‘Kiss My A**’: Ben Shapiro Goes Scorched Earth on ‘Haters’ and Hit Pieces

Ben Shapiro responded to the series of hit pieces written about The Daily Wire over the last week or so in a blistering monologue on Friday’s edition of his show, which he shared on X with the caption, “All the haters can kiss my ass.”

“Over the past few weeks, The Daily Wire, you might have noticed, has been the subject of a bunch of hit pieces, like a veritable cornucopia of hit pieces. There was one from The Washington Post and there was one from Puck. And then finally, there was an especially ridiculous one from the stellar journalists at New York Magazine, who literally plagiarized their hit piece from The Washington Post,” observed Shapiro, who argued that the articles had a larger aim:

Well, according to New York Magazine, the future of conservatism isn’t traditional conservatism. You know, like free markets, like equal rights before law, like checks and balances, like traditional virtue. That’s done. The future, according to New York Magazine, is Nick Fuentes, confirmed Nazi stan, and woman hater, and man who will never be able to get a human woman pregnant through natural means. Or Tucker Carlson, confirmed anti-capitalist, and Muslim apologist, and victim of demon scratching. Or maybe Candace Owens, the confirmed slanderer of widows and connoisseur of French testicles. Or maybe Megyn Kelly, click-whoring grandma groyper over there.

The popular conservative pundit went on to challenge this assumption, as well as to shed light on his company’s recent layoffs, which he said had affected 13% of its workforce and “really sucked.”

“It was truly sad because all those people are great,” said Shapiro.

Then he turned his attention back to the future of conservatism, observing that “people only tend to write stories like this about major American institutions.”

“There’s no national media coverage if a top Candace Owens producer and her manager quit. Or if Megyn Kelly’s YouTube account starts shedding tens of thousands of subscribers a month. Or if Tucker Carlson’s traffic is disproportionately drawn from Pakistan — we all have our fan base. Those are all things that actually happened, by the way, but nobody really cares very much because, yeah, those people have significant audience numbers, but they don’t have any real institutional influence. They are not institutions,” argued Shapiro. “That’s not true of the Daily Wire. We’re big enough that people care when we trip up. And of course, like any business, we have our ups, e have our downs. But, as Mark Twain put it, the reports of our death are greatly exaggerated. But here’s the thing. There is something else going on here. Something very clear going on. The media left and the woke right, that’d be like Candace, and Fuentes, and Tucker, and Megyn, all of them, together, the new left, they are attempting to destroy traditional conservatism. That’s the whole thing here.”

As an example, he cited the fact that the Post was “happy to quote Candace Owens, the ranting bag lady of the internet, to explain that The Daily Wire’s numbers are down.”

Shapiro concluded by noting that while people asking “what happened” to Carlson, Kelly, and Owens, “nobody has ever asked that question about me — no one — because my worldview has not changed.

He concluded:

My principles haven’t changed because I think those principles are true and good. And those principles are not going to change. So, in the end, take it or leave it. If people decide they don’t want to hear it, it’s a free country. That’s their choice. But I am willing to bet my future and the future of America that more Americans agree with me than agree with the people who want to destroy The Daily Wire. I’m betting there are a lot more rational people in this country than conspiracy-mongering nut jobs. I’m betting that there are way more people in America who believe in truth, and virtue, and freedom than people who revel in grievance, and demoralization, and stupidity. And again, maybe I’m wrong. Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe we lose. But here’s the thing: that also doesn’t change a thing. It doesn’t change a thing, it doesn’t matter. Because the only thing that matters is the only that has ever mattered to me: speaking the truth, whether people like it or whether they don’t. Because facts still don’t care about your feelings.

Watch above Ben Shapiro on YouTube.

New: The Mediaite One-Sheet "Newsletter of Newsletters"
Your daily summary and analysis of what the many, many media newsletters are saying and reporting. Subscribe now!