We've been talking more and more about how the left should be strategic in
the way it deals with people like Ben Shapiro and
other right wingers who might show up at say like a podcasting conference.
Maybe it's not a good idea to have a meltdown over his presence
because it makes the left look weak and unable to defend their positions and
I don't think we have anything to be afraid of.
I think Ben Shapiro is someone we should always want to challenge head on,
but that is not what we saw in a recent conference where
he showed up because the Daily Wire had a booth and
the organizers of the conference later had to apologize to conference goers who
were deeply offended that Ben Shapiro would even be present at the conference.
And so Ben Burgess over at the Daily Beast wrote an opinion piece that I love and
it's titled Ben Shapiro wants you to be scared of him, so don't be.
A podcast convention apologized for
the harm caused by the conservative firebrands, mere presence and
nobody's happier about that than him and he was happy about it.
I mean, we showed you how he was bragging about how how scary he is and
how scared the left is of him.
And Burgess writes in his piece, quote Shapiro almost never risks talking
to anyone on the left who isn't a nervous 19 year old engaging with him for
two for a two minute interaction during a Q and
a session that Shapiro's team can harvest and
put out as a Ben Shapiro destroys fill in the blank clip, the only recent exception
I can think of is the debate Shapiro did with the young Turks, ana Kas Perry in.
I suspect that Shapiro underestimated her at any rate, the conversation went
very badly for him when CASS Berrien brushed off his culture war obsessions and
insisted on talking about labor unions and economic inequality.
Since then,
he's displayed very little appetite to repeat the experience, I will say.
He did reach out to me today, in fact, and asked if I'd be interested in
coming on his program, Ben Shapiro's program for a discussion.
We're in the very beginning phases of that, we're organizing it, if it happens.
And he would require me to go to florida to be on this special that he's doing.
But anyway, I wanted to at least be fair to Ben and mention that that
that's a development from literally today, but nonetheless jake, what do you think?
>> Yeah, I mean, I love that quote,
it's one of the most accurate quotes in media history.
He totally underestimated you and you laid a bear trap for him and and
and look, this is your overall thesis for all the right wingers and
you're absolutely right once you move them off of their cultural war stuff.
They have no economic positions.
All their positions are for the rich and the mega rich and so and
when I did a breakdown of that debate, I pointed out that every answer that
Ben gave was from the perspective of the already incredibly wealthy, right?
He would say, of course, you want to encourage people with millions of
dollars to start new businesses so they can make more millions of dollars.
Really, that's our number one concern in America.
That's a concern is I don't think it's a top concern for
most people in the country and and so they don't want people to know that they're for
lower wages, therefore less health care, they're not for the paid family leave that
americans love, we can go on and on their positions are deeply, deeply unpopular.
So when you moved on to those topics in your debate,
Yeah, he was in a really bad shape.
And by the way, the debate for everybody who watched it was really cordial and
I and I like that it was cordial and they had a real, you know,
exchange of ideas and when you watch it, you walk away thinking, my God,
the right winger is not for me at all, right?
And ANna's points on the you know, on economic issues are devastating.
>> Yeah, and look, I I want to say this, I definitely disagree with Ben on
a lot of things, but what I I think there's a difference between
debating a conservative who actually believes in his positions and
isn't like debating in bad faith versus debating a huckster, right?
So like, I think like a good example would be like, Milo Yiannopoulos,
right, like why Russell with a pig, right?
What's the point of debating that?
Whereas with Ben Shapiro, he has built a giant loyal audience.
That here's one perspective and one perspective only.
He was super respectful during our debate.
Like he didn't get nasty with me, I didn't get nasty with him, and
I felt like it was a genuine exchange of ideas and disagreements.
And I think that that could actually be helpful, not because I'm gonna convince,
like, you're not going to convince everyone in his audience, but
you're providing a perspective again, that they likely haven't heard before.
So, if you're confident in your views,
if you have the receipts to back up what you're saying,
the evidence to back up what you're saying, and you can speak confidently,
you could rebut his arguments confidently, there's no reason to be afraid.
And even if you can't do all those things, even if you're uncomfortable debating,
you don't want to counter some of the claims that he's made,
that's totally fine too, but be strategic in not making the left appear as
if they're afraid of Ben Shapiro, because he's such a mastermind in politics.
>> Yeah, so look, anna and
I have debated some of the biggest right wingers out there, and
it was all I think honestly, and you can watch all those debates relatively easy.
So the both her and I debated and culture,
I debated in Susa just watch those debates, it's not even close, right?
So but what was interesting is I debated tucker Carlson and
he pretty much surrendered.
He didn't fight me on any of the issues.
It was really interesting.
That's why some of those debates are worthwhile and you begin to get a better
sense of the person when you engage in those discussions.
So, in my debate with Ben,
I think that a lot of people didn't know that he's for money in politics.
He thinks that that that campaign contributions what every other american,
including right wingers, including his audience calls bribes, that's the swamp,
that's the trump, want to drain the swamp, and Ben loves the swamp,
he wants more money in politics, because who has the money, rich people.
And his whole show is structured around making sure that rich people get richer.
So that's the whole point of the show.
So if you force him on those grounds, he's in a world of trouble and
he doesn't have to get nasty or personal.
It's just his ideas suck.
[LAUGH] Or maybe you like his ideas, maybe you think, my God,
if only the rich were just a little bit richer, everything would be great.
Okay, then have at it hoss.
Okay, [LAUGH] and you're on that side.
But Anna, because you guys have that debate,
I read about more of Ben's points and until today, and
this piece that we're talking about in the Daily Beast,
I didn't know that he had said that gay people, or
I guess gay men is specific, should bury their feelings and
just marry women, and that that would be the moral position.
Do people in his audience know that, that's that's mental.
>> Man, that really is a messed up position,
because it's like victimizing two people at once, [LAUGH] right?
Like forcing a gay person to marry a woman that he's never gonna feel
attraction toward.
And then the woman, I mean, think about how tortuous that marriage is.
Women can feel things, we can tell if the guy isn't into us,
just terrible, absolutely terrible.
And then if they have kids, it's just, yeah,
I don't agree with that position at all,
I think that's a terrible thing to want people to have to go through.
>> Yeah, and finally, to the point of the original story,
don't ban them, it just makes him a martyr, and he loves it.
This is not about Ben Shapiro, all the right wingers, unless they're saying
things that are like actual calls for violence, which unfortunately happens all
the time on the right now, but to the best of my knowledge, Shapiro does not do that.
If they're having a normal conversation, you should be progressive,
should be super happy to debate them, and and
then eventually most of them will run away like crowder.
>> Yeah Yeah, exactly, that's a really good point.