The fall of Ben Shapiro

Summary

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Today, Explained – "The Fall of Ben Shapiro"

Date: May 28, 2026
Hosts: Noel King, Sean Rameswaram
Guests: Drew Harwell (Washington Post), Ryan Broderick (Garbage Day/Panic World)

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Overview

This episode examines the sharp decline of Ben Shapiro and his conservative media empire, The Daily Wire. Once the king of "MAGA media," Shapiro's influence and audience have plummeted amid cultural, political, and business shifts in the right-wing media landscape. The discussion explores the factors behind this fall—from shifting conservative attitudes toward Israel to internal culture wars and failed business ventures. The hosts are joined by tech/media journalist Drew Harwell and culture critic Ryan Broderick for a deep dive into Shapiro’s rise, the turns that led to his decline, and what it spells for the future of conservative media.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. The Rise of Ben Shapiro and The Daily Wire

• Ben Shapiro’s Media Empire: In just a decade, Shapiro transformed from a young pundit to building The Daily Wire into a conservative juggernaut, producing podcasts, documentaries, merchandise, and even kids’ shows like the puppet-fronted "Zoodles" [00:01].
• Viral Strategy and Facebook Dominance:
  • Shapiro and his partner Jeremy Boreing capitalized on “anti-woke” cultural content, dominating Facebook traffic and outpacing even mainstream outlets like CNN and The New York Times.
  • "They were making $100 million or more a year, which is completely insane even now for what was essentially a blog." (Drew Harwell, [05:08])
• Success Becomes Excess:
  • Flush with cash, The Daily Wire invested in “alternate Hollywood” projects: movies (e.g., “Lady Ballers”), feature-length satirical documentaries, and an ambitious Game of Thrones-style fantasy series, “The Pendragon Cycle.”
  • These projects flopped, becoming costly money pits with no significant audience.
  • "But this show was completely a failure on basically every metric. Nobody watched it." (Drew Harwell, [08:29])

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2. The Fracturing of the Right and Shapiro’s Audience

• Shifting Conservative Coalitions:
  • October 7th attacks in Israel proved to be a pivotal moment.
  • Shapiro, an Orthodox Jew and staunch pro-Israel voice, now found himself at odds with an emergent, openly anti-Israel (and sometimes anti-Semitic) faction on the right—creating rifts with high-profile colleagues like Candace Owens, who left the Daily Wire after public sparring with Shapiro.
  • "That moment became a huge fracture point for MAGA—and definitely MAGA media online..." (Drew Harwell, [08:57])
• Algorithmic & Energy Shifts:
  • Facebook’s algorithm changes cut The Daily Wire’s lucrative visitor pipeline, compounding the loss of political momentum as the right's energy shifted to newer, edgier voices.
  • "They couldn't just make $100 million off Facebook anymore. Facebook was changing their algorithm..." (Drew Harwell, [10:50])

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3. The Rise of Rival Factions and Further Chaos

• Emergence of the Far-Right Gripers:
  • New right-wing influencers led by figures like Nick Fuentes adopted open hostility toward Israel, and—by extension—Ben Shapiro.
  • "He is the de facto leader of this far right splinter cell movement, the Gripers, and he's got a live stream that he's on every single day. And he is just the most, you know, lowest of the low, vile kind of far right personality you could imagine." (Ryan Broderick, [18:22])
• Messy Fragmentation After Charlie Kirk’s Death:
  • The assassination of moderate right figure Charlie Kirk further accelerated right-wing infighting, with alliances now constantly fracturing and new taboos rapidly forming and devoured by social media attention dynamics.
  • "They're not really working together. They're fighting with each other a lot. And they're also telling on each other…all these guys are sort of unfollowing each other and fighting with each other." (Ryan Broderick, [22:26])

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4. Shapiro’s Struggle to Adapt

