Business Why Ben Shapiro’s Media Empire Is Collapsing - The collapse of the Daily Wire can be seen as a dire warning for traditional Republicans.

Photo: Mark Peterson/Redux

There was a time, not very long ago, when Ben Shapiro could reasonably call himself the king of all conservative media.

In 2020, as Drew Harwell at the Washington Post notes, Shapiro’s media company, the Daily Wire, “ranked as Facebook’s top English-language publisher for three straight months. Its sarcastic news items on then–House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s salon visits gained millions more views than the websites of Fox News, CNN and the New York Times.” Shapiro himself was ubiquitous, a right-wing star who had risen to fame before Donald Trump and seamlessly adapted to the MAGA takeover of the Republican Party. He was a digital battering ram against the Democrats and the progressive left. He seemed guaranteed, like Fox itself, for an indefinite run at the top of the media heap.

That’s all over now. The Daily Wire is instituting significant layoffs. Its website has emerged as one of the great traffic losers in conservative media. Meanwhile, the company has seen its subscriber base on YouTube starting to shrink. There are Daily Wire YouTube videos that now, after a few days online, have less than 10,000 views, a catastrophically small number for a channel with more than 3 million subscribers. The top comments all mock the low view counts.

If a variety of poor business decisions can be blamed, in part, for the Daily Wire’s downfall — ill-fated investments in feature films, an epic fantasy series, and peculiar merchandise — the greater story is the collapse of Shapiro’s constituency, especially among the young media consumers who once fueled the Daily Wire’s runaway growth. There are two realities to Shapiro conservatism in 2026: It retains a significant foothold among Republican elites, and it is fast being rejected by the future grassroots of the party.

Shapiro, who is an Orthodox Jew, is fiercely pro-Israel. His support for Israel and hatred of the Palestinian cause are issues that define him as a public political figure. He is an unequivocal backer of Netanyahu’s Israel and a committed, conventional neoconservative; he has been predictably thrilled by Trump’s war against Iran. Also a fiscal libertarian and social conservative, Shapiro once sat at the happy median of the Republican voter and could claim, at least in the 2010s, that he understood the beating heart of campus conservatism.

No longer. The anti-Israel, antisemitic Groypers, led by Nick Fuentes, are in ascendance. Candace Owens, who once worked with Shapiro at the Daily Wire, now boasts a YouTube channel that’s larger than his, where she’s indulged in anti-Israel conspiracy theories, warred with Charlie Kirk’s widow, and even broken with Trump without suffering any financial consequences. Beyond Owens and Fuentes, Tucker Carlson and Megyn Kelly have found massive audiences with their own brand of conspiratorial commentary that marries Israel skepticism and isolationist advocacy. Carlson and Kelly have both loudly opposed the war in Iran; Trump now reviles them, but neither ex–Fox talking head has backed down. Carlson seems to be moving on from Trump completely.

As the recent state elections in Indiana show, Republicans who break with Trump can still suffer. He remains godly among the MAGA faithful. It remains to be seen if the Carlson or Owens projects have an electoral future. What is clear, however, is that there’s an online constituency for what they do, whereas Shapiro’s will have an expiration date. Gen-Z conservatives have no great affection for Israel. In the Groyper tent, this can be chalked up to Jew hatred. But the story is far more complicated among the millions of young right-leaning voters who simply don’t understand how Trump could campaign on America First while standing up a foreign policy that is clearly subservient to the whims of the Netanyahu government. In 2025, a pundit who claimed Netanyahu would be dictating the terms of an Iran bombing campaign to Trump might have been accused of trafficking in antisemitic tropes. Instead, we’ve learned that’s essentially what happened.

The reality of two wars — Israel’s bombing of Gaza following the October 7 attacks and the ongoing bombardment of Iran — cannot be waved away by the likes of Shapiro, whose propagandist talking points have grown stale. There are young conservatives willing to call Israel’s actions in Gaza genocidal or question how establishing a violent apartheid state in the West Bank is furthering American interests. This doesn’t mean there’s any groundswell of sympathy for the Palestinians among right-wing Gen Z, but it does preclude the ironclad support for Israel that Shapiro has always insisted is essential for any conservative. The chaos in Iran, meanwhile, has only damaged Shapiro’s standing further. Republican voters overall still back Trump and the war, but support for MAGA is collapsing among the youth — which is to say, Shapiro’s audience. What is America First about incinerating an Iranian school for no real reason?

In the second Trump term, conventional conservatives are undoubtedly the power brokers, and they’ll have another two and a half years to impose their will on the country and the rest of the world. Attempted regime change in Iran and Venezuela were great neoconservative projects. Marco Rubio might be the most important official in the Trump Cabinet, and there are signs he’s displacing J.D. Vance as the front-runner for the 2028 nomination. Who, though, will actually own the future? What will the GOP look like in 10 or 20 years? Will your prototypical Republican be a Shapiro Republican — libertarian on economics, interventionist on foreign policy, and extremely pro-Israel? Or will they look very different, closer to a Carlson or an Owens or even a Fuentes?

