Ben Shapiro Is Waging Battle Inside the MAGA Movement

23:17And so at that point. So that was your limit with her. Well, that was to be fair. I am not an officer of my company. The people who made that decision were Jeremy Boring and Caleb Robinson, the co-CEOs of the company. But that was the collective management decision. Yes. and now you specifically criticized tucker carlson for a really soft interview he did with a guy named nick fuentes you point out how outrageous he is but is that exactly what carlson wants in his guest just attention i mean i think that probably he you know the attention doesn't hurt but at the same time i think that probably there is some ideological overlap between some of the things that he believes about america and the conspiratorial forces controlling it and some of the stuff that that Nick Fuentes believes, you know, what Tucker has a habit of doing is bringing on guests who spout the most conspiratorial form of the theory.

24:09And then he sort of buys it back about 5%. And then he allows those views to be predominant in the public discourse while talking about what wonderful people these, these folks are. Okay. But I get that. And I, I can't help but agree with that, obviously, but then you have Donald Trump. He hasn't had dinner with me, but he's had dinner with Nick Fuentes. So how does that affect your feeling about Donald Trump? So obviously, I mean, I condemn that at the time when it comes to his dinner with Fuentes and I believe it was Kanye West. It was Kanye West and Fuentes at the time. The president of the United States, and people say that I grade on a curve, but I think I grade realistically here.

24:44I am not surprised by what President Trump does. He likes being with famous people. He very often does not know who they are. He will throw them out. He will say bad things about them five minutes later. He will like Steve Bannon until he calls him sloppy. Steven fires him, whereupon he will welcome him back into his orbit and like him again. And so the sort of attempt to treat... But Ben, Ben, Ben, he's having... But maybe I think you're taking this too casually. He's having dinner with a Nazi apologist. And I didn't take that casually. And then really doesn't go off and blast him. He just kind of says, oh, I kind of didn't know who it was.

25:18And Kanye brought him along. First of all, that's bad staff work, to say the least. Terrible staff work. And it's bad behavior on the part of the president of the United States, no? I agree that it's bad behavior on the part of the president of the United States. I'm not sure what else to say about that. What's the equivalent of Conor Harris or Joe Biden? I don't think that's quite the same thing as Tucker Carlson legitimately using his forum to provide Nick Fuentes a way to speak to the public for two hours. That's a pretty low bar. No, I agree. But those are the two things you're comparing. Now, at America Fest, the vice president said this.

25:50President Trump did not build the greatest coalition in politics by running his supporters through endless self-defeating purity tests. I didn't bring a list of conservatives to denounce or to de-platform. And I don't really care if some people out there, I'm sure we'll have the fake news media, denounce me after this speech. He was kind of attacking you, wasn't he? I mean, I assume that he was disagreeing with the thing that I had said. sure. And I will point out that I don't think the vice president is being very accurate about his own approach to various conservatives and other people online.

26:24He's quite fond of attacking people online from time to time. Totally. And I remember when a bunch of, I think it was young Republican leaders had their signal chat exposed and they were making all kinds of anti-Semitic remarks on that. And the vice president didn't denounce that either. In fact, he just kind of thought it was, you know, kids being kids. Right. And again, I highly disagree with this as both a matter of morality and as a matter of tactics. I think tactically is foolish. I think it's immoral. What's going on? What's going on that this is so prevalent and excused at the top end of at least part of the conservative media sphere and the White House?

27:06I mean, I think it's a mirror image of what's going on on the left. I think to pretend that anti-Semitism is not rising on both the right and the left is to be whistling past the graveyard. But one of the things fair enough, but stick to the right. But the reason that I'm pointing this out, I understand, but Democrats would like to be in office. And so, again, to go back to sort of the original point with regard to President Trump and voting for him and not voting for him. If the question is binary choice, then you're going to have to make a decision between one of these parties because these are the two major parties.