• Desperation on Social Media:
  • Shapiro’s pivot to TikTok and other short-video platforms is described as inauthentic and lacking the confident edge of his heyday.
  • "His short videos really give this whiff of desperation. He's doing all of the stuff that like a TikToker would do, but he doesn't really...he doesn't seem to really enjoy it as much." (Drew Harwell, [11:56])
• Generational Disconnect:
  • Shapiro, once a “wunderkind,” is now seen as an old hand, out of touch with younger right-wing audiences and outpaced by new, more radical figures.
  • "Ben Shapiro from the very beginning was much better at talking to old people than talking to young people...A lot of the weird preoccupations the Daily Wire has had with, like, dominating Hollywood, for instance, feel very old to me." (Ryan Broderick, [24:36])

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5. The Broader Implications for Right-Wing Media

• Internet Attention Economics:
  • As right-wing publishers grow ever more dependent on the economics of online attention, there’s little incentive to moderate or stabilize.
  • "There's no real incentive for them to become more moderate...they're gonna be hitting themselves in the face with hammers and smoking meth and, you know, attacking people on the street and going completely full white nationalist, no regard to anything." (Ryan Broderick, [25:53])

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Shapiro’s Brand of Culture War:
  • "He wasn't talking about tax codes...he was talking about like the, the stupid things that the libs were doing. You know, the, the dark times that wokeness was bringing for the country." (Drew Harwell, [04:08])
• On Failed Ambitions:
  • “They flew them out to places like Italy and Hungary. They filmed on location for this knockoff fantasy in the time of Merlin and swords and ladies in furs. And they spent roughly $3 million an episode...But this show was completely a failure...It was just a real, real loss.” (Drew Harwell, [07:30]–[08:47])
• On the Right’s Self-Destruction:
  • "The age-old problem with working at the racism factory—They eventually make a new racism that includes you." (Ryan Broderick, [16:47])
• On Attention Economics:
  • “Social media, I think, always prioritizes the newest, most taboo idea. And so this would be a new taboo that has been discovered by far right commentators.” (Ryan Broderick, [19:40])
• On the Future of the Right:
  • "The days of Prager University or the Daily Wire trying to do like, a sensible conservative's reaction to Cardi B's 'WAP' or whatever is just, like, not gonna come back." (Ryan Broderick, [26:43])

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Timestamps: Segment Highlights

• 00:01–02:10 — Introduction: The scope of Shapiro's media empire
• 02:10–07:05 — Drew Harwell traces Shapiro’s rise and The Daily Wire’s peak
• 07:12–08:47 — Behind-the-scenes on the failed “Pendragon Cycle” project
• 08:57–10:32 — October 7th and the Israel fracture in MAGA media
• 10:50–11:56 — Shapiro's brand loses momentum as algorithm and cultural shifts take hold
• 12:29–13:51 — Teasing the next segment: the impact of Charlie Kirk’s assassination
• 16:47–20:05 — Ryan Broderick on the “racism factory” and the right’s vibe shift
• 20:23–21:32 — The uneasy, fragmented MAGA alliances and the Kirk/Fuentes split
• 22:04–23:36 — The post-Kirk scatter: infighting, leaks, generational change
• 24:36–25:42 — Shapiro’s generational disconnect and post-Trump right
• 25:50–27:22 — The social media incentive spiral and ever more extreme conservatism

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Conclusion

"The Fall of Ben Shapiro" presents a detailed autopsy of a personality and media machine that once shaped the online right. Shapiro’s careful, pugnacious style and business savvy fueled a meteoric rise but created a brittle, old-guard empire vulnerable to cultural schisms, failed ventures, and the relentless churn of internet attention economies. As MAGA media splinters into distrust, extremity, and generational warfare, the episode suggests Shapiro’s era may soon be remembered—perhaps even missed—as a brief, less-toxic interlude in the ongoing radicalization of digital conservatism.

