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Ben Shapiro | |
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_(cropped).jpg) Shapiro in 2024 | |
| Born | Benjamin Aaron Shapiro (1984-01-15)January 15, 1984 (age 41) Los Angeles, California, U.S. |
| Education | University of California, Los Angeles (BA) Harvard University (JD) |
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| Political party | Republican |
| Spouse | |
| Children | 4 |
| Relatives | Mara Wilson (cousin) |
| Signature | |
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Benjamin Aaron Shapiro (born January 15, 1984) is an Americanconservative political commentator, media host, and attorney. He writes columns forCreators Syndicate,Newsweek, andAmi Magazine, and is editoremeritus forThe Daily Wire, which he co-founded in 2015. Shapiro is the host ofThe Ben Shapiro Show, a daily politicalpodcast and live radio show. He waseditor-at-large ofBreitbart News from 2012 until his resignation in 2016. Shapiro has also authored sixteen non-fiction books.
Benjamin Aaron Shapiro was born on January 15, 1984, in Los Angeles, California, to aConservative Jewish family. He isAshkenazi Jewish.[1][2][3][4] When he was 9 years old, his family began to observeOrthodox Judaism.[4] He started playing violin at a young age[5] and performed at theIsrael Bonds Banquet in 1996 at age 12.[6] His parents both worked in Hollywood. His mother was a TV company executive, and his father, David Shapiro, worked as a composer.[3]
Skipping two grades (third and ninth), Shapiro went fromWalter Reed Middle School inThe Valley toYeshiva University High School of Los Angeles inWestside, Los Angeles, where he graduated in 2000 at age 16.[7][8] He studiedpolitical science at theUniversity of California, Los Angeles, graduating in 2004 at age 20 with aBachelor of Arts,summa cum laude, and membership inPhi Beta Kappa. He then attendedHarvard Law School, where he studied under liberal law professorsLani Guinier andRandall Kennedy.[9][10] Shapiro graduated from Harvard Law in 2007 with aJuris Doctor,cum laude.[11]
After graduating from law school, Shapiro entered private practice at the law firmGoodwin Procter but left after 10 months.[12] As of March 2012[update], he ran an independent legal consultancy firm, Benjamin Shapiro Legal Consulting, in Los Angeles.[8]
Shapiro became interested in politics at a young age. He started a nationally syndicated column when he was 17, becoming the youngest nationally syndicated columnist in the United States,[8] and had written two books by age 21.[13][14]
In his first bookBrainwashed: How Universities Indoctrinate America's Youth (2004), Shapiro argues that theAmerican Left has ideological dominance over universities and thatprofessors do not tolerate non-left opinions.[15][16]
In 2011, HarperCollins published Shapiro's fourth book,Primetime Propaganda: The True Hollywood Story of How the Left Took Over Your TV, in which Shapiro argues that Hollywood has aleft-wing agenda that it actively promotes through prime-time entertainment programming. In the book, the producers ofHappy Days andM*A*S*H say they pursued apro-pacifist,anti-Vietnam-War agenda in those series.[17] Shapiro also became a fellow at theDavid Horowitz Freedom Center.[18]
In 2013,Threshold Editions published Shapiro's fifth book,Bullies: How the Left's Culture of Fear and Intimidation Silences Americans.[19] In 2017, he released his only novel,True Allegiance, a book about "Anillegal immigrant crisis breaking out along America'sSouthern border".[20] In 2019, Shapiro published the bookThe Right Side of History: How Reason and Moral Purpose Made the West Great, which focuses on the importance ofJudeo-Christian values and laments their decline in modern America.
In 2021, Shapiro published the bookThe Authoritarian Moment, which argues that there is no pressingauthoritarian threat in U.S. politics from the right wing. Instead, he argues that the authoritarian threat comes from the left's control of academia, Hollywood, journalism, and corporate America.[21]
In 2012, Shapiro becameeditor-at-large ofBreitbart News, arightist website founded byAndrew Breitbart.[22] AfterBreitbart came under the leadership ofSteve Bannon, Shapiro attempted to distance himself from him.[23][24]
On February 7, 2013, Shapiro published an article claiming Senate sources indicated a group called "Friends ofHamas" was a foreign contributor toChuck Hagel's Senate confirmation campaign forUS Secretary of Defense. However, weeks later,Slate reporterDavid Weigel reported that there was no evidence of such a group's existence.[25] Shapiro told Weigel that the story he published was "the entirety of the information [he] had."[26][27][28] Shapiro later expressed regret over publishing the story.
