Age, Biography, and Wiki
Ben Shapiro was born on January 15, 1984, in Los Angeles, California. He comes from a family deeply connected to the arts; his mother was a television executive, and his father was a composer. Shapiro's early exposure to the arts led him to excel academically and musically. He graduated from Yeshiva University High School of Los Angeles by the age of 16 and later attended the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), where he earned a Bachelor of Arts in political science by the age of 20. Shapiro pursued his law degree at Harvard Law School and gained experience at the law firm Goodwin Procter before establishing his own legal consulting firm, Benjamin Shapiro Legal Consulting.
| Occupation | Political Activists |
|---|---|
| Date of Birth | 15 January 1984 |
| Age | 41 Years |
| Birth Place | Los Angeles, California, U.S. |
| Horoscope | Capricorn |
| Country | U.S |
Height, Weight & Measurements
While specific details about Ben Shapiro's height and weight are not widely available, he is often visible in public forums and media appearances, showcasing his dynamic personality.
In July 2015, Shapiro and transgender rights activist Zoey Tur were on Dr. Drew On Call to discuss Caitlyn Jenner's receipt of the Arthur Ashe Courage Award. After Shapiro referred to Tur, who is a trans woman, as "sir" and questioned her genetics, she placed her hand on the back of his neck and threatened on air to send him "home in an ambulance". Shapiro replied, "That seems mildly inappropriate for a political discussion." Later, Shapiro filed a police report accusing Tur of battery and stated that he intended to press charges to "teach the left a lesson". Tur said the report was Shapiro's attempt to keep the story in the news.
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Dating & Relationship Status
Ben Shapiro is married to Mor Toledano, an Israeli citizen of Moroccan descent. The couple has four children together and currently resides in Tennessee.
He is Ashkenazi Jewish. When he was 9 years old, his family began to observe Orthodox Judaism. He started playing violin at a young age and performed at the Israel Bonds Banquet in 1996 at age 12. His parents both worked in Hollywood. His mother was a TV company executive, and his father, David Shapiro, worked as a composer.
In March 2016, Shapiro resigned from his position as editor-at-large of Breitbart News following what he characterized as the website's lack of support for reporter Michelle Fields in response to her alleged assault by Corey Lewandowski, Donald Trump's former campaign manager, in spite of video and eyewitness evidence of the assault. In his resignation statement, Shapiro stated, "Steve Bannon is a bully, and has sold out [the late Breitbart.com founder] Andrew Breitbart's mission in order to back another bully, Donald Trump; he has shaped the company into Trump's personal Pravda". After Shapiro's departure, Breitbart published a piece, falsely attributed to Shapiro's father's pseudonym, saying, "Ben Shapiro betrays loyal Breitbart readers in pursuit of Fox News contributorship", which Breitbart later deleted. Despite being critical of Bannon, Shapiro defended Bannon when he was accused of antisemitism.
Shapiro supports a ban on abortion, including in cases of rape and incest, with one exception: when competent medical authority determines that the life of the mother is in jeopardy as a result of the pregnancy. He has further clarified that this includes extreme cases of mental illness where the life of the mother is at risk due to suicide. He also believes that doctors who perform abortions should be prosecuted. He has referred to women who have abortions as "baby killers". In 2019, Shapiro asserted that "the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade" was "not going to happen", and added that he had "serious doubts" about "whether the Supreme Court, as currently constituted, would vote to overturn Roe v. Wade". (Roe v. Wade was later overturned by Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization in 2022.)
He has stated he does not feel same-sex marriage should be taught to students in schools, saying, "In California, they've already passed laws that you have to teach same-sex marriage in public schools, for example... I went to public school for elementary school and junior high, I don't know why the government is teaching me anything about this stuff. This is for my parents to teach me. This is a values thing." He also states, "I'm very much anti gay-marriage in the social sense. As a religious person, I think homosexuality is a sin, I think that lots of things are sins that people engage in, I think they should be free to engage in them."