Memorable Moment:

• "Bring a bucket and a mop. So this suggests that there's an awful lot of...not to be too graphic, but some sort of medical discharge that's happening here, right? A lot. Too much, because that's a symptom of something that is not going great." — Ben Shapiro, [27:07]

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Transcript

[Noel King]

In the span of a decade, Ben Shapiro built the Daily Wire into a conservative media empire. He produced hit podcasts that bit at liberal excesses and documentaries and lectures about the founders, the genders, the Gospels. He peddled polos, hats, candles, provided a home for deplatformed conservative stars like Matt Walsh and minted stars like Candace Owens. Let's put a pin in that. The Daily Wire even has kids programming a judgmental puppet named Zoodles. Zoodles who share Shapiro's load bearing eyebrows. This the empire showed signs of collapse. The Daily Wire's YouTube videos are down from millions of views to the low five figures, Web traffic is plummeting, and recently Shapiro laid off 13% of his employees. Asked by the Washington Post what had happened, Shapiro accused other conservatives of click whoring by embracing radical Islam, theorizing about the evils of Winston Churchill, and mocking the widow of Charlie Kirk. The kid still got it on today explained the fall of Ben Shapiro

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[Ben Shapiro]

If you or any of your friends get pregnant, that is generally not having anything to do with today explained per se. So I'm confused as to why I would want you to force anything.

[Noel King]

Drew Harwell, tech reporter, Washington Post, writes about MAGA media and influencers, including recently one Ben Shapiro.

[Drew Harwell]

Ben Shapiro matters because he is a symbol of the changing conservative media landscape. Like he was the king of MAGA media online for a number of years.

[Ross Store Advertiser]

You're not being polite to the pronouns disrespectful.

[Ben Shapiro]

Okay, forget about the disrespect facts. Don't care about your feelings. Do you really think Donald Trump respects the rule of law?

[Drew Harwell]

I mean, if somebody no.

[Ben Shapiro]

But I think the Constitution itself is a pretty damn durable document. Thank God. There are some whores in this house. There's some whores in this house. There's some whores in this house. It continues along these lines.

[Drew Harwell]

And yet he has fallen and so has the media movement around him.

[Far-right Critic]

Ben Shapiro was effectively the final boss of, of the pro Israel lobby. And we're now watching him come undone in real time.

[Drew Harwell]

It really has shown how much the MAGA movement has been undermined in recent years and how much, you know, the Trump star has fallen. But also this kind of classic MAGA media energy has changed too.

[Noel King]

All right, for people who are not familiar, who is this guy? Who is Ben Shapiro?

[Drew Harwell]

Ten years ago, Ben Shapiro came on the scene and he was this conservative digital media like wunderkind.

[Ben Shapiro]

Hi, I'm Ben Shapiro and this is is Reality Check.

[Drew Harwell]

Ben Shapiro is editor at [e-mail], so why am I off the rails? Mr. Shapiro, he was, you know, this right wing pundit. He was coming up at a time where he wasn't really traditional conservatism, like you know, small business, Chamber of Commerce. He, he represented this new wave of MAGA conservatism that was more about, you know, winning the quote, unquote, the culture wars. Right?

[Daily Wire Insider]

Ben Shapiro just destroyed this woke student with simple logic.

[Ben Shapiro]

The answer is that in 90, 99.9% of cases, you absolutely can gender somebody based on looking at them. Like really?

[Drew Harwell]

He wasn't competing in the same debates that the conservative journals of the time were talking about. He wasn't talking about tax codes. You know, he was talking about like the, the stupid things that the libs were doing. You know, the, the, the dark times that wokeness was bringing for the country.

[Ben Shapiro]

Coca Cola has now decided that they are going to force their employees to take anti racism training with the execrable Robin Diangelo.

[Drew Harwell]

And he was making a lot of money from it, right? He was putting out this viral chum that was constantly doing big numbers on Facebook, was making a ton of money for not just him, but for the Daily Wire, which he co founded. That was this like blog media property. And the Daily Wire with his help, became like the biggest publisher on Facebook for many months, beating out, you know, cnn, Fox, New York Times. It just became this unstoppable property at the time.

[Noel King]

So when does, when does Daily Wire hit its peak?

