The Ben Shapiro Show - September 15, 2026


The 'Free Palestine' Stunt That Got Macklemore Fired

This Photo Set the Internet on Fire

Episode Stats


Length

10 minutes

Words per minute

189.15

Word count

1,964

Sentence count

149

Harmful content

Misogyny

3

sentences flagged

Toxicity

13

sentences flagged

Hate speech

20

sentences flagged


Transcript

Transcripts from "The Ben Shapiro Show" are sourced from the Knowledge Fight Interactive Search Tool. Explore them interactively here.
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 Ed Sheeran, for a reason no one can discern, decided that Macklemore would open for him.
00:00:04.000 Now, Macklemore has not been relevant for, I don't know, 10 years.
00:00:07.000 He was a one hit wonder, did a song called Thrift Shop, and then he's basically been wandering the fields of obscurity ever since.
00:00:16.000 Well, a great way to sort of break out of the fields of obscurity is to say radical things at a concert these days.
00:00:22.000 Because nobody would even know that Macklemore opened for Ed Sheeran, because who goes to an Ed Sheeran concert to watch Macklemore?
00:00:28.000 The only reason that he became Sort of a national class celeb again is because he went on stage and decided to shout about how Israel was committing a genocide in Gaza because this has become the litmus test for political wokeness.
00:00:41.000 The old political wokeness was America is a white supremacist country. 0.61
00:00:44.000 The new political wokeness is Israel is a genocidal state in the Middle East.
00:00:47.000 Both of those are false.
00:00:49.000 But again, that doesn't matter.
00:00:50.000 So the result of that is that Robert Kraft, who owned the stadiums in which Ed Sheeran was doing his concerts, said, We are not going to be doing this. 0.97
00:01:02.000 Like, you can perform wherever you want, but you can't perform in a stadium that I own telling overt and stupid lies, particularly from a person like Macklemore, who, of course, has dressed up in full scale Der Sturmer Jewish garb at concerts before. 0.63
00:01:16.000 He put out a statement Gillette Stadium has a long standing commitment to provide a welcoming environment for all guests and ensuring that events held at our venue do not provide a platform for hate speech. 0.97
00:01:24.000 Based on Macklemore's recent actions, material shared from the stage during Ed Sheeran's show in New Jersey, and a broader history of anti Semitic rhetoric and imagery that we believe has been deeply offensive and hurtful to the Jewish community.
00:01:33.000 We determined that his participation in the September 25th and 26th concerts at Gillette Stadium would cross that line.
00:01:39.000 This decision is not about diminishing the suffering of innocent Palestinians or denying anyone the right to advocate on their behalf.
00:01:45.000 Their pain and loss are real, but that advocacy should not come at the expense of the Jewish community or obscure the responsibility of Hamas, a United States and globally designated terrorist organization whose horrific actions have caused immeasurable suffering for Palestinians and Israelis alike.
00:01:58.000 I agree with Macklemore.
00:01:59.000 Too many lives have been lost and there's been too much suffering, but only sharing selective information and ignoring the actions of Hamas is not honest and only advances more divisiveness and hate. 0.52
00:02:07.000 And then he continues along these lines.
00:02:10.000 Okay, here is the deal Bobcraft owns the stadium.
00:02:14.000 He doesn't want you using the stadium, your problem.
00:02:17.000 Yeah, I feel this way, generally speaking.
00:02:20.000 And Macklemore, of course, is basically just attention seeking. 0.98
00:02:24.000 Who gives a crap what Macklemore thinks about the Middle East? 0.97
00:02:29.000 The dude could not spot Israel on a map if spotted Jordan and Lebanon. 0.99
00:02:35.000 But now he's going to turn himself into a hero.