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| Husband | Mor Toledano (m. 2008) |
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Net Worth and Salary
As of 2025, Ben Shapiro's net worth is estimated to range between $50 million and $65 million. His annual income is approximately $10 million, derived from various sources including:
- Media Ventures: Shapiro co-founded The Daily Wire, which is valued at over $30 million.
- Book Royalties: Earnings from his 16 nonfiction books.
- Speaking Engagements: Fees ranging from $150,000 to $299,000 per event.
- Investments: A $26 million stock portfolio.
- Real Estate: Properties valued at $17 million.
Shapiro has backed privatizing Social Security, and for lowering taxes on the very wealthy. In August 2022, Shapiro argued that "Marxism can't work in America", saying this was because of "high levels of societal income mobility".
Career, Business, and Investments
Shapiro's career spans multiple roles as a conservative political commentator, author, columnist, lawyer, and radio host. He is best known for his work on The Daily Wire and hosting The Ben Shapiro Show. Shapiro has also written several bestselling books and frequently participates in lucrative speaking engagements. His investments include a significant stock portfolio with holdings in major corporations and real estate properties in the U.S. and Israel.
In September 2020, Shapiro announced that he and his family were leaving California. While he relocated the headquarters of his Daily Wire enterprise to Nashville, Tennessee, he and his family resettled in Florida.
After graduating from law school, Shapiro entered private practice at the law firm Goodwin Procter but left after 10 months. As of, he ran an independent legal consultancy firm, Benjamin Shapiro Legal Consulting, in Los Angeles.
On October 7, 2013, Shapiro and business partner Jeremy Boreing co-founded the U.S. media criticism website TruthRevolt with funding from the David Horowitz Freedom Center. TruthRevolt ceased operations in March 2018.
Shapiro is an advocate of capital punishment and "strongly" supports it remaining legal in the United States. Explaining his beliefs, Shapiro has stated that, "You can forfeit the right to life if you take another life, just as you can forfeit your right to liberty (this is called prison) by infringing on the liberty of another".
In the spring of 2016, Shapiro wrote an article for the Daily Wire in which he stated he would "never vote for Donald Trump". Shapiro supported Ted Cruz in the 2016 presidential election and opposed Trump's candidacy. In August 2016, Shapiro wrote an article for the Daily Wire arguing that Trump, if elected, would not appoint conservative justices to the Supreme Court. He described Steve Bannon as a "bully" who "sold out Breitbart founder Andrew Breitbart's mission in order to back another bully, Donald Trump." Shapiro has stated that Trump's victory in the 2016 election was more of a vote against Hillary Clinton than a vote in favor of Trump.
Shapiro supported the Trump administration's ordering of the killing of Qasem Soleimani, recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, as well as the nominations of Brett Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court. Shapiro also supported Trump withdrawing from the Paris Agreement, cutting regulations, and his nomination of 12 appellate court judges. However, Shapiro criticized Trump for firing James Comey, for appointing Michael Flynn and Steve Bannon, and for endorsing Roy Moore.
Shapiro opposed the 2015 Obergefell v. Hodges Supreme Court ruling that deemed bans of same-sex marriage unconstitutional. However, he opposes government involvement in marriage, saying, "I think the government stinks at this", and expressing concern that because of the ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges, at some point the government may try to force religious institutions to perform same-sex weddings against their will. According to Slate's Seth Stevenson, Shapiro has described homosexuality as a sin. Shapiro also opposes same-sex couples raising children. He has said that "a man and a woman do a better job of raising a child than two men or two women".
Social Network
Ben Shapiro is active on various social media platforms, including Twitter and YouTube, where he engages with a large following. His YouTube channel generates substantial income from ads.
Shapiro's sister, Abigail Shapiro, who studied operatic singing, is a conservative media influencer who posts videos on her YouTube channel "Classically Abby". She has been subjected to online antisemitic trolling due to her brother's high public profile.