27:37And so that's why I think it's important to bring into perspective what's happening in both parties. But Ben, do you see anti-Semitism in the mouths of leading Democratic contenders for the presidency? I see anti-Semitism in the Democratic Party apparatus's willingness to not only humor, but to promote everybody ranging from New York Mayor Zahran Mamdani, to Rashida Tlaib, Congresswoman from Michigan, to Ilhan Omar, Congresswoman from Minnesota, to the bizarre attempt to mirror all of the excesses of the anti-Israel movement. And I anti-Netanahua, I mean, anti-Israel. Listen, I asked Gavin Newsom about this, right?

28:15I was on Gavin's podcast, the governor of California, and he acknowledged that this sort of stuff has become quite prevalent in sort of democratic circles. So the reason that I'm pointing this out is, number one, because I think it's important just as a matter of description to be realistic about the rise of antisemitism in the United States period. And then I'm happy to discuss the problems on my own side of the political aisle, which I have repeatedly. And you have talked about the antisemitism on the left. and we can discuss that as well. But did the degree of it on the right take you by surprise?

28:46Yes, sure. First of all, to understand what's happening, I think we first have to understand what antisemitism actually is because I think that when people mischaracterize the definition, that allows their particular side to escape. So what people tend to do is they will define antisemitism in a way that excuses their side and that throws all of the blame on the other side. The definition of antisemitism, antisemitism at its root is a conspiracy theory about the power of Jews as a group in the world. And that can be channeled into an anti-Zionism that says that Israel is controlling American foreign policy and that Israel has befuddled the world.

29:20And it's all about the Benjamins, which is the kind of thing that Ilhan Omar says, or it can be channeled into Jews in America are too powerful in the media and they are cliquish and they are controlling the circumstances of my life. And yet, Ben, as somebody who's written from Israel and Palestine for years and years, and I, you know, the reaction to some of the things I write is that I'm an anti-Semite, which is, I got to say, news to me. But I'm no more anti-Semitic than you are, and to get attacked like that is hideous. Okay, but so this is why I'm trying to be more precise about the definition.

30:01Being critical of Israeli policy is not the same thing as saying, for example, that Israel's government designed and implemented a genocide, which is a lie. And that is a lie that can be chalked up to a nefarious view of what Jews are doing in the world, because it is also part and parcel of a broader lie, which is that Jews have then sold the idea that they are capable of doing whatever they want under the guise of America's banner. And they've done so because of their inordinate power. It's part of a broader conspiracy theory. And so one of the things that's happened is in much the same way that the right said for a long time, you keep calling everybody racist, therefore nobody's a racist, which is untrue, right?

30:36There are actual racists out there. But the idea is that if you over-apply a category, then it starts losing its power and its effectiveness, and that actually opens the door to the thing. I think the same thing has happened with antisemitism. And so what I've said before is, instead of talking in categories of antisemitism or Jew hatred or the rest of it, why don't we talk about what's true and what's false and what's moral and what's not moral? Because that's easier for people to get their head around. Ben, let me ask you about another extremely potent issue, not just in the Republican Party, and that's the Epstein files.

31:06You've been following this. What do you think it proves or doesn't prove other than the absolute hideous nature of the subject himself? I think the let's put the virality of the narrative around the Epstein files is different from what the evidence shows in the Epstein files. What the evidence shows in the Epstein files is that you have a number of very high profile people who are in in close contact with Jeffrey Epstein, who was a convicted sex offender with minors. The the indictments against Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell suggests that the trafficking of minors was about Jeffrey Epstein. There's no one else who's been indicted in terms of trafficking of minors except for Jeffrey Epstein.

31:47And according to the FBI under President Trump, there is no one who is going to be because they do not have evidence sufficient that he was trafficking young girls to other people. The narrative that has been drawn from the Epstein story, because presumably people don't know where his money comes from, although there was a very, very deep dive, I believe, in New York Times Magazine looking into where his money came from. The narrative is a broader narrative that goes back to kind of the heart of conspiracy theorizing that has taken over, I think, large swaths of both parties, but it is very, very potent on the right.

