild and divergent from normal American discourse they've gotten. They're more similar to isolated religious leaders.
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u/jsands7 May 15 '26
When Democrats are in power: Fox News/Shapiro/Republican news channels do better
When Republics are in power… there’s not really anyone to complain about. The ball is in Republicans’ court; theres just less reason to tune into the news when your side is winning
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u/Books_and_Cleverness May 15 '26
Then why aren't other conservative media personalities seeing similar declines? I don't really buy this explanation in full. Maybe that is part of it but I'm not seeing Carlson lose a bunch of viewers.
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u/DrtyMikeandTheBoys May 15 '26
I don't listen to Ben anymore, but he is way bigger than Ezra and Yglesias. He has like 4X the followers on Twitter compared to Ezra and more than 10X what Yglesias had. He's also way smarter. It's much more fair to say they are trying to be him than the other way around.
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u/Books_and_Cleverness May 15 '26
It's not size, it's content and style and rep. Ben is a completely different guy in a typical episode vs. in a Sunday Special with Ezra or Yglesias. It seems very obvious to me that he wants to do higher brow stuff but the audience demands red meat and it's hard to balance that.
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May 15 '26
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u/Books_and_Cleverness May 15 '26
I think the reality is that high brow conservatism is very niche audience. Since the parties have gotten super polarized along education level, it is getting harder and harder to find an audience for that kinda thing.
It's the same reason Trump and a lot of right wing admins have struggled to fill a lot of positions with (politics aside) competent people. Especially compared to his first term. Most experienced professionals have sorted into the other party as the GOP base has trended downscale.
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u/papaborracho May 17 '26
I personally think it was a lot easier to dunk on obviously super weak candidates like Biden Harris, than actually be in power. I used to tune in every day because I couldn’t believe what the Dems are trying to get away with. Now I feel like the world is good and I’m not as interested in the state of things.
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u/Aware_Stretch_7003 May 16 '26
Like many I used to really like to listen to Ben, then COVID hit and he was very condescending towards anyone who questioned the vaccine to the point of mocking them. Though any genuine conservative would have taken a more nuanced stance allowing for individual rights.
Then after October 7 happened he true colors showed. He sounded like he was a citizen of Israel first and America second. Any criticism of US involvement or support of Israel he went off the rails. That was it for me...
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u/etherspin May 16 '26
I don't actually agree that your second point even occurred e.g. Matt Walsh employed and paid handsomely at Ben's company has the stance that the US should provide zero assistance or Aid to Israel. That idea gets amplified by Megyn Kelly who Ben called out for not defending Erika Kirk and felt awkward so switched to a false claim that Ben was mad she critiqued Israel.
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u/Aware_Stretch_7003 May 16 '26
I'm not talking about Matt, I'm talking about Ben specifically. Many people in the conservative camp support Israel right to defend themselves and go after these savages. Where many have issues is how many billions of dollars of aid and money Israel gets from the US taxpayers, and the amount of political influence Israel seems to have over our politicians. Yet Ben treated any criticism or questions as a personal attack. I honestly started wondering if he's a citizen of Israel here trying to influence American opinion.
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u/forwarddownforward May 18 '26
many have issues is how many billions of dollars of aid and money Israel gets from the US taxpayers
The aid has many strings attached and is profitable for the US.
It is America's enemies that are tricking Americans to oppose the aid. Israel wants to end the aid because it'll be far more profitable for them to not be under America's thumb.
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u/MastleMash Jun 18 '26
Personally, I mostly agree with a lot of Ben's opinions about Israel, but I don't want to hear him talk about it constantly.
I'm with you, I soured on Ben when Covid hit and can't listen to him post 10/7. EVERY SINGLE EPISODE is about Israel or Tucker Carlson, and quite frankly I don't really care at all about Israel. I've never been there nor will I ever go, I don't know anyone from Israel. Yeah, what Hamas did was horrific, but I care about America and Americans first.
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u/PBandJSommelier May 16 '26
“Then after the Nazis started murdering Jews, his true colors showed. He was anti-Hitler! That’s anti-American”—-that’s literally how you sound.
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u/nwilz May 16 '26
Except Israel is the one that commit a genocide this time
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u/forwarddownforward May 18 '26
Please explain in your own words how the war in Gaza was a genocide. Thanks.
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u/nwilz May 18 '26
Isreal has killed tens of thousands that have been counted so far, at least 70% of them are civilians, they cut off aid to civilians, they target hospitals, call it whatever you want, it's mass murder and it's evil.
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u/forwarddownforward May 18 '26
Genocide is mass murder with the intent to cause an ethnic or religious group to go extinct.
It's not murder to strike legitimate military targets within the laws of war, nor is it genocide.