00:02:37.000 So the backlash has begun.
00:02:40.000 He put out a statement, Macklemore, because Ed Sheeran then said, okay, fine, well, just don't come to the concerts anymore.
00:02:45.000 Like, love you, dude, but you're not coming to the concerts.
00:02:47.000 He said, Ed is my friend.
00:02:48.000 I've known him for 13 years.
00:02:49.000 I consider him a brother.
00:02:50.000 And because of that, we've had some difficult conversations this past week.
00:02:54.000 The types of talks rooted in love and respect for one another that still end in a place of fundamental disagreement.
00:03:00.000 Nothing I'm writing here is out of spite or because I want to tear down his character, but as I told Ed multiple times on the phone, our friendship can't change my responsibility to tell the truth about what happened.
00:03:10.000 He said Ed was in an effed up position.
00:03:12.000 He told me the words free Palestine and the images of the Palestinian flag were hurtful to a lot of people he spoke with.
00:03:16.000 I told him if those words were more offensive than tens of thousands of Palestinian children being killed by Israel, there was a fundamental disconnect.
00:03:22.000 He couldn't get past his public facing, I don't take sides.
00:03:25.000 And I get why people don't.
00:03:27.000 Taking a side can cost you.
00:03:29.000 Okay, let us be real in the entertainment industry. 0.85
00:03:33.000 What costs you in the entertainment industry is being pro Israel. 0.79
00:03:37.000 That is what costs you in the entertainment industry these days. 0.90
00:03:40.000 The number of actors in Hollywood who have been put out of jobs because they are pro Israel is incredible. 0.93
00:03:48.000 If you're in the entertainment industry and you show up at the Emmys with an Israel pin, things are not going to go well for you. 0.96
00:03:55.000 But if you show up with a Palestine pin, you will be cheered. 0.82
00:03:57.000 This is why at Venice Film Festival, a documentary filled with nonsense, like lies and nonsense, got a 24 minute standing ovation accusing Israel of deliberately murdering hundreds of Palestinian civilians just for fun. 0.65
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00:05:33.000 The notion that our cultural arbiters Are somehow anti the left's love for Hamas and the pro Palestinian movement is psychotic.
00:05:43.000 But it's great for Macklemore because now he gets to pretend he's relevant again.
00:05:46.000 He pinned his crappy song, Effed Up, which glorifies revolution and rioting. 1.00
00:05:52.000 It's trash. 0.99
00:05:52.000 I mean, it's a really, really bad song, as per usual. 0.99
00:05:56.000 Here is some of his crappy song.
00:05:57.000 You can hear why this dude has not been relevant for a decade. 0.61
00:06:07.000 Yeah Stand for something to fall for anything I'm sick But it's game time Hey, the world's on fire.
00:06:19.000 We don't own the water.
00:06:21.000 Y'all It made tire for a couple dollars.
00:06:24.000 Y'all no air White supremacy is still in charge sucking colonizing Gaza from the White House Lawn with the people mopping and we ain't backing up finally see the oh adjourn well just on a musical level.
00:06:39.000 Why would you do this?
00:06:48.000 Oh my God.
00:06:49.000 And then, of course, look at that.
00:06:50.000 I mean, literally, like the American dollar and the Israeli flag in the same thing.
00:06:54.000 It's just, don't worry.
00:06:56.000 Don't worry.
00:06:56.000 It's not anti Semitic memes at all.
00:06:58.000 It's just, come on. 0.50
00:07:01.000 Well, Miss Rachel, who again has used her perch as a YouTube children's slot post to prop up terrorist sympathizers, by the way. 0.97
00:07:10.000 I mean, here she was literally alongside a terrorist sympathizer.
00:07:13.000 And Yahya Sinwar fan named Motaz Azaza, right?
00:07:16.000 And who spent all of 10 7 literally saying nothing, like nothing, and then has repeated every single anti Israel meme she can find.