The collapse of the Daily Wire can be seen as a dire warning for traditional Republicans. Young conservatives are now looking on as the Iran war rapidly devolves into a quagmire and seeing all the damage it has wrought. They view this as an outgrowth of Israeli foreign policy, and they don’t like it. In a post-Trump future, they’ll have little desire to repeat these interventions. Like the Rockefeller Republican of yore, the Shapiro Republican could go extinct entirely.

This story has been updated to credit reporting from the Washington Post.

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[frozen_runner]

By people you've already captured and thus this "talking" gives you no political advantage.

You convince no one, and mistake the "oh fuck off" you're getting from it as a positive since it's at least interaction.....

Indeed. People spend more and more of their time online and forget the internet isn't real life. It's like they start to assume offline debates and interactions need to be like online flame wars, and that's just insane.

 

[SmokelessFire]

The lore that Abby Shapiro is his sister always cracks me up, especially since there's a bunch of her leaked nudes online, which would make him crazy.

Nah that was actually a different very jewish looking girl with giant honkers.

 

[GettrGriftr]

Shapiro imploded for me when he was doing some tour of the UK and had an interview/debate? with a conservative and walked out of the whole thing when faced with mild pushback. He completely flipped his shit then tried to walk it all back, but he had already shown that his feelings do care about the facts.

I was legit surprised by that. One didn't have to be a Scot to know who Andrew Neil is and what kind of interviewer he is. I find it hard to believe that Tiny Hat didn't know who Neil was before that interview or couldn't do five minutes of research on the man.

Maybe li'l Ben thought that, since Neil is also more or less conservative, he'd get more of a Sean Hannity reception. But Neil puts  everybody on the spot, and Ben was no different.

 

[Blewberry Nausea]

I know one way to save your empire, Benny boy; Have your sister whip out those giant milkers and film some OF-style content!

Nah, the hype has gone on too long. It would be like that South Park episode with the one girl with the big tits teases showing them off all episode then does it at the end and it’s Quaato from Total Recall.

 

[Gandhi's Left Hook]

I was legit surprised by that. One didn't have to be a Scot to know who Andrew Neil is and what kind of interviewer he is. I find it hard to believe that Tiny Hat didn't know who Neil was before that interview or couldn't do five minutes of research on the man.

Maybe li'l Ben thought that, since Neil is also more or less conservative, he'd get more of a Sean Hannity reception. But Neil puts  everybody on the spot, and Ben was no different.

It surprised me as well. Shapiro was billing himself as this political tough guy and he folded so hard.

I really think his decline started there even if it took a decade.

 

[Fartificial Insmelligence]

Nah, the hype has gone on too long. It would be like that South Park episode with the one girl with the big tits teases showing them off all episode then does it at the end and it’s Quaato from Total Recall.

For me it’s not about knowing how they look (Grok can show me a zillion variations of a topless Abby Shapiro), it’s the fact that it’d be embarrassing for Ben

 

[Hey Johnny Bravo]

Turns out there isn't much of a market in America for "I don't care about the browning of America, now pay your tithe to Israel, goyim."

I've listened to Ben Shapiro's show and he has, at least in the past, pointed out the browning of America and why that's bad. I know a lot of people hate him and his show for a variety of reasons, but he is not like Mark Levin.

 

[MadDisaster]

I never enjoyed Shapiro, and his Israel and war support doesn't work for people who want "America First" abd more isolationist policies. It has nothing to do with Fuentes or even really being anti-Jewish. People, middle or conservative both, are sick of being ignored in favor of foreign or monied interests while their lives continue to get worse.

If both sides want infinity foreigners (illegals or H1-Bs), or prioritize foreign interests (NATO and the UN, or Israel and the Middle East) there's nowhere for Americans who want things to actually benefit them for once.

 

[Mr. Zed da Robot Poon Fed]

Whilst "Am I racist?" took the cuckservative line of "democrats are the real racists", I'm convinced Walsh is close to defecting. When the Wire crumbles, I hope he goes full dissident, either on the JQ with Candace and Tucker or on race with Jared Taylor. It's the next step for him.

Locate your nuts, Matt. You've already made enough shekels.

It’s interesting because Ben even mentioned that Matt did not want the USA to intervene in the Israel-Palestine conflict, and while he claims he was fine with that, it's clear that he had problems with Matt's viewpoint.

The whole "facts don't care about your feelings" era are over. It's clear that a ton of people don't give a shit. Whoever isn't convinced that women don't have penises already made their decision.

And now he's on the internet competing with more genuine opinions with regards to stuff like Isreal and marriage.