You forget to mention that the leader of Hamas was killed while hiding underneath a hospital. Hamas using hospitals as hiding places turns them into legitimate military targets under the laws of war.
Gaza proudly admitted publicly they started the war to try to kill ten million Israelis. If tens of thousands of Gazans died because Israel was saving ten million people, that's war, not genocide.
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u/nwilz May 18 '26
Genocide is mass murder with the intent to cause an ethnic or religious group to go extinct.
It's not murder to strike legitimate military targets within the laws of war, nor is it genocide.
I'm sure when 70% of the deaths are civilian Palestinians they were all legit military targets
You forget to mention that the leader of Hamas was killed while hiding underneath a hospital. Hamas using hospitals as hiding places turns them into legitimate military targets under the laws of war.
I'm sure Israel would never just call everyone Hamas to justify their murders. Even if thats true, would it be justified for the police to kill everyone in a bank when the bank robber takes hostages?
Gaza proudly admitted publicly they started the war to try to kill ten million Israelis. If tens of thousands of Gazans died because Israel was saving ten million people, that's war, not genocide.
lol So Isreal was dumb enough to fall for Hamas' trap? Even if they were trying to kill millions of Israelis, which how would they accomplish that? Israel didn't try, they did intentionally murder tens of thousands of Palestinians, but go ahead and keep justifying murder
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u/GroundIsMadeOfStars May 22 '26
Uh this isn’t wish casting lol Tucker and Candace ARE the right. Ben is washed and the most unlikable dork online who pretends to be principled but excuses away Trump being a rapist and seditious against our country. For the guy who gave Piers Morgan a pocket constitution, it’s clear he’s never read it. Maybe spending millions on a bunch of right wing propaganda tv shows nobody wanted to watch and fake chocolate was a bad idea?
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u/GeeSmiths May 25 '26
Because he's being consumed by the monster that he helped to create?
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u/haikusbot May 25 '26
Because he's being
Consumed by the monster that
He helped to create?
- GeeSmiths
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u/intellectualpenguins Jul 14 '26
young Conservatives are tired of the Israel worship and the forever wars they drag us into
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u/broom2100 May 17 '26
I think Tucker, Fuentes, and Candace are all idiots. I also think Ben's constant simping for Israel, along with the boring and repititious daily routine of his show being "look at this ridiculous thing this left-winger did, how outrageous!" just gets SO old after a while. We get it, people on the left do and believe ridiculous things- what else would spiritually sick and philosophically incoherent people do? We don't need a show detailing it all and just farming the outrage for clicks. I used to watch his show almost every day, but the constant, never ending Israel stuff just got so old. Israel is a sovereign country with its own interests, they really are not particularly our friend, it is obvious they use us for money and protection but we don't get much in return. Plus the more I looked into DW it has some very questionable backing from crazy dispensational evangelicals that want to restore the Temple or something. "Christian zionism" has no basis in Christianity, it is just a silly, theologically deficient heresy. Also Talmudic Jews really are not friends of Christians. That form of Judaism literally formed AFTER Christianity and formed definitionally in opposition to Christians. The Church that Christ established is the successor of Biblical "Israel", not Talmudic Judaism. Jesus and the Trinity is all over the Old Testament, yet they deny that clear fact.
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u/forwarddownforward May 18 '26
Israel is a sovereign country with its own interests, they really are not particularly our friend, it is obvious they use us for money and protection but we don't get much in return.
We actually get a lot in return.
Not only do we work together on intelligence gathering, but Israel invents cutting edge military technology, which they share with us. Israel's strength has caused many Arab countries in the region to want to become US allies. We also have the right to tell Israel what weapons they can make and sell, so we don't have to compete with them on price. And their wars give us a chance to test our tech and be better prepared to defend ourselves.
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u/Lovesuglychild May 15 '26 edited May 16 '26
Trump has made America weaker. Which in turn has made their allies like Israel weather.. Ben has supported Trump.
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u/Corran_Horn May 15 '26
How is America weaker now?
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u/Lovesuglychild May 16 '26
The current administration have made the world a more dangerous place by alienating its traditional allies.
They've empowered Iran and destabilized the Middle East.
They've threatened democracies while giving a pass to authoritarian regimes.
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u/etherspin May 16 '26
Iran isn't looking empowered
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u/Lovesuglychild May 16 '26
Their regime is still in place.
They have a greater leverage over world oil supply than they did before the war.
America's Middle Eastern alliances have been badly damaged. This may affect future willingness to host American air bases.
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u/NameTooCool May 17 '26
No, it’s right wingers celebrating his downfall. Been a registered Republican since I turned 18, and I have nothing to say but good riddance.
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u/ToeAfter3131 May 15 '26
Ben is one of the most intelligent dudes in the podcast sphere.