32:15and that is that there is a cadre of people who are preying upon children, who manipulate everything in your life, who may be doing so because they have been honeypotted or because they are being manipulated by a foreign intelligence service, typically on the right, on the far right, this is treated as Mossad, even though there is zero evidence that that is the case. And then Ehud Barak's name is brought up in this context. As you might imagine, I'm not a fan of Ehud Barak, but there is no evidence that on behalf of Mossad, he was running Jeffrey Epstein as a sex trafficking agent. By the way, it'd be pretty terrible statecraft considering he was already a convicted sex offender.

32:49I think that the broader theory here, which goes well beyond the evidence and the virality of that theory speaks to people's belief that they are not in control of their own lives and that conspiratorial forces who prey on children, which is obviously the best way to, if you wish to have the most nefarious form of the most nefarious theory that you've got, making them pedophiles is a great way to do it. But the attempt to kind of draw out a gigantic pedophilic conspiracy ring that was running all of America's foreign policy and domestic policy and culture, I think that goes to people's desire to abdicate control over their own lives, which I think gets back to some of my original politics, right?

33:25Which is where I was saying that I think individual responsibility is the lodestar of a successful society. And when you have conspiratorialism take over, as Karl Popper suggested, it's a massive problem.

33:39My guest is the commentator and podcast host, Ben Shapiro. Our conversation continues in a moment on the New Yorker Radio Hour.

33:55Right now, we are living through some of the most tumultuous political times our country has ever known. I'm David Remnick, and each week on the New Yorker Radio Hour, I'll try to make sense of what's happening, alongside politicians and thinkers like Cory Booker, Nancy Pelosi, Liz Cheney, Tim Waltz, Ketanji Brown-Jackson, Newt Gingrich, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Charlemagne Tha God, and so many more. That's all in the New Yorker Radio Hour, wherever you listen to podcasts.

34:27This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. My guest today is the commentator Ben Shapiro. Shapiro has maintained an enormous audience, especially among conservatives. But he walks a fine line. He's not exactly MAGA, certainly not all the time. He's taken issue with some of Donald Trump's positions, not to mention his ethics. And earlier in our conversation, Shapiro frankly acknowledged real corruption on Trump's part. But he's very quick to accuse the left of pearl-clutching, too. and he tends to find that whatever he may object to with Trump, Trump's opponents share equally in the blame.

35:08Is Donald Trump and the MAGA movement healthy for this country or would you rather see the Republican Party return to the roots that you started out as a conservative and a Republican? Do you see promise in the people that have been put forward as successors to Donald Trump? J.D. Vance among them. So, you know, I have differential opinions on a wide variety of these people. The president obviously picked Vance for his vice president. If vice president were in a primary with Marco Rubio, I would be likely to support Marco Rubio in that primary over J.D. Vance, for example. But the president did pick Marco Rubio for a secretary of state.

35:48And so I like, you know, so I think that when we say, are there options that I like better than others? Sure. Are there things about the Trump movement that I think have been good and salutary? Sure. Do I think that is he my ideal? If I if I could construct in my head the ideal Republican candidate or president, would it look exactly like Donald Trump? No, but I'm not sure that he's claiming to be that, nor do I have that magical power. And try as I might to manifest that in real life. What do you think Donald Trump cares about? I try not to get into motivations because I'm not a psychiatrist.

36:19But here's the nice thing about President Trump. When you asked if he was honest before, I said in some ways, yes, in some ways, no. And we got to the ways in no, but we never got to the ways in yes. The way in yes is that whatever is in his head is going to come out his mouth in the next 2.7 seconds. There is no brain mouth barrier for President Trump. That's not so much honesty as impulsivity, no? Well, I mean, it's honesty in the sense that you are getting his honest take on what he thinks in that moment. It may be an impulsive approach to honesty, but it is definitely – there is a definition of honesty by which it turns.

