The Ben Shapiro Show – "Friendly Fire: Bad Bunny. Bad Culture."

Date: February 12, 2026
Host: Ben Shapiro (with Michael Knowles, Matt Walsh, Drew Hernandez, Allie Beth Stuckey)

Episode Overview

This episode of Friendly Fire on The Ben Shapiro Show focuses on cultural battles at America’s biggest pop culture event: the Super Bowl. The hosts critique the Bad Bunny halftime show for its leftward cultural signaling and consider the success of TPUSA’s alternative, conservative-leaning halftime event. The conversation also delves into youth culture, nihilism, internet celebrity, masculinity, the aftermath of a Canadian school shooting, and the ongoing crisis of meaning in modern Western life.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Super Bowl Halftime Show: Bad Bunny and Cultural Signaling

Discussion Begins: [03:19]

• Drew Hernandez: Explains why he abstains from watching the halftime show, arguing it is crafted to provoke conservative outrage and alienate football’s core audience.
  • Quote: "I don't watch it because I feel it's a setup. It's a setup where they put on some stupid left wing thing, dissing the audience of white males basically who watch football like me. And then we come out and we complain about it. We sound like a bunch of cranks." [03:38]
• Michael Knowles: Sees the show as an intentional affront to mainstream American football fans, emphasizing the disconnect between the showcased "foreign" culture and football's history.
  • Quote: "You might as well have a halftime show that's devoted to celebrating women. Women who represent zero percent of the rosters." [06:08]
• Ben Shapiro & Matt Walsh: Note that establishment Republicans and some conservatives praised Bad Bunny’s Spanish-language performance, missing what they see as deliberate anti-American messaging.
  • Quote (Ben): "A Puerto Rican transvestite sings exclusively in Spanish. Finally at the end, he says, God bless America. And then... God bless America, Chile, Argentina, Cuba. And you think, well, you want... At America's preeminent sporting event. You can't even say God bless America without throwing shade at this country that you manifestly hate." [07:19]
• Matt Walsh: Remarks that being unable to understand the lyrics of pop acts is common for him, and while he sees the production’s aesthetic as impressive, he finds the “All Americas” message as a demoralizing bit of political gaslighting.
  • Quote: "When he said, you know, we are all Americans and we all understand, no, we're not. Like, we're not Americans means like from the United States, that was the part that I found insulting." [11:29]
• Michael Knowles: Insists conservatives shouldn’t shy from cultural critique, as unified right-wing pushback has brought change before (citing how NFL players stopped kneeling during the anthem).
  • Quote: "If we're, like, united about something and we all decide basically as one voice that we're not okay with this, this is not okay. We can actually get concessions in the culture." [13:05]

2. TPUSA Halftime Alternative: Conservative Counter-Culture?

Discussion Begins: [08:03]

• Ben Shapiro: Highlights the surprising success of the Turning Point USA (TPUSA) counter-programming halftime show, noting tens of millions of viewers and artistic risk-taking—especially for an organization viewed as "cringe" by some establishment conservatives.
  • Quote: "They offered something that was artistically interesting and kind of bold." [17:56]
• Michael Knowles & Matt Walsh: Argue that conservative self-critique threatens progress; instead, the right should celebrate cultural wins and seize future opportunities.
  • Memorable: "[Conservatives] have to find a reason to pick holes in it. And I think that's also the reason we lose..." [19:57]
• Drew Hernandez: Points out the dangers facing young conservative artists, suggesting that leftist Hollywood punishes even the mildest association with the right.
  • Quote: "If you're young, they crush your career... That's why young people don't do it." [19:57]

3. The Rise of Nihilistic, Hyper-Online Masculinity: The Clavicular Phenomenon

Discussion Begins: [23:11]

• Ben Shapiro: Introduces "Clavicular," a TikTok anti-hero who epitomizes Gen-Z nihilism and hyperreality. Explains his philosophy: relentless appearance-maximizing, apolitical hedonism, existence lived online, and a rejection of broader meaning.
  • Quote: "All that matters in this world is appearances. So we need to be decadent, hedonistic, create our own meaning and then basically take a dirt nap and turn to worm food." [24:37]
• Matt Walsh, Michael Knowles: Warn about Clavicular’s influence on young men, his advocacy for self-destructive behaviors, and the disturbing new normal of internet performativity, which presents "celebrity for nothing."
  • Michael: "He's one of the first celebrities of...one of our first true, you know, brain rot celebrities. Doom scroll celebrities...he doesn't sing, he's not really good at a sport, he's not an actor...he's just kind of a guy who lives his life on the Internet for all to see." [29:33]
  • Matt: "It's not just about the celebrity culture. It's about the utter nihilism...That's the thing that strikes me about the clavicular of it." [31:34]
• Allie Beth Stuckey: Compares the live-streamed existence to The Truman Show—except the Claviculars of the world are consenting to and embracing their own simulated reality, which she finds "much darker."
  • Quote: "He actually is consenting to his life not being real and just being a part that he is portraying...There's something that is much darker about that." [35:35]
• Debate: The hosts parse differences between Clavicular, Andrew Tate, and Nick Fuentes—seeing them variously as nihilists, vitalists, or hedonists, and as symptoms of a civilization that’s lost meaningful direction.