00:07:24.000 Well, she's out there defending Macklemore, of course.
00:07:27.000 She says, I see you have a hierarchy of children's lives.
00:07:31.000 There are two kinds of celebrities and leaders right now those who are willing to shout at the top of their lungs that over 20,000 Palestinian children shouldn't have been killed in the Gaza genocide, and those that remain silent because these children are not worth it to them.
00:07:41.000 Well, actually, no.
00:07:42.000 There are a lot of people who point out that every child that died as a result of Hamas. 0.80
00:07:46.000 Attacking Israel.
00:07:47.000 Second, that Israel did not commit a genocide because that is not what genocides look like.
00:07:51.000 Genocides look like the mass extermination of a population, they do not look like the targeted killing of terrorists with the single best civilian to terrorist kill ratio.
00:08:03.000 And there's no such thing as a great ratio because anytime a civilian dies, it's terrible.
00:08:06.000 But if you're just talking about the efficacy of military action, there's never been a lower ratio in urban combat between terrorist death and civilian death than you saw in the Gaza Strip.
00:08:16.000 Doesn't matter. 0.95
00:08:16.000 Again, it's all slop. 0.95
00:08:18.000 It's all slop.
00:08:19.000 Slot pushed by people like Pramila Jayapal in Congress.
00:08:22.000 It's so incredibly disappointing that Macklemore, my constituent, was removed from Ed Sheeran's tour because of his commitments in support of the Palestinian people.
00:08:30.000 We should all be outraged that powerful people are more upset about what an artist says than the displacement, starvation, and killing of innocent Palestinians.
00:08:37.000 Well, no, they were concerned about his lies. 1.00
00:08:40.000 The fact that he is a liar. 0.99
00:08:41.000 That was the reason. 0.98
00:08:42.000 Well, at least he'll be able to perform in Dearborn.
00:08:44.000 Shocker.
00:08:46.000 The Dearborn mayor, Abdullah Hamoud, who once again, Abdullah Hamoud is the same mayor.
00:08:51.000 Who once told a concerned constituent that he should leave Dearborn rather than object to the renaming of a city street after a terrorist?
00:09:01.000 But he's going to welcome Macklemore.
00:09:05.000 Good news, I suppose.
00:09:06.000 I mean, listen, no one's talked about Macklemore this much since Thrift Shop.
00:09:08.000 So good for him, I suppose.
00:09:10.000 He's making a buck.
00:09:11.000 What an amazing video you just watched.
00:09:13.000 Wasn't that amazing?
00:09:14.000 Well, you know, if you think so, head on over to dailywire.comslash subscribe to watch the full show ad free or check out this crazy story here.
00:09:22.000 Every significant movement in history started with protesting.
00:09:25.000 Not a traitor!
00:09:25.000 It's Uncle Tom!
00:09:26.000 This is our generation's civil rights!
00:09:28.000 I have no idea what the protest is about.
00:09:30.000 Bingo!
00:09:30.000 Given the current climate, should a figure as polarizing as Clay Saunders even be allowed on campus?
00:09:36.000 Ah, can you hear me okay?
00:09:37.000 Saunders is a close personal friend of Chancellor Friedman.
00:09:39.000 This is a decision I cannot fight. 1.00
00:09:41.000 Islam will conquer the West. 1.00
00:09:44.000 Assalamualaikum. 1.00
00:09:45.000 Are we paying attention?
00:09:50.000 They've taken over the building.
00:09:51.000 They're downstairs and they've blocked the doors.
00:09:55.000 I seek forgiveness from Allah the Almighty.
00:09:58.000 We cannot run and hide.
00:10:00.000 Muhammad is the messenger of God.
00:10:04.000 There is no God but Allah.
00:10:06.000 What do you say? 0.99
00:10:08.000 He turned those SOBs into a fine red mist. 1.00
00:10:13.000 As we move, one man will cover while the other guys go. 1.00
00:10:16.000 They call that leapfrogging.
00:10:17.000 Stretch your mouth and listen.
00:10:20.000 You need a course in safe weapons handling.