In March 2016, Shapiro resigned from his position as editor-at-large ofBreitbart News following what he characterized as the website's lack of support for reporterMichelle Fields in response to her alleged assault byCorey Lewandowski,Donald Trump's former campaign manager,[29][30] in spite of video and eyewitness evidence of the assault.[31][32] In his resignation statement, Shapiro stated, "Steve Bannon is a bully, and has sold out [the late Breitbart.com founder]Andrew Breitbart's mission in order to back another bully, Donald Trump; he has shaped the company into Trump's personalPravda".[33] After Shapiro's departure,Breitbart published a piece, falsely attributed to Shapiro's father's pseudonym, saying, "Ben Shapiro betrays loyal Breitbart readers in pursuit of Fox News contributorship", whichBreitbart later deleted.[29][34] Despite being critical of Bannon, Shapiro defended Bannon when he was accused ofantisemitism.[35]
In 2012, Shapiro joinedKRLA-AM 870 as a host on their morning radio program alongsideHeidi Harris andBrian Whitman.[36] By 2016, he was one of the hosts for KRLA'sThe Morning Answer, a conservative radio show. Internal emails showed that Shapiro faced pressure fromSalem Media executives, the syndicate that owned the show, to be more supportive ofDonald Trump during the2016 United States presidential election. Shapiro, however, remained highly critical of Trump throughout the election.[37]
Shapiro andJeremy Boreing foundedThe Daily Wire on September 21, 2015. He serves as editor emeritus as well as the host of his online political podcastThe Ben Shapiro Show, which is broadcast every weekday.[38][39] As of March 2019[update], the podcast was ranked by Podtrac as the second most popular podcast in the U.S.[40]Westwood One began syndicatingThe Ben Shapiro Show podcast to radio in April 2018.[41] In 2018,Politico described the podcast as "massively popular".[42] In January 2019, Westwood One expanded Shapiro's one-hour podcast-to-radio program, adding a nationally syndicated two-hour live radio show, for three hours of Ben Shapiro programming daily.[43] As of March 2019, according to Westwood One,The Ben Shapiro Show is being carried by more than 200 stations, including in nine of the top ten markets.[44] In June 2020, Shapiro stepped down from his role aseditor-in-chief, which he had held since the site's founding, and took on the role of editor emeritus.[45]
In September 2018, Shapiro started hostingThe Ben Shapiro Election Special onFox News. Thelimited-run series covered news and issues relating to the2018 midterm elections.[46] Shapiro has made frequent appearances onPragerU with talks onintersectionality andHollywood with 4,900,000 to 8,400,000 views as of December 2018[update].[47][39] In 2021, Ben Shapiro's podcast was ranked 9th most listened to on Apple podcasts.[48]
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Shapiro speaks at college campuses across the United States. In his speeches, he often presents a conservative viewpoint on controversial subjects. He spoke at 37 campuses between early 2016 and late 2017.[3]
Some students and faculty members atCalifornia State University, Los Angeles, objected to a speech that Shapiro, who was then an editor at Breitbart News, was scheduled to hold at the university on February 25, 2016, titled "When Diversity Becomes a Problem". University president William Covino canceled the speech three days before it was to take place, intending to reschedule it so that the event could feature various viewpoints on campus diversity. Covino ultimately reversed his decision, allowing the speech to go on as planned.[49][50] The day of the speech, student protesters formed human chains, blocking the doors to the event and staging sit-in protests. When Shapiro began his speech, a protester pulled the fire alarm. After the speech ended, Shapiro was escorted out by campus police.[51] Conservative youth organizationYoung America's Foundation (YAF) announced it was filing a lawsuit against the university (with Shapiro as one of the plaintiffs), claiming that theFirst andFourteenth Amendment rights of the students were violated by Covino's attempted cancellation of the event as well as by the physical barricading of students from entering or leaving the event.[52][53]
In August 2016,DePaul University revoked an invitation for Shapiro to address students at the school and barred him from entering the campus owing to "security concerns".[54]