4. The Canadian School Shooting & Cultural Breakdown

Discussion Begins: [38:52]

• Ben Shapiro: Discusses the media and law enforcement’s reluctance to identify the shooter’s motive, observing patterns of ideological obfuscation when crimes involve trans-identifying perpetrators.
• Matt Walsh: Argues trans ideology, radicalization, and social alienation (exacerbated by the internet) drive a disproportionate number of mass shootings among this demographic.
  • Quote: "I think we're gonna see more and more people lashing out violently and unfortunately, you know, it's only gonna get worse from, from here." [41:21]
• Drew Hernandez: Offers a cultural analysis of disillusioned youth—betrayed by society, left without purpose, and manipulated by elites who lie and conceal important truths.
  • Quote: "That lying is at the heart of this disillusionment that you see in the young. And I think that truth and telling the truth...is our first step in winning people back." [43:33]
• Matt Walsh: Warns that atomized, virtual existences deprive young people of the real-world bonds and clear paths towards purpose, leaving them existentially adrift and vulnerable to radical ideologies.
  • Quote: "That all breaks down into this sort of bizarre, atomistic individualism that eventually results in people with fragmented psyches. And I think that's incredibly dangerous." [45:08]

5. Gender, Purpose, and Meaning

Discussion Begins: [47:16]

• Allie Beth Stuckey: Cites Nancy Pearcey's "Love Thy Body," explaining how the loss of purpose (telos) underpins gender confusion, both for men and women. Warns of a society prioritizing autonomy/authenticity over higher callings.
• Ben Shapiro: References Aristotle’s "final cause"—the notion that understanding what we are for is central to human flourishing, and laments how this has been lost, fueling crises like transgenderism and declining interest in traditional family structures.
  • Quote: "The idea that we can know from a thing that it's for something...is a fundamental break that I think has not been rectified yet." [54:08]

6. Religious Language, Weaponized Compassion, and Political Manipulation

Discussion Begins: [50:01]

• Andy Beshear & Religious Left: The hosts critique left-wing politicians who use Christian language to justify progressive policies related to gender identity, accusing them of twisting religious compassion into "toxic empathy" and "emotional/religious extortion" (per Stuckey).
  • Quote (Allie): "[Beshear is] emotionally extorting you. He's religiously extorting you. Gavin Newsom does the same thing...they exploit your compassion by telling you that you can only be a good person by affirming these destructive policies and validating lies and affirming sin." [50:07]

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Bad Bunny’s Halftime Show:
  • "This is an iconic cultural event. It's an American event...when they turn that into this celebration of not just any foreign culture, but, by the way, a foreign culture that has nothing to do with football at all...it's meant to be offensive to the actual fans of the game because it's inaccessible." (Michael Knowles, [05:25])
• On Clavicular and Gen Z:
  • "He is a symptom specifically of our age and his gener...he was raised entirely on the Internet...all that matters is how you look...It's a Nietzsche for 2026, I think." (Ben Shapiro, [28:00])
• On Modern Nihilism:
  • "There's no meaning, there's no happiness, there's no joy, there's no fulfillment...All that there is is your looks." (Matt Walsh, [32:25])
• On Transgender Ideology and Violence:
  • "We have to realize that if you are a trans identified person, then you are divorced from reality by definition, number one. Number two, you're radicalized because, because trans ideology is a, is a radical ideology." (Matt Walsh, [40:20])
• On Gender and Purpose:
  • "If you take away literally the most distinctive part of, of human existence in life and then you say that it's completely irrelevant, then what you're going to get is men either wanting to be women or just to exploit women and treat women as though women are men." (Ben Shapiro, [53:12])
• On Weaponized Compassion:
  • "They exploit your compassion by telling you that you can only be a good person by affirming these destructive policies and validating lies and affirming sin." (Allie Beth Stuckey, [50:07])

Timestamps for Important Segments

• [03:19] – Transition from sponsor banter to Super Bowl Halftime show discussion.
• [06:55] – Critique of establishment conservatives' response to Bad Bunny.
• [08:03] – Analysis of Turning Point USA’s halftime show and conservative culture-making.
• [17:56] – The artistic and cultural significance of Kid Rock’s TPUSA set.
• [23:11] – Introduction to "Clavicular" and Gen-Z online nihilism.
• [32:25] – Matt Walsh’s analysis of the black-pilled "mogging" phenomenon.
• [38:52] – Reaction to the Canadian school shooting and media narrative suppression.
• [47:16] – Conversation on gender, telos, and modern existential confusion.
• [50:07] – Allie Beth Stuckey’s critique of progressive misuse of Christian compassion.

Conclusion

This episode takes on the leftward tilt of American popular culture, particularly live events like the Super Bowl, and proposes (sometimes optimistically) that the right can and should create its own cultural moments. Through the lens of TPUSA’s counter-halftime event and the rise of bizarre online microcelebrities like Clavicular, the hosts paint a picture of generational alienation, despair, and radicalization—contrasting it with calls to rediscover meaning, purpose, and traditional understandings of gender. The conversation is marked by a blend of cultural critique, self-deprecating humor, and urgent, sometimes dire, warnings about the trajectory of Western society.

For further listening, exclusive member-only segments, and more culture war breakdowns, the hosts encourage listeners to subscribe to Daily Wire Plus.