I Just Got Another Astounding Email — From The Washington Post

I informed you a little bit earlier this week that I got a message from The New York Times in which they essentially were attempting to pressure YouTube into censoring all sorts of conservative podcast videos.

The claim was that I was engaged in election misinformation; the entire email was all about how I essentially needed to be shut down by YouTube. If you’re demonetized on YouTube, they also shut down your reach.

When I say that there is a Democratic Legacy Media Human Centipede, it’s because that’s the reality. The entire goal of that Centipede is to shut down anyone and everyone who disagrees with them. So Media Matters brought out a study — apparently behind closed doors — and fed it to The New York Times, which then attempted to get comments from people like me, Tucker Carlson, and a bunch of other people on the Right in which they were essentially attempting to elicit a response. They were suggesting that we are all election deniers and engaged in misinformation so YouTube could shut us down.

But just in case you thought that the email was not a part of a coordinated hit, within 48 hours I got an email from — you guessed it — The Washington Post. 

It stated: 

Hi, Ben. I’m a tech reporter at The Washington Post. My colleagues and I are working on a story that examines the role podcasts are playing in casting doubt on the integrity of the 2024 election. The piece includes interviews with researchers who say podcasts are an especially effective medium for such claims because of how technically challenging it is for companies to do content moderation. 

So what does that mean? The suggestion here is that companies ought to be doing content moderation. Which companies? Presumably, social media companies ought to be shutting down, once again, shows like this one. YouTube ought to shut down the show, according to The Washington Post. Or perhaps he was talking about Spotify or perhaps iTunes or perhaps advertisers. 

Back to the email:

A Washington Post analysis found that The Ben Shapiro Show is one of many nationally prominent podcasts that have aired these claims. Our analysis, based on your October interview with former President Trump, where you referred to Democrats as professionals at ballot harvesting and Trump referred to them as cheaters. Could you please let me know if you have any comment? My deadline is 5 p.m. Eastern today. 

Notice the claim. The claim is that I was engaged in election misinformation by referring to Democrats as professionals at ballot harvesting. That, apparently, is election misinformation.

But here is NBC News in May 2024:

Democrats, for their part, have long enjoyed successes in mail voting, fueled in part by ballot collection where it is legal. The Democratic National Committee said it plans to spend ‘tens of millions of dollars in support of voting programs like mail and early voting.

NBC News, you election deniers. You engage in election misinformation every day. 

Of course, they don’t believe that I’m engaged in election misinformation. The thing they’re mad about is that I had Donald Trump on my show. It’s not just me they want to censor. They also want to censor Trump. They believe that it is some sort of informational crime for me to have on the former and likely future president of the United States.

That’s insane. It’s totally crazy. They think we are supposed to censor President Trump and that I can’t say things that are perfectly true about ballot harvesting, which is one of the most corrupt practices in America. It’s legal but it’s also corrupt.

The Washington Post has become a joke, so much so that Jeff Bezos had to issue an editorial just a couple of days ago titled “The hard truth: Americans don’t trust the news media,” in which according to Gallup, Americans think the news media stink.

WATCH: The Ben Shapiro Show

Perhaps if Jeff Bezos actually wants to correct things at The Washington Post, it’s not enough to stop them from endorsing Kamala Harris on the editorial pages. Perhaps he ought to look to his reporting staff who are now doing the bidding of places like Media Matters as well as obviously coordinating with the Democratic apparatus to unleash two separate stories that came out almost simultaneously.

One of those stories came from The New York Times and one from The Washington Post on Wednesday. Both of these stories say the same thing: that conservative media ought to be destroyed.

The New York Times piece had a big graphic including people ranging from me to Tim Pool to Rudy Giuliani to Tucker Carlson to Michael Knowles. The title? “Election Falsehoods Take Off on YouTube as It Looks the Other Way.”

Obviously, YouTube is not censoring things the way The New York Times would like YouTube to censor things.

Think for a second how truly sick this is. You have members of the media, members of the press, people who are supposed to be about the free dissemination of speech, actively asking YouTube to shut down people they don’t like. And again, this is not about election misinformation because included in their litany of sins is me saying things such as Democrats set the rules on ballot harvesting and mail-in voting, all of which is true, as reported by The New York Times. 

