Yesterday, Politico Playbook, a morning newsletter for political professionals and junkies, continued its guest-writer series by allowing Ben Shapiro to explain why Republicans opposed the impeachment of Republican Donald Trump.
Given Shapiro's prominent place in the extreme-right echo chamber — he’s downplayed the violent insurrection, uses hateful rhetoric, appeals to mass shooters, and is only “notable” because he’s propped up by fracking billionaires — Politico could have used this opportunity to let some of its sharp and capable reporters interview Shapiro. Many of Politico’s reporters were rightly critical of the editorial decision to give Shapiro the space (and in response, his own media outfit will be sending Politico’s newsroom their “Leftist Tears” mugs.) If his views are important to understand, surely they could have asked him about what culpability he feels for the role his messaging, and the rightwing media ecosystem of which he is a key node, might have played in the insurrection that triggered Trump’s second impeachment.
Even if – after four years of the mainstream outlets interviewing every "forgotten" white person they found in Midwestern diners – Politico felt it was necessary to further delve into the mindset of Republicans who have embraced Trump’s violent racism and democracy-denial since his days of birtherism (and the days of calling for the modern-day lynching of the Exonerated Five before that), there are certainly more qualified and intelligent options than Shapiro. Because, in addition to being little more than a megaphone for reactionary rightwing propaganda (and aside from the optics of Politico’s API-sponsored newsletter handing itself over to a figure funded by fracking money), Ben Shapiro is just objectively bad at making good arguments. Immediately after Playbook went out, political Twitter was chock-full of devastating takedowns, like Zack Beuchamp’s detailed debunking of Shapiro’s poorly formed attempt at an argument.
Oh, and also Ben plagiarised Dan Sinker’s impeachment.fyi newsletter. So an abject failure at every level.
Maybe he enjoys being absolutely humiliated: after all, it’s not like this is the first time Ben Shapiro’s been made a laughingstock. Take his take on climate change, for example. He once suggested that it’d be no big deal if sea level rise drowns the entire coastal real estate market under 10 feet of water, because apparently —the thing that no one else has thought of yet, but the sagacious Shapiro has: people who own homes on the coast will just sell their houses. “To who, Ben? Fucking Aquaman?”
It’s not just that Ben Shapiro should be held accountable for pushing hateful rhetoric that encourages exactly the sort of violence that triggered Trump’s impeachment, then downplaying its seriousness. (Or that he’s capitalizing on school shootings by making a movie about one – a sick exploitation of tragedies the US endures only because it’s held hostage by people who share Shapiro view on guns.)
It’s that Ben Shapiro's arguments are fundamentally stupid.
It’s that he adopts this phony persona, because that’s what’s necessary to preach in favor of the powerful over the oppressed. Who cares about what a failed screenwriter and professional virgin turned mouthpiece for billionaires who was caught using pay-to-play scams on Facebook has to say about Democrats' rejection of a rational response to a deadly mob pulled from his own audience?
For a news organization that felt so strongly about Trump’s poisonous rhetoric against the press that they filed a lawsuit against him, it’s shockingly irresponsible for Politico to give such a prominent platform to a personality who has taken a lead role building an audience of insurrectionists addicted to incidenairy fake news.
There’s value in journalists and their publications holding someone accountable for threatening to meet pro-LGBT politicians with guns, and demanding he explain why he’s so popular with violent racists. What does it say about Ben’s message that a man who murdered six Muslims at a mosque in Quebec City obsessively checked Shapiro’s Twitter feed more than he did Breitbart, Tucker Carlson, and other assorted white supremacists?
But what value is there in letting someone who inspires rightwing violence explain, "Wellactually, it's the Left that’s acting inappropriately?"
Of course, we know why. News organizations have responded to decades of conservatives’ relentless accusations of leftwing bias by bending over backwards to give Republicans air time. But the parties aren’t the same, and all it’s done is create a sort of false balance between one political party that weaponizes disinformation to whip up its base to the point of violent insurrection, and the other, trying to do what it can to prevent the next Shapiro-inspired mass shooting or Trump-inspired seditious murder of a police officer.
If you want to understand how the majority of Republicans felt empowered to allow Trump to turn them into cannon fodder for the sake of soothing his flailing ego, it’s because they knew people in power in DC institutions like Politico wouldn’t hold them accountable for it.