On September 14, 2017, Shapiro gave a speech at the invitation of theUniversity of California, Berkeley student organization Berkeley College Republicans (BCR), in which he criticizedidentity politics.[55][56] The event was supported by the YAF and BCR.[53] It involved a large police presence, which had been promised by Berkeley ChancellorCarol T. Christ in her August letter that supportedfree speech. Together, the university and thecity of Berkeley spent $600,000 (equivalent to $769,671 in 2024) on police and security for the event, which transpired with nine arrests but no major incidents.[57][58][59]
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On October 7, 2013, Shapiro and business partnerJeremy Boreing co-founded the U.S. media criticism website TruthRevolt with funding from theDavid Horowitz Freedom Center.[39] TruthRevolt ceased operations in March 2018.[60]
On January 14, 2021, Shapiro was featured as a guest writer forPolitico's Playbook newsletter, where he defended House Republicans who opposed thesecond impeachment of Donald Trump.[61] The newsletter drew immense backlash from manyPolitico staffers, some of whom argued that Shapiro should not have been allowed to write the article.Matthew Kaminski, editor-in-chief ofPolitico, refused to apologize and defended the decision to enable Shapiro to write the article, stating, "We're not going to back away from having published something because some people think it was a mistake to do so."[62][63] According to theDaily Beast, more than 100Politico staffers signed on to a letter to publisherRobert Allbritton criticizing bothPolitico's decision to feature Shapiro's article and the response from Kaminski.[64]
Shapiro cameoed inThe Daily Wire filmLady Ballers that was released December 1, 2023. He portrayed a referee.[65]
On January 26, 2024, he appeared alongside artistTom MacDonald in the music video for MacDonald's rap song "Facts", which Shapiro is featured on.[66][67][68] The song held the No. 1 spot on Apple Music in late January and early February 2024.[69][70] On February 5, 2024, the song debuted at No. 16 on theBillboard Hot 100.[71]
In 2012,Zman Magazine hailed Shapiro as a "rising star inAmerica's conservative movement".[8] In 2016, Shapiro described himself as "basically alibertarian".[72] In 2021, he described himself as "generally libertarian" with regard to the role of the government and as aconservative with regard to the role ofsocial structures.[73]The New Yorker,Haaretz andVox have described Shapiro as "right-wing".[74][75][76] Shapiro's views have been described byThe New York Times as "extremely conservative"[3] and was described byThe Economist as a "radical conservative" and as a "classically religious-conservative".[77]
A 2020 studyNews, Nationalism, and Hegemony: The Formation of Consistent Issue Framing Throughout the U.S. Political Right examining issue framing by right-wing podcasts usedThe Ben Shapiro Show as an example which "offered a mainstream conservative perspective that favors President Donald Trump and his framing on issues like 'nationalism'" in a two-by-two matrix that also examined aStormfront podcast, analt-right podcast, and the Daily Standard podcast; the study argued that Shapiro's rhetoric was similar to that used in the Stormfront podcast, though with a different tone.[78]
Shapiro has described the politicalleft as believing in an imaginary "hierarchy of victimhood" in which the opinions of members of persecuted groups like theLGBT community are afforded more credence. He has argued that the left has dominated American culture through popular entertainment, media, and academia in a way that has made conservatives feel disenfranchised and helped lead to the election of Donald Trump in 2016.[3] Shapiro has stated that "political correctness breeds insanity".[79] He is an outspoken opponent ofsafe spaces, especially those on college campuses, arguing that they go against free speech.[80] Shapiro frequently praisesWestern culture and Western civilization,[78] saying "I believe Western civilization is superior to other civilizations."[78]
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Shapiro supports aban on abortion,[3] including in cases ofrape and incest, with one exception: when competent medical authority determines that the life of the mother is in jeopardy as a result of the pregnancy. He has further clarified that this includes extreme cases of mental illness where the life of the mother is at risk due to suicide. He also believes that doctors who perform abortions should be prosecuted.[32] He has referred to women who have abortions as "baby killers".[81][82][83] In 2019, Shapiro said that "the Supreme Court overturningRoe v. Wade" was "not going to happen", and added that he had "serious doubts" about "whether the Supreme Court, as currently constituted, would vote to overturnRoe v. Wade". (Roe v. Wade was later overturned byDobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization in 2022.)[84]
