What Next - SchadenFriday: Ben Shapiro’s Short—as in Abrupt—Decline
Slate News
Slate Podcasts
4.5 • 6K Ratings
🗓️ 15 May 2026
⏱️ 5 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Once a rising star of the New Right via New Media, Ben Shapiro and his Daily Wire have spent the second Trump administration in precipitous decline. Is it simply a case of bad business decisions running into their beloved capitalistic scythe or did their audience outpace them on a race to…let’s say “the right”?
Guest: Will Sommer, senior reporter at The Bulwark.
This episode is member-exclusive. Listen to it now by subscribing to Slate Plus. By joining, not only will you unlock exclusive episodes of What Next —you’ll also access ad-free listening across all your favorite Slate podcasts. You can subscribe directly from the What Next show page on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Or, visit slate.com/whatnextplus to get access wherever you listen.
Podcast production by Elena Schwartz, Paige Osburn, Anna Phillips, Madeline Ducharme, and Rob Gunther.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Happy Friday Slate Stores. |
| 0:01.6 | Welcome back to another edition of Shadden Friday. |
| 0:04.1 | These are our Slate Plus exclusive conversations for when you need to point and laugh at the not-so-great things happen in to not-so-great folks. |
| 0:14.2 | Because after a long week of news, who doesn't need a little comedic interlude? |
| 0:19.3 | One of the folks who has got his finger on the pulse of not so great folks is Will Sommer at the Bullwark. Hi, Will, welcome to the show. |
| 0:27.9 | Hey, thanks for having me. Will, you write the False Flag newsletter over at the Bullwork. How do you explain your job when your family and neighbors ask you about it? |
| 0:38.1 | Yeah, that's a great question. |
| 0:39.6 | You know, it's a pretty unique niche in the media. |
| 0:43.0 | It's like right-wing media, conspiracy theories, the personalities of our second Trump era. |
| 0:51.5 | You dredge the sewers of our media landscape fair? Yeah, I think that would be a pithy way |
| 0:58.2 | to put it as well. Yeah, I mean, it is, it, you know, it's maybe the worst of the worst, you know, |
| 1:04.7 | the people in terms of people driving the Trump movement. Okay. So I reached out to you because |
| 1:10.5 | the star of this week's very special shot on Friday is Ben Shapiro, |
| 1:15.8 | co-founder of the Daily Wire, who has not been having a good run of things right now. |
| 1:21.6 | But before I really get into it, do me a favor. |
| 1:24.9 | Give me the Ben Shapiro 101 because i think there are so many maga world |
| 1:30.3 | commenters youtube personalities he may be just at the bottom of a pile of people like oh here's |
| 1:36.8 | nick fuentes uh here's this guy here's ben shapiro you know what i mean here's kandis owens |
| 1:41.3 | so tell me who ben shapiro is yeah well you know i'm glad to be here because Ben Shapiro sort of played a big role in why I got into covering this in the first place. |
| 1:49.0 | Really? |
| 1:49.4 | About 16 years ago, maybe I was still in college. |
| 1:52.2 | My local newspaper got a letter in the letters to the editor saying, you know, you guys should hire Ben Shapiro. |
... |
Transcript will be available on the free plan in 8 days. Upgrade to see the full transcript now.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Slate Podcasts, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of Slate Podcasts and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.