Recently, mainstream media reported on the decline of Ben Shapiro, perhaps pouncing at the diminishing prominence of the man once the “King” of Conservative Inc. But they were merely catching up to what has been known for many months. And while Ben Shapiro took issue with the moniker of “king,” for many years, he was the guy at the top of the industry. After the fall of Bill O’Reilly, it was figures like Ben Shapiro, Steven Crowder, and Glenn Beck who would lead the transition from Fox News to podcasting and YouTube as the dominant mediums of distribution.
To say that Shapiro was the king is fair, and the climax of his rule was his Sunday Special, where he landed premier guests, and the conversations on there shaped online discourse. The quality of Shapiro’s work is usually not brought up as a reason for his decline, but the Sunday Special devolved into liberal guests and lost its production value when Ben Shapiro, buying the Covid narrative, did remote interviews. It’s also worth mentioning that the Gina Corano interview, fresh after her firing from Disney, was so vapid and useless.
In 2019, Ben Shapiro had a friendly rivalry with Steven Crowder, the number one Conservative Inc. YouTuber (a rise fall and rise again for Crowder is certainly a worthy discussion for another day). But then Covid happened.
Most of Conservative Inc would peddle the Covid lie, which was obvious at the time and inexcusable, including the 3 aformentioned industry leaders. Glenn Beck, after writing a book on the government manufacturing a crisis to take away liberties, peddled the lie. Steven Crowder sold masks, and changed his entire show format. Ben Shapiro, most egregiously, defended Anthony Fauci until December of 2020. He scolded his audience about how his wife was a doctor. He said, “Get the vaccine, dopes,” lying about how it prevents infection.
Shapiro simps insist that he and the Daily Wire fought back against government overreach, citing the lawsuit against the Biden Administration’s vaccine mandate using OSHA, but courage is not waiting until Q4 of 2021 to fight back. It’s standing up when it’s hard. Courage has a window. Leadership is not sensing which way the wind is blowing and getting at the front of the line. That’s opportunism. And an easy lawsuit victory, which would have come by other lawsuits anyway, does not atone for the previous several months of peddling Fauci’s lies.
Many new faces have emerged in Conservative Inc. because of Covid, because their faithfulness during the hard times was rewarded by audiences. And in the post-Covid discourse, the right began to abandon the Proposition Nation narrative of American history and return to a more nationalistic movement. Additionally, Ben Shapiro’s antichrist religion gained increased scrutiny, as people discovered the role of Judaism in wokeness and realized the subversive role of Israeli influence in American politics. Christ or chaos was the debate, and Ben Shapiro and the Daily Wire were the leaders in Christless conservatism.
Fast forward to 10/7, it was clear that Shapiro cared more about a foreign nation. Meanwhile, trouble was brewing inside the Daily Wire. After giving Candace Owens, a notorious Con Inc diversity hire, the bag, they fired her. The Daily Wire would go on to lose Brett Cooper. Jeremy Boreing, then CEO would spend The Daily Wire’s cash reserves on creating content for a ghetto Hollywood studio, producing girlboss movies, and a multimillion-dollar fantasy epic.
But instead of producing content for mass audiences, they produced it for their political audience that had bought into their streaming platform. The Daily Wire Plus is where content goes to never see the light of day, and few sympathetic YouTubers even covered Pendragon, especially since it came out in direct competition with A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms. Combined with an alienating brand on the right, and the Daily Wire’s misunderstanding of the movie and television business led to Boreing’s eventual removal.
The Daily Wire has recently undergone mass layoffs of an estimated 25% of its staff amidst failed investments into entertainment media, and there are metrics suggesting that Shapiro’s reach has declined 85% from its peak. Ben Shapiro peaked at 7.23 million subs and has lost around 200K since September 2025. Shapiro’s aggressive foray into the so-called Podcast Wars was unsuccessful at generating clicks.
But part of the reason is that The Daily Wire has long bought views. While Matt Walsh and Michael Knowles don’t need to buy views, Ben Shapiro does, despite being the flagship program. Bought views kill the YouTube algorithm for a channel because why should the algorithm promote a video that the creator is paying to promote? Additionally, the ad rolls negatively affect the video metrics like the watch time and click through rate, but I am digressing in industry jargon here. New subs help a video expand its reach the most, and Shapiro is steadily hemorrhaging subs, not connected to any crash out.
Shapiro would respond to the naysayers, insisting that the liberals and the Fuentes, Owens, Carlson and Kellys of the world are joining with the liberal media to attack him because they want to end traditional conservatism. But Shapiro’s position on marriage is libertarian. He opposed mass deportations, citing unfeasibility, supporting de facto amnesty for some illegals. He believes in endless neoconservative wars. He believes in a Proposition Nation and Judeo-Christian values.
This puts him at odds with an explicitly Christian right that supports mass deportations and a foreign policy that prioritizes American interests. In many ways, Shapiro’s views are not even traditional, if we look far enough back. Finally, Shapiro asks why no one has said or asked if he’s changed. This is true because Ben Shapiro was always milquetoast. He always showed up late to the right side of an issue, well after his audience, and pretended as though he was following the data, Covid being the prime example. Ben Shapiro remains the same while audiences demand courage. And when the competition opened up from relaxed censorship, Ben Shapiro fell behind, and not even an election year (2024) saw new audience capture for him.
Facts don’t care about feelings was once a great mantra, but the right learned you win by imposing will, not by spouting facts. You win by changing hearts with the gospel of Jesus Christ, not by promoting Judeo-Christian values, whatever those are. The fall of Ben Shapiro is glorious and should be credited to God.
Powered by RedCircle