[Drew Harwell]

I would say probably about 2020. That was the year when the Daily Wire was consistently month after month becoming the top publisher on Facebook. That was their peak Facebook posting time. That was Their peak ad revenue time they were making $100 million or more a year, which is completely insane even now for what was essentially a blog. Even in conservative media. They were a huge outlier and they were riding so high and they were making so much money that for a time it was like they didn't really even know what to do with the money. They were this blog that had become this giant media empire. And so they started kind of thrashing in a lot of different directions and exploring a lot of different ways to spend. They had Ben Shapiro. There was one other important guy in the operation named Jeremy Boreing, who was this basically this theater kid, my friend,

[Ben Shapiro]

co founder, co CEO and most importantly, the God king of the Daily Wire. Jeremy boring moved to LA as a young man with stars in his eyes 20 years ago and now.

[Daily Wire Insider]

And we want our movies to be defined less by what they're about and

[Drew Harwell]

more what they aren't about, which is

[Daily Wire Insider]

left wing sucker punches and left wing propaganda.

[Drew Harwell]

You know, his big push was to take the anti woke model they had been successful at in their blog and on Facebook and really make this alternate Hollywood and make all of these different media properties that were anti woke and satirical and anti left. And so, you know, they started making movies. They started like going into Hollywood and making these big feature films that they would put into theaters. Movies like Lady Ballers.

[Daily Wire Insider]

A guy can become a girl with no physical changes at all.

[Far-right Critic]

Oh, that's called jigger queuing.

[Ryan Broderick]

So I can be a woman on

[Drew Harwell]

the court and a man in the bedroom. I can't believe it.

[Daily Wire Insider]

Nice.

[Drew Harwell]

And am I racist? That were like feature film length documentary satires.

[Ryan Broderick]

Am I racist?

[Noel King]

I would really appreciate it if you left.

[Ryan Broderick]

I'm trying to learn. I'm on this journey.

[Noel King]

Can you please leave? Tell me about the Game of Thrones knockoff.

[Drew Harwell]

Oh yeah. So this is my favorite of their adventures because it was so. It was insane even to the people inside the company. It was a fantasy series, seven episode series, kind of loosely based off of Game of Thrones. It was called the Pendragon cycle. Rise of the Merlin.

[Ryan Broderick]

I say Merlin slew 17 men with his own hands.

[Drew Harwell]

This is where it begins. And they flew out all of these actors. Some of them were conservative bloggers at Daily Wire. They flew them out to places like Italy and Hungary. They filmed on location for this knockoff fantasy in the time of Merlin and swords and ladies in furs. And they spent roughly $3 million an episode to make this show. They had huge special effects budgets. They had swords clanging and they had production diaries. All of this stuff that you would never imagine from a blog that was making fun of Nancy Pelosi and blue hair liberals and all this stuff. But they just felt like, hey, we have the money. Let's build something where we can actually make even more money on the other side of it. But this show was completely a failure on basically every metric. Nobody watched it.

[Ben Shapiro]

Right.

[Drew Harwell]

You had to subscribe to the Daily Wire. There was no discussion about it. It was just a complete money pit. What was it like, Marlon, to be alone? And Even on their YouTube, if you go onto the Pendragon cycle, YouTube, it's gotten the low hundreds of subscribers. So it was just a real, real loss.

[Noel King]

All right, so Ben Shapiro builds a media empire, makes some foolish decisions, makes some very smart one. And then what happened?

[Drew Harwell]

Yeah, so I think the biggest change point was the October 7th attacks in Israel. You know, for a time before that, the conservative movement was heavily pro Israel, you know, by default. And Ben Shapiro was a proud cheerleader of that because he's a practicing Jew. He wears a yarmulke. He's very proud of his Jewish heritage. He is very openly pro Israel. And yet that moment became a huge fracture point for maga. Definitely MAGA Media Online, because you had the traditional, you know, conservatives who were staunchly pro Israel.

[Ben Shapiro]

Israel has been actually extraordinarily meticulous in the pursuit of an incredibly difficult urban war.