In 2019, Shapiro spoke at the annualMarch for Life in Washington, D.C., where he said abortion is a "violent act".[85]
Shapiro is a critic of thealt-right movement,[86][77] stating in 2017, "It is a garbage movement composed of garbage ideas. It has nothing to do with constitutional conservatism."[79] In 2019, Shapiro criticized weekly newspaperThe Economist for describing him as "alt-right" in their interview with him; in response,The Economist issued an apology and modified the article title to instead describe Shapiro as a "radical conservative".[87]
Shapiro has been a target of online harassment and antisemitic threats from the alt-right. After leaving Breitbart News, Shapiro was a frequent target of antisemitic rhetoric from the alt-right.[34] According to a 2016 analysis by theAnti-Defamation League, Shapiro was the most frequent target of antisemitic tweets against journalists.[88][89]
Shapiro is an advocate ofcapital punishment and "strongly" supports it remaining legal in the United States.[90] Explaining his beliefs, Shapiro has stated that, "You can forfeit the right to life if you take another life, just as you can forfeit your right to liberty (this is called prison) by infringing on the liberty of another".[91]
Shapiro has acknowledgedclimate change as a legitimate phenomenon, although he has questioned "what percentage of global warming is attributable to human activity."[92] In relation to concerns over increased flooding of coastal property fromsea-level rise as a result of climate change, Shapiro stated, "You think people aren't just going to sell their homes and move?"[93] Writing forGQ, in response to that remark, Jay Willis adds, "The possibility that no market will exist for property that is literally underneath the ocean seems not to have occurred to him." In an opinion piece on the2020 California wildfires, Shapiro argued that state policies had contributed more to the severity of the fires than climate change. In response,Scientific American accused Shapiro of promotingclimate change denial.[94] In 2021, he stated that a global temperature increase of 4 °C (7.2 °F) did not amount to an emergency, and that describing it as one was "purely a political designation".[95]
In the spring of 2016, Shapiro wrote an article for theDaily Wire in which he stated he would "never vote forDonald Trump". Shapiro supportedTed Cruz in the2016 presidential election and opposed Trump's candidacy.[96] In August 2016, Shapiro wrote an article for the Daily Wire arguing that Trump, if elected, would notappoint conservative justices to the Supreme Court. He describedSteve Bannon as a "bully" who "sold outBreitbart founderAndrew Breitbart's mission in order to back another bully, Donald Trump."[97] Shapiro has stated that Trump's victory in the 2016 election was more of a vote againstHillary Clinton than a vote in favor of Trump.[3]
Shapiro supported the Trump administration's ordering of the killing ofQasem Soleimani,[98]recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel,[99] as well as the nominations ofBrett Kavanaugh[100] andNeil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court. Shapiro also supported Trump withdrawing from theParis Agreement, cutting regulations, and his nomination of 12 appellate court judges. However, Shapiro criticized Trump for firingJames Comey, for appointingMichael Flynn andSteve Bannon, and for endorsingRoy Moore.
On October 19, 2020, Shapiro announced that he would be voting for Trump in the2020 presidential election: "There are three reasons I'm going to vote for Donald Trump in 2020 when I didn't four years ago: First, I was simply wrong about Donald Trump on policy. Second, I wasn't really wrong about Donald Trump on character, but whatever damage he was going to do has already been done, and it's not going to help if I don't vote for him this time. And third, and most importantly: TheDemocrats have lost their fucking minds."[101] He rebuked Trump onelection night, November 3, 2020, when Trump prematurely claimed himself the winner when neither he nor his opponentJoe Biden had yet reached the 270 electoral votes required to win the presidency. He tweeted: "No, Trump has not already won the election, and it is deeply irresponsible for him to say he has."[102] Shapiro denounced thefalse claim that Trump was the legitimate winner of the 2020 election.[103] He criticized theJanuary 6 Capitol attack whilst also criticizing the Democratic Party's response to it.[103] In 2024, during2024 Republican primaries, Shapiro favored Florida GovernorRon DeSantis over Trump but later supported Trump after DeSantis dropped out of the primary. Shapiro also later helped host a fundraiser for Trump.[104][105] In October 2024, Shapiro interviewed Trump on his show.[106]
