On Sunday, “Fox News Sunday” anchor Chris Wallace devoted the Power Player of the Week segment to Daily Wire Editor-in-Chief Ben Shapiro, calling him the leading voice for conservative millennials.
The segment began with Shapiro asserting, “In a free country, it is up to you to succeed or fail on your own merits. So get off your a** and do it.”
Wallace commented, “Yes, Ben Shapiro talks fast. But then, for most of his 33 years, he’s been a man in a hurry. He’s the host of the most-listened-to conservative podcast in the country. He’s the editor of The Daily Wire, which gets one hundred million page views a month. And he’s a big presence on college campuses, where his militant conservative views spur protests.”
Wallace then showed clips from Shapiro’s exchange with a college student regarding transgenderism, the video of which went viral, commenting, “This exchange with a 22-year-old college student over transgender identity has attracted 47 million views on Facebook.”
Wallace referenced Shapiro’s perspective on the hierarchy of victimhood in America, playing a clip from Shapiro’s speech at the University of Utah in which he stated, “So it goes LGBTQ, and then black folks, and then Hispanic folks, and then women and then Jews, and then Asians, and then, way down at the bottom, white straight males. Those are the people who are at the very bottom, and their opinions do not matter at all.”
Wallace noted, “Shapiro has been called the voice of conservative millennials.” He asked Shapiro how conservative millennials were different from conservative baby boomers. Shapiro replied, “By the time a lot of conservatives hit baby boomer age, there’s a mentality that’s set in that they’re always losing, and that every choice, every political choice, particularly, is a lesser of two evils choice. If you’re a conservative millennial, I think that you tend to be a little more idealistic, just as younger people are generally.”
Wallace pointed out that Shapiro believes that President Trump’s tweets tend to damage his standing with young people. Shapiro stated, “Young people in the United States dramatically dislike this administration and they dramatically dislike the Republican Party. And it is President Trump’s responsibility, for conservatives anyway, to fix that. And sitting there on Twitter and retweeting Britain First is not gonna do that.”
Wallace asked Shapiro about Breitbart chief Steve Bannon; Shapiro responded, “I think that Steve is very interested in being perceived as powerful, as being perceived as a mover and shaker. I don’t think he’s nearly as much as a mover and shaker as he wants to be seen as.”
Wallace continued, “As we said, Shapiro has always moved fast.” Showing a picture of him with his younger sister when he was five, Wallace said. “At age five, he dressed for Halloween as John Adams. By age 17, he wrote a nationally syndicated political column.” Shapiro noted he had skipped a couple of grades, was adept at the violin, and was planning to double major in college in genetic science and music, adding, “I was always pretty driven.”
Wallace stated, “And his only plan now is to keep pushing his special brand of combative conservatism.”
Shapiro said, “Sometimes the best way to get a message across is to just speak bluntly. And so I’m not going there to deliberately offend people; I’m saying things that I think are true with precisely the amount of verve I think necessary to convey the message.”
Wallace concluded, “After our interview I had one piece of advice for Shapiro: Try talking a little slower so some of us can keep up with him.”
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