36:48It's revealing. I'll give you that. It is revealing. It is authentic. If you want to call it authentic, it's authentic. But as far as what is sort of the core of his sort of political belief, again, I think he has an instinct that he wants America to be great and powerful in the world. He likes the symbolism of America being great and powerful in the world. America is strong. America is virile. These are things that clearly he does believe. And so the way that manifests in policy may be grabbing Nicolas Maduro and taking him back to New York for trial. Or it may be an industrial policy that is more reminiscent of a 1937 FDR policy than it is of a traditional sort of Reagan Republican policy.

37:24Or finding more to be sympathetic about with Vladimir Putin than Zelensky. It's pretty slippery slope. Yeah. So when it comes to – right. When it comes to Putin and Zelensky, again, that one I cannot explain from a sort of America great perspective. I think that the president – Can't you explain it? I mean, can't you explain it in terms of he is impressed by, taken with the kind of authoritarian impulses and behavior of Putin rather than Zelensky? So same with Xi Jinping. I think that he is attracted by powerful people, for sure. But again, I'm not going to – he has sort of varied fairly widely, actually, over the course of the last year and a half on Russia-Ukraine.

38:08And again, I've been very consistent that I think that we ought to be supporting Ukraine sufficient to deter the Russian threat and to force Putin to the table. Now, I want to ask you about Minneapolis, which is still going on. Just from a free speech point of view, from a First Amendment point of view, should somebody like Don Lemon be prosecuted? I mean, obviously, if what he was doing was performing an act of journalism, the answer is no. And the question is going to be whether they can prove in court that he was actually a conspirator in the violation of the FACE Act. Are you worried about Donald Trump's regard for journalists?

38:45He's obviously infatuated them. He loves to talk to them. But he refers to them as enemies of the people. And you know, as a student of history, that's a phrase that comes from Robespierre. It comes from Stalin. And it has consequences. I mean, again, he's been doing that for 10 years. And you seem to have a robust audience. and the ability to speak freely every day. And I don't think that you're sitting in your studio right now waiting for the FBI to break down your door. You think he's just kidding around. Well, the FBI had no problem breaking down the door of the Washington Post reporter and taking all her devices recently.

39:16And if you go back to the Obama administration, James Rosen was treated quite similarly when he was working for Fox News. And then the Associated Press, I think, had some situations with the Obama administration as well. Like this, again, this is why I go back to, is Trump breaking new ground here or is he using tools that were left over from other administrations in ways that other people don't like. And I don't like it either. I mean, him suing various outlets, I think, is wrong and bad. Do I think that we are now at grave threat that the First Amendment has ended in the United States because Don Lemon was picked up by the by the DOJ?

39:47But Ben, sooner or later, he's not going to like what you say. And your turn is going to come and you're going to be deposed and you're going to be sued. And will that change your view of this? Not particularly. I mean, I'm not if he again, I think that it's wrong for him to do the suing of these outlets. So I'm not sure what would change about my opinion, given that I've said already that I think that it's wrong. It might hurt more if he did it to me. Let me get a little inside about. You've noticed that I'm not excusing any of the things that I think he's doing that are wrong. And this is and this is why, you know, one of the things that I think that if people on the opposite side of the aisle actually wanted to be shooting for a better future here, which is I think what we would all like, it's not enough to simply rail against Trump and say, this is not normal.

40:31It's why, you know, I think the people on the left should do some of the same with their own side. Much of what we talked about here is me criticizing my own side. I'd say 90 percent of what we talked about is me criticizing my own side. But I find an extraordinary dearth of that, unfortunately, on the left. And because of that, I think people do react by supporting the right. And this is this is one of the things that I think is is a huge mistake on the part of media is to sort of play this game where Trump does a thing. Therefore, therefore it is a bad thing. People on the left do the same thing.

41:00They are opposing Trump, therefore it's a good thing. And that seems to me completely problematic. I'm perfectly willing, Tan, each of these specific problems, say if the evidence shows that Donald Trump is targeting Donald Trump. There's no question that every president, and I'll just say it unequivocally, every president sooner or later lies. Every president sooner or later misbehaves. We're talking though about radical difference in degree, are we not? I mean, I really do not think so. That's where we disagree. Yeah, we definitely disagree on this. We definitely disagree on this. I think that the left routinely underestimates what's done by the left, whereas I think I'm being pretty accurate in that I think both sides are routinely violating the rules, and that's why we are in sort of a political death spiral to a certain extent.