In March 2024, Shapiro attracted criticism when he stated on his show that "No one in the United States should beretiring at 65 years old. Frankly, I think retirement itself is a stupid idea unless you have some sort of health problem."[107][108][109]
Shapiro has backed privatizingSocial Security,[3] and for lowering taxes on the very wealthy.[3] In August 2022, Shapiro argued that "Marxism can't work in America", saying this was because of "high levels ofsocietal income mobility".[110]
In 2018, Shapiro argued thatFacebook was targeting conservative sites after the platform implemented analgorithm change, limiting their traffic, and that they are not transparent enough.[111] In 2021,[inconsistent] an article inNPR revealed that, under Shapiro's leadership, theDaily Wire had dominated Facebook news feeds and received more engagement than any other news outlet "by a wide margin".[103]
In 2010, Shapiro argued thathomosexuality should not have been removed as a mental illness from theDSM because homosexuals have higher rates of depression than heterosexuals and do not reproduce.[112][113] In 2014, Shapiro argued that the United States "is not a country that discriminates against homosexuals" and that "there is a vastly minute amount of discrimination against gays in this country."[114]
Shapiro opposed the 2015Obergefell v. Hodges Supreme Court ruling that deemed bans ofsame-sex marriage unconstitutional.[115] However, he opposes government involvement in marriage, saying, "I think the government stinks at this", and expressing concern that because of the ruling inObergefell v. Hodges, at some point the government may try to force religious institutions to perform same-sex weddings against their will.[72][32] According toSlate's Seth Stevenson, Shapiro has described homosexuality as a sin.[32] Shapiro also opposessame-sex couplesraising children.[77] He has said that "a man and a woman do a better job of raising a child than two men or two women".[81] Shapiro opposes same-sex marriage being covered in school classrooms.[72]
Shapiro believestransgender people suffer from mental illness.[79][13] He has commented, "You can't magically change your gender. You can't magically change your sex." He compared such changes to the notion of changing one's age or identifying as an animal.[3]
In July 2015, Shapiro andtransgender rights activistZoey Tur were onDr. Drew On Call to discussCaitlyn Jenner's receipt of theArthur Ashe Courage Award.[116][117] After Shapiro referred to Tur, who is atrans woman, as "sir" and questioned her genetics, she placed her hand on the back of his neck and threatened on air to send him "home in an ambulance". Shapiro replied, "That seems mildly inappropriate for a political discussion." Later, Shapiro filed a police report accusing Tur ofbattery and stated that he intended to press charges to "teach the left a lesson". Tur said the report was Shapiro's attempt to keep the story in the news.[117][118][75][119]
In 2019, in response to 2020 Democratic Party presidential candidateBeto O'Rourke calling for the removal of the tax-exempt status of religious institutions opposed to same-sex marriage, Shapiro said that if O'Rourke was going to try to "indoctrinate" his children in religious schools, Shapiro would be forced to either "leave the country" or "pick up a gun."[120]
Following the December 2012Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, Shapiro appeared on CNN'sPiers Morgan Tonight on January 10, 2013. On the issue ofgun control, Shapiro calledPiers Morgan a "bully" who "tends to demonize people who differ from you politically by standing on the graves of the children of Sandy Hook, saying they don't seem to care enough about the dead kids."[121][122] Videos of the encounter quickly received millions of views and wentviral.[39]
Writing in October 2017, in the aftermath of theLas Vegas shooting, Shapiro argued that "banning all guns would be unwise as well as immoral", additionally Shapiro stated, "...here's the problem: Not a single gun law short of full-scale gun confiscation would have prevented Las Vegas or any of the other mass shootings we've seen. Furthermore, there is no correlation between states with high rates of gun ownership and states with high rates of gun homicide."[123]