[Drew Harwell]

But then you had this rising faction that was defined by some people who were just sort of critical of Israel. And then, you know, a side of it that was openly anti Semitic. And you had these people like Candace Owens, who shares a lot of anti Semitic conspiracy theories and who for a time was a rising star at the Daily Wire. She got her fame in Ben Shapiro's organization, but then left it after October 7th because her and Ben Shapiro were constantly fighting over these issues.

[Far-right Critic]

I truly believe that the Zionist ideology is an evil. It's an evil because it's a supremacist ideology that says you can trample over anybody's rights as long as it is like, you know, you serve Israel.

[Drew Harwell]

So there was this just this bigger debate happening that was roiling maga. And the Daily Wire became a microcosm of it because you had these two different conservative factions fighting over where MAGA should go to next.

[Noel King]

We're talking because Ben Shapiro's company is failing. And so the question is, is the company failing because the company, as a company, made bad business decisions, or is the company failing because conservatives do not like the way that Ben Shapiro talks about Israel and they've said, eh, we're gonna go elsewhere.

[Drew Harwell]

I think it's a little bit of both, honestly. You know, they were pouring a lot of money into bad business decisions. They were gaining less money because their business model was changing. They couldn't just make 100 million dol Facebook anymore. Facebook was changing their algorithm, shunting traffic in other ways. And a lot of the political energy they had was also fading. This pro Trump reflexive support was changing. And meanwhile, they didn't have the political high ground for a lot of their fans anymore. A lot of their fans were moving to these independent creators who were more likely to say what they wanted to hear. And it was just kind of a perfect storm for them.

[Noel King]

So what's Ben Shapiro's future, which was once never in doubt? What does it look like now?

[Drew Harwell]

When you go into Ben Shapiro's social media, you don't see a lot of that confident energy that you saw five years ago. I look on his TikTok and his Instagram, they really. His short videos really give this whiff of desperation. He's doing all of the stuff that like a tiktoker would do, but he doesn't really. He doesn't seem to really enjoy it as much.

[Ben Shapiro]

Alrighty, folks, today we're gonna go through some more woke TikToks at the behest of my producers. Oh, no. Why is Lizzo being by a labubu?

[Drew Harwell]

You know, it's like the culture war is still happening, but he's kind of flailing to regain that relevance that he had. And so I just don't think there's enough propulsion there to keep him at the center of these magnet conversations anymore.

[Noel King]

Drew Harwell of the Washington Post. Maybe it was October 7th that alienated Shapiro from his audience and vice versa, but our next guest says there was another turning point. The assassination of Charlie Kirk. That's coming up.

[Daily Wire Insider]

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[Ben Shapiro]

Me.

[Ryan Broderick]

No, I'm just kidding.

[Drew Harwell]

I sleep.

[Daily Wire Insider]

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[Far-right Critic]

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[Ben Shapiro]

This suggests that there's an awful lot of Today Explained.

[Ryan Broderick]

My name is Ryan Broderick and I write the Garbage Day newsletter and I host the Panic World podcast.

[Noel King]

You wrote an essay about Ben Shapiro and his recent troubles. It included these wonderful lines, the age old problem with working at the racism factory. They eventually make a new racism that includes you. What are you talking about?

[Ryan Broderick]

Well, it was sort of a pithy way to describe what I think is happening to Ben Shapiro right now, which is that he's found himself on the wrong side of a far right vibe. Shift. Shift. That's happening. So the question of, you know, should American conservatives support Israel? I think has quickly become the deciding factor in, you know, canonizing the new wave of, of MAGA or even post MAGA conservatism in America. There's a lot of creators on one side who say we should not be involved with Israel. They say that largely for anti Semitic purposes, but also because they're xenophobic and isolationists. But they, they sort of know that this is a, a red line that they can, they can go across. And Ben Shapiro cannot follow them there because he is an Orthodox Jew who supports Israel and is and is a fairly standard conservative, all things considered. And so this is among the many other problems that Shapiro is having right now in trying to kind of hold his digital media empire together.