In 2011, HarperCollins published Shapiro's fourth book, Primetime Propaganda: The True Hollywood Story of How the Left Took Over Your TV, in which Shapiro argues that Hollywood has a left-wing agenda that it actively promotes through prime-time entertainment programming. In the book, the producers of Happy Days and M*A*S*H say they pursued a pro-pacifist, anti-Vietnam-War agenda in those series. Shapiro also became a fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center.
On February 7, 2013, Shapiro published an article claiming Senate sources indicated a group called "Friends of Hamas" was a foreign contributor to Chuck Hagel's Senate confirmation campaign for US Secretary of Defense. However, weeks later, Slate reporter David Weigel reported that there was no evidence of such a group's existence. Shapiro told Weigel that the story he published was "the entirety of the information [he] had." Shapiro later expressed regret over publishing the story.
In 2012, Zman Magazine hailed Shapiro as a "rising star in America's conservative movement". In 2016, Shapiro described himself as "basically a libertarian". In 2021, he described himself as "generally libertarian" with regard to the role of the government and as a conservative with regard to the role of social structures. The New Yorker, Haaretz and Vox have described Shapiro as "right-wing". Shapiro's views have been described by The New York Times as "extremely conservative" and was described by The Economist as a "radical conservative" and as a "classically religious-conservative". A 2020 study News, Nationalism, and Hegemony: The Formation of Consistent Issue Framing Throughout the U.S. Political Right examining issue framing by right-wing podcasts used The Ben Shapiro Show as an example which "offered a mainstream conservative perspective that favors President Donald Trump and his framing on issues like 'nationalism'" in a two-by-two matrix that also examined a Stormfront podcast, an alt-right podcast, and the Daily Standard podcast; the study argued that Shapiro's rhetoric was similar to that used in the Stormfront podcast, though with a different tone.
Shapiro has described the political left as believing in an imaginary "hierarchy of victimhood" in which the opinions of members of persecuted groups like the LGBT community are afforded more credence. He has argued that the left has dominated American culture through popular entertainment, media, and academia in a way that has made conservatives feel disenfranchised and helped lead to the election of Donald Trump in 2016. He has stated that "political correctness breeds insanity". Shapiro is an outspoken opponent of safe spaces, especially those on college campuses, arguing that they go against free speech. Shapiro frequently praises Western culture and Western civilization, saying "I believe Western civilization is superior to other civilizations."
In 2018, Shapiro argued that Facebook was targeting conservative sites after the platform implemented an algorithm change, limiting their traffic, and that they are not transparent enough. In 2021, an article in NPR revealed that, under Shapiro's leadership, the Daily Wire had dominated Facebook news feeds and received more engagement than any other news outlet "by a wide margin".
In 2010, Shapiro said "Israelis like to build. Arabs like to bomb crap and live in open sewage". He later stated that he was talking about the Israeli and Arab leadership, as well as terrorist groups in Palestine.
In a 2014 YouTube video entitled "The Myth of the Tiny Radical Muslim Minority", Shapiro said, "We're above 800 million Muslims who are radicalized – more than half the Muslims on earth. That's not a minority... the myth of the tiny radical Muslim minority is just that: it's a myth". PolitiFact and Channel 4 News in the UK rejected his methodology, arguing that support for Sharia law was not sufficient to label an individual a "radical Muslim", and that "The meaning of Sharia law varies from sect to sect and nation to nation." Channel 4 News also criticized his use of polls with small sample sizes as accurately representing the views of tens of millions of Muslims, though acknowledged that "some polls do show that very illiberal values and concepts can be prevalent in some Muslim countries".
In the 2017 Quebec City mosque shooting, six Muslims were killed by Alexandre Bissonnette. Police presented evidence that Bissonnette checked Shapiro's Twitter feed 93 times in the month leading up to the shooting. Shapiro condemned the attack and said he did not incite the shooting.
Education
- Yeshiva University High School of Los Angeles: Graduated by age 16.