41:42When you look at immigration policy, I think we can agree that there was no immigration policy, certainly no effective immigration policy when it came to the southern border for far too long, and we can argue about the reasons for that and what bill didn't get passed and so on. How do you feel about the way it's being done as dramatized by ICE in Minneapolis and elsewhere and mass deportations and people being shipped off to El Salvador and this kind of thing? So these are really sort of two separate questions, right? Trump's border policy is incredibly popular because the border was sealed day one.

42:19And it turns out that you didn't need a piece of legislation to do that. Joe Biden could have always done that. And in fact, even in the last couple of months while he was president, he sort of started to do that. As far as internal policing of illegal immigration, I think that the approach taken by Tom Homan, the Borders are, has been significantly better than the approach taken by the DHS secretary or Stephen Miller, the president's top advisor on these issues, which is hone in on the criminal illegal immigrants, many of which are in the system. I think that Democrats are actually making a major mistake by not having local law enforcement cooperate with ICE in taking people who are in jail and deporting those people or reporting them to ICE for deportation.

42:59I think that's a huge mistake by Democrats politically and just in terms of policy. And that's been a consistent policy in the United States for a while is to deport criminal illegal immigrants. Ramping that up, I think, is both smart policy and good policy. I think that the Trump administration's reaction, which has been, you know, what if we set up quotas or what if we decide that we're going to radically ramp up and going after non-criminal illegal immigrants, by which I mean people who have not committed an additional crime other than crossing the border illegally, that that is a political mistake and that that's been redounding not to the benefit of the Trump administration.

43:35I think that there are better ways to do it than they've been. But I think that Democrats are playing with fire in a lot of the stuff that they've been doing in places like Minneapolis. I think the idea that ICE agents are state-sponsored terrorism, I confronted the California governor about that, and he backed off of that. Rhetorically. Yes. When people suggest that ICE is Gestapo, when people are likening this to the Holocaust, I think it's a massive, massive, not only mistake. When people in the government, the highest levels of government call, you know, refer to people who are like Alex Petty as a as not just refer to him as a terrorist.

44:10Yes, I thought that I literally came out that day and I said that that was a complete misapprehension of the situation so far as I could tell on the tape. And I said the same thing about the characterization of Renee Good as somebody who's trying to mow down immigration officers by the bushel. I mean, it was stated by Gregory Bovino, I believe, that Alex Petty wanted to kill as many ICE agents as possible or Border Patrol as possible. And I said that that's not true. And I think that that's wrong, which is why I'm very happy that Tom Homan, who seems to be more of an adult, has been put in charge of implementation of border policy in Minnesota.

44:40I do want to focus on one thing. You said, and I think quite rightly earlier, that the left and the right keep, these aren't your words, but mine, just building their, you know, digging their trenches deeper and deeper and deeper. who do you see on your side of things in the conservative world who's a potential leader that would not have these tremendous moral failings that you've described, who would do without the kind of rhetorical ugliness that you have denounced, who would cast out the kind of characters that Tucker Carlson and company are encouraging? Who do you see as a potential leader on the Republican side that would make you a great deal more comfortable?

45:25I mean, again, I think there are a number of them. I think ranging from Glenn Youngkin, former governor of Virginia, to Brian Kemp, former governor of Georgia. I think the governor of DeSantis in Florida has done an excellent job. I think that Senator Ted Cruz has spoken out very clearly against people like, for example, Tucker Carlson and his predations. I think Secretary of State Rubio would be really good. I'd like to see Vice President Vance change tack on a lot of this. I hope that he will. This is actually a systemic problem on both the left and the right is the primary system is very, very difficult for people who are not deliberately inflammatory to navigate because primary voters tend to be the most passionate voters.