Shapiro has backed repealing theAffordable Care Act.[3] In 2021, Shapiro said that he was in favor of theCOVID-19 vaccine and that he was vaccinated,[124][125] but is againstCOVID-19 vaccine mandates.[126]
In 2003, Shapiro published a column onTownhall stating that Israel must be allowed to "transferPalestinians andIsraeli-Arabs from Judea, Samaria, Gaza and Israel proper." Citingexpulsion of Germans after World War II as a precedent,[127] Shapiro insisted that "expelling a hostile population is a commonly-used and generally effective way of preventing violent entanglements." In the same article, Shapiro said that "The ideology of the Palestinian population is indistinguishable from that of the terrorist leadership."[128] JournalistJeffrey Goldberg criticized Shapiro's comments as an example of his "fascist" views.[129][130] Shapiro later reversed his view on theWest Bank issue, saying it was "both inhumane and impractical".[131]
In 2010, Shapiro said "Israelis like to build. Arabs like to bomb crap and live in open sewage". He later stated that he was talking about the Israeli and Arab leadership, as well asterrorist groups in Palestine.[74]
In a 2008Townhall opinion piece, Shapiro expressed support for Israel'ssettlement building in the occupiedPalestinian territories in the West Bank.[132]
In 2019, Shapiro said that Democratic congresswomanIlhan Omar, whosecomments about American support for Israel were accused of evokingantisemitic tropes, and thewhite supremacistSan Diego shooter, hold "a lot of the same opinions about Jews."[133]
During the2021 Israel–Palestine crisis, Shapiro published an op-ed inThe Marshall News Messenger in which he stated that the reason behind the conflict between Israel andHamas is that "Israel exists, and Hamas wishes it didn't exist".[134] Shapiro additionally stated that Hamas's rocket attacks "would entail an anti-Semiticgenocide", adding that Hamas was spending "tens of millions of dollars in foreign aid" on building "terror tunnels and rocket capacity to strike at the Jews." Shapiro argued that Hamas was positioning its rockets in civilian areas, seeking to "force Israel to kill Palestinian civilians so Hamas can propagandize about supposed Israeli human rights atrocities." He stated that Hamas was killing not only Jews but alsoIsraeli Arabs and foreign workers. He also criticized the media coverage of the crisis, labeling it as "absurd"[134] and specifically criticizedThe New York Times for itsopinion article featuring a Palestinian writer titled "The Myth of Coexistence in Israel". Shapiro stated that an image used in the article, a map of Israel, was "so bad thatMSNBC, which used the image in 2015, had to retract it and admit it was factually incorrect."[135]
In an October 2024 appearance co-sponsored by The Daily Wire and theYoung American's Foundation at theUniversity of California, Los Angeles, Shapiro was asked whether or not he'd condone the actions of theIsraeli Defense Forces andNetanyahu-led Israeli government amidstthe deaths of over 40,000 people during the ongoingGaza war. He responded "I don't just condone [their] actions, I celebrate and laud them". In the same statement, he claimed that the Israeli government has gone through "such extraordinary efforts not to kill civilians" that they have managed to have "the best civilian-to-terrorist kill ratio in the history ofurban warfare". Furthermore, he blamed the Palestinian casualties on Hamas, which he believes usescivilians as human shields.[136]
In a 2002 article, Shapiro wrote, "I am getting really sick of people who whine about 'civilian casualties'... when I see in the newspapers that civilians inAfghanistan or theWest Bank were killed by American or Israeli troops, I don't really care". Shapiro declared that "One American soldier is worth far more than an Afghan civilian", accusing Afghan civilians of being "fundamentalist Muslims" who provide cover for terrorists or give them money.[137] Shapiro later apologized for these comments, stating that the 2002 article was "just a bad piece, plain and simple, and something I wish I'd never written". He said that while he still partially agreed with his article's main point—"that we must calculate the risk to American services members when we designrules of engagement"—he "expressed [that point] in the worst possible way, and simplified the issue beyond the bounds of morality (particularly by doubting the civilian status of some civilians)".