[Noel King]

All right, so Ben Shapiro is on one side, as you said, he is unlikely to ever turn his back on Israel. On the other side are people who are going hard at Israel and have been since approximately, I don't know, October 8, maybe 2020. Who are they? Who are the players here?

[Ryan Broderick]

So the biggest one is Nick Fuentes.

[Ben Shapiro]

Israel does whatever it wants and nobody seems to be able to stop them.

[Ryan Broderick]

He is the de facto leader of this far right splinter cell movement, the Gripers, and he's got a live stream that he's on every single day. And he is just the most, you know, lowest of the low, vile kind of far right personality you could imagine.

[Ben Shapiro]

I don't mean to perpetuate any anti Semitic tropes, but doesn't that seem to imply. Wouldn't that tend to imply that Israel controls the whole world?

[Ryan Broderick]

But you also have more and more creators, I think, sensing this vibe shift and moving towards him. So Candace Owens was going so far as to even claim that Charlie Kirk was killed by Mossad.

[Far-right Critic]

Truth is that Charlie was under immense pressure and he was facing financial threats over his shifting stance on Israel.

[Ryan Broderick]

You also have Tucker Carlson, Megyn Kelly, a lot of these people. I was sort of put in the camp of, you know, pretty run of the mill conservative commentators who understand that Trump is not popular. And so they're trying to like kind of feel out new territory there.

[Noel King]

I don't owe anybody my never ending support.

[Ross Store Advertiser]

I will be open minded to the facts as they develop. A lot has happened with Israel.

[Ryan Broderick]

And then you also have manosphere guys like Tim Dillon who have even started to kind of go against Israel. So it is this thing that is happening. And you know, social media I think, always prioritizes the newest, most taboo idea. And so this would be a new taboo that has been discovered by far right commentators.

[Noel King]

Okay, so in that camp of people, you have critics of Israel that run the gamut from Candace Owens who seems kind of nutty, to Megyn Kelly, who often, I don't know, seems pretty straight. What do they all have in common? Is it just their criticism of Israel?

[Ryan Broderick]

No, I. My read on this is that it all stems from Charlie Kirk actually. So. Oh yeah. The MAGA movement is not one movement. It is not one ideology. The 2024 winning coalition was this weird mismatch of far right live streamers, manosphere podcasters, neoconservatives and the, you know, the TP usa. Charlie Kirk, kind of middle of the road MAGA people.

[Drew Harwell]

What is so important to our country is to find our disagreements respectfully. Because when people stop talking, that's when violence happens.

[Ryan Broderick]

And I think Charlie Kirk was very instrumental in holding a lot of this together, if only because it seemed like, you know, to them at least that he was possibly a replacement for Trump. You know, I, I've read, I've read into it as like the MAGA movement was trying to home grow their own version of Trump. Charlie Kirk may have been that figure. He dies and the whole thing starts to fall apart. And I have to give unfortunately some credit to Nick Fuentes here, who has always Hated Charlie Kirk.

[Noel King]

So Charlie Kirk is killed, and then these alliances form and they fracture and they reform and they refracture. What events of the last, say, eight months do we place in the. Okay, this is a post. Charlie Kirk's assassination moment.

[Ryan Broderick]

Well, it's a lot of reading the tea leaves of online discourse, I would say. But I, you know, when the movement is working, when they're all falling in lockstep with one another.

[Noel King]

Huh.

[Ryan Broderick]

And so, you know, Sydney Sweeney's jeans would be a good example of the. Or Cracker Barrel. Right.

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[Ryan Broderick]

They've been able to get this talking point to surface out of their DMS and into the general consciousness. And if you look back, you know, at the months immediately after Charlie Kirk's murder, that hasn't really been happening the same way. They're not really working together. They're, they're, they're fighting with each other a lot. And they're also telling on each other. I mean, these people are very messy. So, like, even as we speak, Ashley St. Clair is on TikTok sharing secrets from inside the MAGA movement and going on Hassan Piker's stream.