46:00And that means that the people who tend to elevate are the people who are sometimes the most provocative. I mean, you know, you've spent time in the United States Senate. If you go and you talk to some of the most passionate advocates on both sides of the aisle in the Senate, they actually do still do the kind of Tip O 'Neill, Ronald Reagan thing. Like they still mow each other. A lot of them still like each other. A lot of them still do lunch together. And the kind of story that's sold, I think, in the commentariat particularly is that you must hate the person on the other side in order for you to win great victory.

46:31You shouldn't be able to do things with 51 percent. You should have to have 70 percent to do it. That's why the system was built the way it is, with all of the gridlock between the branches and between the states and the federal government. And I think that the way that both the political parties as vehicles for political victory and also the commentariat in search of clicks and giggles have mobilized is in opposition to that. And so people are getting more and more frustrated. I'm not interested in clicks, much less giggles, even though we do have cartoons. My concern is with the sustenance of democracy and democratic institutions.

47:07And And I wonder if we share or we don't share a concern that the period that we're in now is potentially lays waste to those institutions. I mean, I'm worried about it for sure, but I think that we may be worried about it from different angles. One of the things that I notice about democracies that sort of fall into crisis is, number one, obviously, lack of institutional trust. But if you believe that if the other side wins, it's literally the end of the democracy, that is incredibly dangerous. That really is a problem because then it suggests that if the other side wins, you're never going to get to vote again.

47:43Tyranny is upon you. And perhaps the only solution is a solution that sort of breaks the system. But Ben, when the president of the United States tries to threaten people in Georgia to give him some votes or he starts to talk about nationalizing the elections, all these things, whether it's January 6th. aren't these legitimate concerns? Is the worrier the problem or the actual situation the problem? Well, I mean, no, I think in some situations, the worrier is the problem. In some situations, it depends on the conclusion you're drawing. I think the worry about January 6th was justified because obviously I think that the behavior of the president between the election and January 6th was morally wrong and also legally wrong.

48:20But I also think that the guardrails held. And I think that the notion that Democrats are sitting around worrying that there will never be another clean election, that's not true. And when Republicans say the same thing, Democrats are right to pounce on that. Democrats will say, President Trump will say, if we don't win this election, it's because it was stolen. But then I'll hear Democrats turn around and say very much the same thing about Republicans. And once both sides believe that if the other side wins, the election was stolen, then how are we supposed to ever share a polity together? That is a massive problem.

48:50And so it's something, again, I pressed Governor Newsom on this when I sat with him. It's like, you're out there saying that it's the death of democracy. We're at the end of democracy. You're trying to run in 2028. So you don't believe that. And one of the things that when the president says he wants to federalize elections, I say that he shouldn't say that he's wrong. You know what else was wrong? When the House of Representatives under Democrats tried to push H.R.1, which was a federalization of elections. It was an attempt to use the power of the federal government to cram down particular election rules on states, including things like ballot harvesting.

49:19What it leads to is a place that actually Vice President Vance has said. He said you shouldn't refrain from using the tool because you believe the other side won't use it. They will use it. So you should preemptively use it. Once we get to the point in American politics where one side basically says the other side will do whatever it can to cheat, steal, lie, change election results, destroy the country. Therefore, we must do that to stop them from doing that. Then you are really at sort of the end of a thing. And that thing is the American experiment. But the reality is that our system is very much still functional.

49:52And last I checked, Democrats are slated to win the House and possibly the Senate. So they don't feel like this is the end of the road. Ben Shapiro, thank you. Thanks so much.

50:29Come see Critics at Large live. On February 19th, we're going to be at the 92nd Street Y in New York City for a conversation about Wuthering Heights. There's a new adaptation coming up starring Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi, and we will certainly be getting into that. But we'll also do what we, humbly, I'll say what we do best. Returning to the text, we're going to go deep on the gothic and Emily Bronte. Join me, Vincent Cunningham, and my co-hosts, Alex Schwartz and Nomi Frye, for the discussion. And crucially, if you buy a VIP ticket, you'll join us for an after party too. Go to 92ny.org for more information.

51:13That's 92ny.org. Hope to see you there.

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