They quote me saying the Democrats rigged voting rules in 2020. What I actually said is that the Democratic Party rigged many of the voting rules in advance in order to advance mail-in voting and ballot harvesting. That’s also true. It was reported by both The New York Times and CBS News.

Nico Grant, the ridiculous reporter at the New York Times, wrote:

 In June 2023, YouTube decided to stop fighting the most persistent strain of election misinformation in the United States: the falsehood that President Biden stole the 2020 election from Donald Trump. Within months, the largest video platform became a home for election conspiracy theories, half-truths and lies. They in turn became a source of revenue for YouTube, which announced growing quarterly ad sales on Tuesday.

So again, the theory here is that YouTube is making money off election denial.

Now, why would you quote me in that context? This is the dead giveaway. I’m the dead giveaway in the story.

Why?

Because I never said that Trump won the 2020 election. I’ve said repeatedly that Joe Biden won the 2020 election, at least by the counted ballots, by the state certification procedure. In fact, I challenged, between November and January, Trump’s claims that he had the legal capacity to overthrow the election or that Mike Pence did.

Yet they include me in the article anyway, because it’s not about election misinformation: it’s about destroying everyone on the Right. That’s what The New York Times wants to do.

The New York Times writes:

While Media Matters is a partisan organization that regularly criticizes conservatives, reporters and academics frequently cite it as a source on YouTube misinformation because it devotes significant resources to tracking the vast platform.

The New York Times independently verified the research, examining all of the videos identified by Media Matters and determining whether YouTube placed ads or Fact Check labels on them.

So the Times is attempting to justify precisely why they cribbed Media Matters’ work. My favorite part of the story from The New York Times is what follows: I put up a thread on X that received millions of views. Tucker Carlson also released a screenshot of his replies to The New York Times reporter, basically telling them to go f*** themselves, which, coincidentally, is what I told a New York Times reporter.

Here is the quote about our comments:

Mr. Carlson and Mr. Shapiro did not directly respond to a series of questions, but attacked reporting from The New York Times.

I did notice that when I put up the thread and then I sent this reporter the thread — which was extensive — he could have quoted that thread.

But he can’t quote the thread. If he quotes the thread, it totally debunks his entire stupid story and shows the underlying motive.

If you thought that that was just a one-off, it was not.

Only hours later, The Washington Post put up their piece, titled, “In the podcast election, top shows cast doubt on integrity of 2024 vote.”

The Post added:

Claims aired on the free-flowing and beloved medium could undercut trust in the results of a razor-tight election, experts say.

“Experts”? As always, they just go and find somebody who works at a leftist outlet such as the Brookings Institution, and get them to say the thing the reporter wants them to say. “Experts say” is just a guise for something the writer wants to say. I can find an expert to say anything in America. It’s so easy.

Take the lead picture in the Post piece. It’s a terrible old picture of me. (I always enjoy when I’m shown in legacy media because they find whatever is the worst picture of me and put it on there; it’s kind of amusing.) I’m Captain Election Misinformation, according to the Post.

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But the only reference to me in the story refers to the fact that Donald Trump appeared on my program. What was the big problem with anything that I said? 

They can’t identify the thing that I said: the problem doesn’t exist. Instead, they just say:

During October appearances on the Shapiro and Rogan shows, Trump said that Democrats were cheating and that the media was interfering with the election.

I have a question: Is it my job to not have Donald Trump on my show? Is that the implication by The Washington Post, which boasts “Democracy Dies in Darkness”?

The Post continued:

Asked for comment, Shapiro in a post on X cast this story as part of  ‘the legacy media’s coordinated attempt to DESTROY conservative media.’

Yes. That’s exactly what it is when you come out with the story at the same exact time as The New York Times, and both of you are cribbing from the work of Media Matters, and both of you are lying about the purpose of your story. Of course it’s an attempt to destroy conservative media one week out from an election.

I’m sorry I thwarted your little stupid plans to get YouTube to shut down shows like this one five days before an election.

Your little October surprise has fallen flat.

YouTube, to its credit, has said this stuff isn’t election misinformation. It doesn’t violate their rules, and so they are not going to ban it. So good for YouTube.

But that doesn’t mean that the attempt didn’t happen. And again, this is all a broader part of the attempt by legacy media to strangle in the crib any sort of competitive media and any social media structure that refuses to abide by its rules.