Shapiro supported the2003 invasion of Iraq, arguing that "China is adictatorship. North Korea is a dictatorship. Saudi Arabia, Libya, Syria, Pakistan and Egypt are all dictatorships. We can't overthrow all of those regimes simply to free their citizens. We have to focus on those regimes that endanger American security."[138]
Shapiro has stated that, whileAfrican-Americans were historically victims of injustice in the United States, he does not believe in the existence ofwidespread systemic injustice today.[3] In 2017, Shapiro stated that "the idea that black people in the United States are disproportionately poor because America is racist; that's just not true."[139] Shapiro has dismissed the idea that the United States was founded onslavery and argued that America was founded in spite of slavery.[140]
Shapiro was one of several conservative commentators condemning RepresentativeSteve King (R-IA) after King's January 2019 comments in defense of the terms "white supremacy" and "white nationalism". Shapiro called for King to becensured, and supported King's 2020 primary challengerRandy Feenstra.[141]
Shapiro has criticizedBlack Lives Matter and has stated that "the Black Lives Matter movement did indeed begin with protests aboutpolice brutality but quickly morphed into broader debates over the validity oflooting and rioting,tearing down historic statues,slavery reparations anddefunding the police."[142][non-primary source needed]
After thetrial of Derek Chauvin, where police officerDerek Chauvin was convicted of themurder of George Floyd, Shapiro stated that Chauvin should not have been found guilty of murder, and instead opined that Floyd died of a drug overdose rather than as a result of Chauvin's actions.[143][144] On March 4, 2025, Shapiro launched a website urging President Trump topardon Chauvin, though this would not cover Chauvin's state conviction for second-degree murder, for which he is serving a 22.5-year sentence.[145][146]
Shapiro practicesOrthodox Judaism,[147] which he states informs his ideological positions. Shapiro wears ayarmulke, the traditional Jewish skullcap. In a 2011 tweet, Shapiro claimed thatJudaism is plagued by "Bad Jews" who "largely vote Democrat".[148] The same year, he wrote an article titled "Jews in Name Only" in which he claimed "Jews who vote for Obama are, by and large, Jews In Name Only (JINOs)" and that such Jews "do not care about Israel" or that they "care about it less than abortion, gay marriage and global warming".[149] During the2016 presidential election, he wrote an article titled "No, It Doesn't Matter ThatBernie Sanders Is Ethnically Jewish. He's a Jew In Name Only." Despite being a practicing Jew, he has expressed admiration forChristianity and its role in the building ofWestern civilization.[150]
In October 2022, Shapiro condemnedKanye West's antisemitic comments, comparing them topropaganda in Nazi Germany. He also called West "unstable".[151]
In a 2014YouTube video entitled "The Myth of the Tiny Radical Muslim Minority", Shapiro said, "We're above 800 millionMuslims who are radicalized – more than half the Muslims on earth. That's not a minority... the myth of the tiny radical Muslim minority is just that: it's a myth".PolitiFact andChannel 4 News in the UK rejected his methodology, arguing that support forSharia law was not sufficient to label an individual a "radical Muslim", and that "The meaning of Sharia law varies from sect to sect and nation to nation."Channel 4 News also criticized his use of polls with small sample sizes as accurately representing the views of tens of millions of Muslims, though acknowledged that "some polls do show that very illiberal values and concepts can be prevalent in some Muslim countries".[152][153]
In the 2017Quebec City mosque shooting, six Muslims were killed byAlexandre Bissonnette. Police presented evidence that Bissonnette checked Shapiro's Twitter feed 93 times in the month leading up to the shooting.[154] Shapiro condemned the attack and said he did not incite the shooting.[155][156]
In 2006, Shapiro called forsedition laws to be reinstated. He cited speeches critical of theGeorge W. Bush administration by DemocratsAl Gore,John Kerry andHoward Dean as "disloyal" and seditious.[157][158] Shapiro retracted these views in a 2018 column, stating that his 2006 column "absolutely blows. It's garbage" and adding that the idea of sedition laws was "inherently idiotic". Shapiro later described PresidentBarack Obama's2010 State of the Union Address as "philosophicallyfascist."[159]
In 2008, Shapiro married Mor Toledano, anIsraeli medical doctor ofMoroccan Jewish descent,[160][161] and they lived in Los Angeles.[3] The couple have two daughters and two sons.[162][163] They practiceOrthodox Judaism.[164]
In September 2020, Shapiro announced that he and his family were leaving California.[165] While he relocated the headquarters of hisDaily Wire enterprise toNashville, Tennessee, he and his family resettled in Florida.[166][167]
Shapiro's sister, Abigail Shapiro, who studied operatic singing, is a conservative media influencer who posts videos on her YouTube channel "Classically Abby".[168] She has been subjected to online antisemitictrolling due to her brother's high public profile.[169]
Shapiro is a cousin ofMara Wilson,[170] who has disavowed him due to their differing political beliefs: Shapiro hasconservative views, while Wilson hasleft-wing beliefs.[171] It was reported in 2020 that they had not contacted each other for several years.[172]
Shapiro is a lawyer, author and columnist, as well as fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center, a conservative platform for political debates.
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