His entertainment sector also features mostly crap like Mr. Burchum and Lady Ballers. You try to be anti-woke just to represent all of the other problems Hollywood and entertainment currently have.

 

[The Hardest R]

I was legit surprised by that. One didn't have to be a Scot to know who Andrew Neil is and what kind of interviewer he is. I find it hard to believe that Tiny Hat didn't know who Neil was before that interview or couldn't do five minutes of research on the man.

Maybe li'l Ben thought that, since Neil is also more or less conservative, he'd get more of a Sean Hannity reception. But Neil puts  everybody on the spot, and Ben was no different.

Lil Benji Shoahpiro got his start “owning” PoliSci 101 students. He never participated in actual debates, especially those as seasoned as Andrew Neil. He intentionally picked the softest and weakest targets and got annihilated when he left his bubble.

 

[God of Nothing]

ah yes
"republicans"

 

[Althalus]

Others have mentioned the failure of spin-off media like Mr. Birchum, I'll just say that show failed because the writing sucked and none of the characters were compelling.

The titular character is a stereotypical blue-collar white man who drives a pickup truck and teaches woodworking at a high school. He is written as a typical boomer who complains about kids not knowing anything and has the boomer "I'm the sole pillar holding the world together by existing" mentality. He even has a typical boomer meltdown at a store cashier because the cashier didn't know something. Said meltdown was portrayed as being justified, but any person under 40 watching that would think it was ridiculous). The only antagonist I remember is a millennial caricature with a man bun, generic leftist political views, and an annoying personality. Very original.

I saw maybe 1 or 2 episodes and that was enough, didn't bother watching the rest of the show to form any further opinions.

There was also another show that was a blatant Archie Bunker ripoff but also with boring/flat characters. Didn't even bother watching that one beyond a few youtube clips.

Daily Wire ironically ran into the same problem that leftist media ran into, which is that ideology-driven writing usually sucks, and you need to write a good story first before putting a message in it.

 

[Would]

There was a time, not very long ago, when Ben Shapiro could reasonably call himself the king of all conservative media.

Dark times, those.

and it is fast being rejected by the future grassroots of the party

Good. Fuck Israel first “Americans”.
Boomer-era Republicans only know how to suck circumsized cock and smile about it.

 

[Angry Alt Right Nerd]

There was a time, not very long ago, when Ben Shapiro could reasonably call himself the king of all conservative media.

In 2020, as Drew Harwell at the Washington Post notes, Shapiro’s media company, the Daily Wire, “ranked as Facebook’s top English-language publisher for three straight months. Its sarcastic news items on then–House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s salon visits gained millions more views than the websites of Fox News, CNN and the New York Times.” Shapiro himself was ubiquitous, a right-wing star who had risen to fame before Donald Trump and seamlessly adapted to the MAGA takeover of the Republican Party. He was a digital battering ram against the Democrats and the progressive left. He seemed guaranteed, like Fox itself, for an indefinite run at the top of the media heap.

Strange, I was told conservatives were the most oppressed and silenced demographic everywhere.

 

[Halbschwanz]

Alot of political commentator guys like Ben Shapiro have a limited shelf-life. And he has kind of reached the end of his. His act is stale and he is really boring.

Shapiro puttered out once "SJW rekt" debate comps stopped being popular. Never mind that with the rash of assassinations and attempts RWers are finally realizing their opponents are not harmless idiots and that neocons will gladly throw them into the enemy's meat grinder before doing anything to fix a problem.

Defining America by the fact it saved Jews from evil mustache man, or pretending an African or Mexican is a "fellow christian with the same worldview as us" is just an impossible to maintain illusion now.

NAXALTniggers shall be made tie their own nooses as they are fed an infinite stream of police bodycam footage and Tiktoks of brown people recording themselves committing crimes while bragging about it.

 

[oh no its pipkun]

Whilst "Am I racist?" took the cuckservative line of "democrats are the real racists", I'm convinced Walsh is close to defecting. When the Wire crumbles, I hope he goes full dissident, either on the JQ with Candace and Tucker or on race with Jared Taylor. It's the next step for him.

Locate your nuts, Matt. You've already made enough shekels.

a christian would have to default to the JQ because judism and zionism isnt compatible with christianity.

 

[Disdainer of the Plebs]

It warms my heart to see that this little shit’s time in the sun is coming to an end.

It’s a shame Fuentes is what comes next, that gay little retard isn’t much better.

 

[Coldgrip]

Strange, I was told conservatives were the most oppressed and silenced demographic everywhere.

No, that would be Gamers.

 

[The Last Stand]

Ben Shapiro on H-1B visas:
He says the most capable people in America are immigrants and the children of immigrants who came through that program.

Now I understand what his apathy of "the browning of America" meant.



You WILL be displaced and pay for it.

 

[LinkinParkxNaruto[AMV]]

Shocking. How could this be?