- University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA): Bachelor of Arts in Political Science by age 20.
- Harvard Law School: Juris Doctor (J.D.) degree.
Shapiro's education and career have positioned him as a significant figure in conservative media and politics. His strategic business ventures and investments have contributed to his substantial net worth and influence.
Skipping two grades (third and ninth), Shapiro went from Walter Reed Middle School in The Valley to Yeshiva University High School of Los Angeles in Westside, Los Angeles, where he graduated in 2000 at age 16. He studied political science at the University of California, Los Angeles, graduating in 2004 at age 20 with a Bachelor of Arts (B.A.) degree, summa cum laude, and membership in Phi Beta Kappa. He then attended Harvard Law School, where he studied under liberal law professors Lani Guinier and Randall Kennedy. In 2007, Shapiro graduated from Harvard with a Juris Doctor, cum laude.
Shapiro speaks at college campuses across the United States. In his speeches, he often presents a conservative viewpoint on controversial subjects. He spoke at 37 campuses between early 2016 and late 2017.
Some students and faculty members at California State University, Los Angeles, objected to a speech that Shapiro, who was then an editor at Breitbart News, was scheduled to hold at the university on February 25, 2016, titled "When Diversity Becomes a Problem". University president William Covino canceled the speech three days before it was to take place, intending to reschedule it so that the event could feature various viewpoints on campus diversity. Covino ultimately reversed his decision, allowing the speech to go on as planned. The day of the speech, student protesters formed human chains, blocking the doors to the event and staging sit-in protests. When Shapiro began his speech, a protester pulled the fire alarm. After the speech ended, Shapiro was escorted out by campus police. Conservative youth organization Young America's Foundation (YAF) announced it was filing a lawsuit against the university (with Shapiro as one of the plaintiffs), claiming that the First and Fourteenth Amendment rights of the students were violated by Covino's attempted cancellation of the event as well as by the physical barricading of students from entering or leaving the event.
In August 2016, DePaul University revoked an invitation for Shapiro to address students at the school and barred him from entering the campus owing to "security concerns".
On September 14, 2017, Shapiro gave a speech at the invitation of the University of California, Berkeley student organization Berkeley College Republicans (BCR), in which he criticized identity politics. The event was supported by the YAF and BCR. It involved a large police presence, which had been promised by Berkeley Chancellor Carol T. Christ in her August letter that supported free speech. Together, the university and the city of Berkeley spent $600,000 on police and security for the event, which transpired with nine arrests but no major incidents.
Following the December 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, Shapiro appeared on CNN's Piers Morgan Tonight on January 10, 2013. On the issue of gun control, Shapiro called Piers Morgan a "bully" who "tends to demonize people who differ from you politically by standing on the graves of the children of Sandy Hook, saying they don't seem to care enough about the dead kids." Videos of the encounter quickly received millions of views and went viral.
In an October 2024 appearance co-sponsored by The Daily Wire and the Young American's Foundation at the University of California, Los Angeles, Shapiro was asked whether or not he'd condone the actions of the Israeli Defense Forces and Netanyahu-led Israeli government amidst the deaths of over 40,000 people during the ongoing Gaza war. He responded "I don't just condone [their] actions, I celebrate and laud them". In the same statement, he claimed that the Israeli government has gone through "such extraordinary efforts not to kill civilians" that they have managed to have "the best civilian-to-terrorist kill ratio in the history of urban warfare". Furthermore, he blamed the Palestinian casualties on Hamas, which he believes uses civilians as human shields.
After the trial of Derek Chauvin, where police officer Derek Chauvin was convicted of the murder of George Floyd, Shapiro stated that Chauvin should not have been found guilty of murder, and instead opined that Floyd died of a drug overdose rather than as a result of Chauvin's actions. On March 4, 2025, Shapiro launched a website urging President Trump to pardon Chauvin, though this would not cover Chauvin's state conviction for second-degree murder, for which he is serving a 22.5-year sentence.
