Background and career
Benjamin Aaron Shapiro (born January 15, 1984) is an American conservative political commentator and media host. He writes columns for Creators Syndicate, Newsweek, and Ami Magazine, and is editor emeritus for The Daily Wire, which he co-founded in 2015. Shapiro is the host of The Ben Shapiro Show, a daily political podcast and live radio show. He was editor-at-large of Breitbart News from 2012 until his resignation in 2016. Shapiro has also authored 16 non-fiction books. Shapiro has described his political views as economically libertarian and socially conservative, and is critical of the alt-right movement. He opposes abortion, gun control, same-sex marriage, transgender rights, and the Affordable Care Act. He supports capital punishment, tax cuts, and the 2003 invasion of Iraq. He has condemned Hamas and praised Israel and the IDF in their role in the ongoing Gaza war and overall Israeli–Palestinian conflict.
Benjamin Aaron Shapiro was born on January 15, 1984, in Burbank, California, to a Conservative Jewish family. He is Ashkenazi Jewish. When he was 9 years old, his family began to observe Orthodox Judaism. He started playing violin at five years old and performed at the Israel Bonds Banquet in 1996 at age 12. His parents both worked in Hollywood; his mother was a TV company executive and his father, David Shapiro, worked as a composer. Shapiro went from Walter Reed Middle School in the San Fernando Valley to Yeshiva University High School of Los Angeles in Westside, Los Angeles, where he graduated in 2000 at age 16. He studied political science at the University of California, Los Angeles, graduating in 2004 at age 20 with a Bachelor of Arts, summa cum laude, and membership in Phi Beta Kappa. He then attended Harvard Law School, where he studied under liberal law professors Lani Guinier and Randall Kennedy. Shapiro was a Claremont Institute Publius Fellow in 2006. He graduated from Harvard in 2007 with a Juris Doctor (J.D.), cum laude.
After graduating from law school, Shapiro entered private practice at the law firm Goodwin Procter but left after 10 months. As of March 2012, he ran an independent legal consultancy firm, Benjamin Shapiro Legal Consulting, in Los Angeles.
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, and had written two books by age 21. In his first book Brainwashed: How Universities Indoctrinate America's Youth (2004), Shapiro argues that the American Left has ideological dominance over universities and that professors do not tolerate non-left opinions. 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 a left-wing agenda that it actively promotes through prime-time entertainment programming. In the book, the producers of Happy Days and M*A*S*H say they pursued a pro-pacifist, anti-Vietnam-War agenda in those series. Shapiro also became a fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. In 2013, Threshold Editions published Shapiro's fifth book, Bullies: How the Left's Culture of Fear and Intimidation Silences Americans. In 2017, he released his only novel, True Allegiance, a book about "An illegal immigrant crisis breaking out along America's Southern border". In 2019, Shapiro published the book The Right Side of History: How Reason and Moral Purpose Made the West Great, which focuses on the importance of Judeo-Christian values and laments their decline in modern America. In 2021, Shapiro published the book The Authoritarian Moment, which argues that there is no pressing authoritarian 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.
In 2012, Shapiro became editor-at-large of Breitbart News, a news outlet founded by Andrew Breitbart. After Breitbart came under the leadership of Steve Bannon, Shapiro attempted to distance himself from him. Shapiro resigned from his position as editor-at-large of Breitbart News in March 2016 following what he characterized as the website's lack of support for reporter Michelle Fields in response to her alleged assault by Corey Lewandowski, Donald Trump's former campaign manager, in spite of video and eyewitness evidence of the assault. In his resignation statement, Shapiro stated, "Steve Bannon is a bully, and has sold out Andrew Breitbart's mission in order to back another bully, Donald Trump; he has shaped the company into Trump's personal Pravda". Shapiro defended Bannon when he was accused of antisemitism.
In 2012, Shapiro joined KRLA-AM 870 as a host on their morning radio program alongside Heidi Harris and Brian Whitman. By 2016, he was one of the hosts for KRLA's The Morning Answer talk show. Despite pressure from Salem Media executives for show hosts to be more supportive of Donald Trump during the 2016 United States presidential election, Shapiro remained critical of Trump throughout the campaign. Shapiro and Jeremy Boreing founded The Daily Wire on September 21, 2015. He serves as editor emeritus as well as the host of his online political podcast The Ben Shapiro Show, which is broadcast every weekday. As of March 2019, the podcast was ranked by Podtrac as the second most popular podcast in the U.S. Westwood One began syndicating The Ben Shapiro Show podcast to radio in April 2018. In 2018, Politico described the podcast as "massively popular". 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. As of March 2019, according to Westwood One, The Ben Shapiro Show was being carried by more than 200 stations, and was broadcast in nine of the top ten markets. In September 2018, Shapiro started hosting The Ben Shapiro Election Special on Fox News. The limited-run series covered news and issues relating to the 2018 midterm elections. Shapiro has made frequent appearances on PragerU with talks on intersectionality and Hollywood with 4,900,000 to 8,400,000 views as of December 2018. In 2021, Ben Shapiro's podcast was ranked 9th most listened to on Apple podcasts. In June 2020, Shapiro stepped down from his role as editor-in-chief of The Daily Wire — a position he'd held since the site's founding — taking on the role of editor emeritus.