[Drew Harwell]

It seems strange when I, when I start the conversation by saying, like, oh, this is Elon Musk's baby mama. Yeah, I know. You're, you're more than that. You are also. Thank you so much. Right wing, reactionary, conservative influencer.

[Ross Store Advertiser]

No, not anymore.

[Drew Harwell]

You used to be.

[Ryan Broderick]

And so all these guys are sort of unfollowing each other and fighting with each other. And it's a lot of right wingers who are super dependent on Internet attention and monetizing Internet attention, and they're really, really nervous about the Internet landscape the same way all digital media publishers are. I think it's having a, a negative impact on the stuffiest of the digital media era people. And Ben Shapiro is the stuffiest.

[Noel King]

So, like, okay, you're, you're gonna call him stuffy, but there is something else that I've been thinking about a lot, which is Ben Shapiro. When he started out, he was so young. He has such a baby face. And it was like this young man that appealed to people who were much older because he was super well spoken and he was pugnacious. And now, and we, we talked about this in the first half of the show, he just sort of seems old. He seems like he doesn't really know what he should be doing on TikTok. He seems like he doesn't really know who in the culture is relevant anymore. You could make the same argument about Tucker Carlson, even though he's surviving, but openly seems scared of Nick Fuentes. Do you think that this is that the guys that we were used to are now the old guys and they know it and the young guys that are coming after them are, I don't know, maybe worse, maybe more willing to say what 20 somethings these days want to hear. Like, where does age play into this?

[Ryan Broderick]

So I would say that Ben Shapiro from the very beginning was much better at talking to old people than talking to young people. And, you know, it seems like what he was doing was, you know, creating a digital media company that looked hip and cool to old people who would then give him money and he would spend that money on advertising and sort of dominate Facebook and sort of created this flywheel that allowed him to grow pretty quickly. A lot of the weird preoccupations the Daily Wire has had with, like, dominating Hollywood, for instance, feel very old to me. Like, it just feels like, like a, like an 80 year old conservative's fever dream of what the Internet could be. Right. Like, just very strange stuff. And I think it's only gotten stranger in the last year or two because it also feels like the Trump movement has kind of moved beyond the need for someone like Ben Shapiro, like in the era of Doge and Project 2025 and, you know, ice occupations and the JD Vance AI stuff. Again, none of it, none of it feels like Ben Shapiro is really in the mix anymore.

[Noel King]

Do you think we're gonna look back in a few years and Ms. Ben Shapiro for his sort of sobriety?

[Ryan Broderick]

Yeah.

[Noel King]

Okay. Okay, tell me, tell me where we're headed.

[Ryan Broderick]

No, I think that's exactly right. I think when digital publishers on the right in the early 2010s began to really lean into the Internet, they inadvertently connected American conservatism, and by extension like global conservatism, with the sea changes and tides of Internet discourse. And that's always going to go towards the thing that feels the most dangerous and the most taboo because that's what's most exciting on social media. And so there is really no incentive. If you have, if you have like every major conservative figure in America making money directly from the Internet, there's no real incentive for them to become more moderate. Right. Like, they're just gonna, like, they're gonna be hitting themselves in the face with hammers and smoking meth and, you know, attacking people on the street and, and going completely full white nationalist, no regard to anything race science, substack nonsense. Like, it's, it's just, and we're already seeing this the, the days of Prager University or the Daily Wire trying to do like, a sensible conservative's reaction to Cardi B's wap or whatever is just like, not gonna come back,

[Ben Shapiro]

bring a bucket and a mop. So this suggests that there's an awful lot of, not to be too graphic, but some sort of medical discharge that's happening here, right? A lot. Too much, because that's a symptom of something that is not going great.

[Noel King]

Bless Ryan Broderick. Garbage Day Panic World. Miles Bryan, producer Jolie Myers, editor Gabriel Dunatov, Check the facts. David Tadashore and Bridger Dunnigan on the mix. I'm Noel King. It's Today Expl Sam.