Drew Harwell

Ben Shapiro matters because he is a symbol of the changing conservative media landscape.

Like he was the king of MAGA media online for a number of years.

Disrespectful.

And yet he has fallen and so has the media movement around him.

It really has shown how much the MAGA movement has been undermined in recent years and how much, you know, the Trump star has fallen, but also this kind of classic MAGA media energy has changed too.

Ten years ago, Ben Shapiro came on the scene, and he was this conservative digital media, like, wunderkind.

Ben Shapiro is editor-at-large at Breitbart.com.

So why am I off the rails, Mr. Shapiro?

He was, you know, this right-wing pundit.

He was coming up at a time where he wasn't really traditional conservatism, like...

you know, small business, chamber of commerce.

He represented this new wave of MAGA conservatism that was more about, you know, winning the, quote unquote, the culture wars, right?

Ben Shapiro just destroyed this woke student with simple logic.

Like, really.

He wasn't competing in the same debates that the conservative journals of the time were talking about.

He wasn't talking about tax codes.

You know, he was talking about, like, the stupid things that the libs were doing.

You know, the dark times that wokeness was bringing for the country.

And he was making a lot of money from it, right?

He was putting out this viral chum that was constantly doing big numbers on Facebook, making a ton of money for not just him, but for The Daily Wire, which he co-founded.