"Who Has The Capital? - Could One Media Giant Take Over the Entire Right-Wing Internet

**SPEAKER_1** (0:00)
Say I go raise a few billion honors, okay?
Is it worth I buy DailyWire, Blaze, five of them and bring them all together? Is that worth it?

**Ben Shapiro** (0:10)
Certainly, I think that there's an opportunity for someone to roll up some of the online right and create a sort of digital super company on the right. You know, the most likely entity to do it is Fox.

**SPEAKER_1** (0:24)
Right.

**Ben Shapiro** (0:25)
Right. Why do I say they're the most likely? In some ways, they're the least likely. They don't understand the online space yet.

**SPEAKER_1** (0:30)
Sure.

**Ben Shapiro** (0:30)
You see them make moves in it. They don't make them very wild.

**SPEAKER_1** (0:33)
They signed ten guys that they did, but yeah.

**Ben Shapiro** (0:35)
But they don't really know what to do yet.

**SPEAKER_1** (0:36)
Sure.

**Ben Shapiro** (0:37)
If they bought the Daily Wire, they'd know a lot more what to do. If they bought the Blaze, they know it because we're digital first companies. We've existed in this space.
But I still say Fox is the most likely to do it because they've got billions of dollars of them.

**SPEAKER_1** (0:49)
The market needs competition, though. To me, to me, it's...

**Ben Shapiro** (0:53)
But the competition often comes from the little guy.

**SPEAKER_1** (0:56)
No, but that's what I'm saying. What I'm saying to you is, if a market like... I remember we were having a conversation a few years ago. Hey, what if we started a media company? I'm talking to a bunch of these guys. We're having meeting after meeting after meeting every other week at my house. Vivek's there, a couple of other people, are big names. These are very big names that we're having a conversation with. And this is pre-Israel.
It's kind of Israel. October 7th happened. But it's not yet like at this level where everybody's openly... There's massive division of Republican. That hasn't happened yet. So we're having this meeting, and a guy comes up to us, and they say, Hey, we're a $22 billion out of fund, big company. And we want to know if you're interested in being a CEO, if we were to go do a roll up and we buy bone, bone, bone, bone, bone. Would you have any interest? Interesting. What would it look like? Well, it would look like this, this, this.
I had to sit there. I'm like, OK, so why would Ben continue? Why would this person continue? Why would that person continue? You know, what would be there? So then would we do a 50-50 and put the back end equity on it so we're all flying to go build a 400 billion dollar company so the real exit is going to be, hey, guys, we frickin 50X and collectively, let's go, even though we disagree, let's show the world that conservatives can unite and let's go give a message. I flirted with the idea of what that would look like because, you know, it was.
It was interesting, but I think the opposite side may also happen. Fox at any point can go knock on anyone's door and buy up anybody. Fox has done this with Wall Street Journal, with New York Post, with God knows how many of them. There's so many companies that people don't even know Fox owns that the only reason you don't know is because it's not public. They own a lot of news corps is like, it's a massive company out there. OK, so let's go to the conservative side. So on the conservative Republican side.

**Ben Shapiro** (2:46)
Can I say one crazy thing?

**SPEAKER_1** (2:47)
Please.

**Ben Shapiro** (2:47)
I've never gotten to tell this story, and I love it so much.

**SPEAKER_1** (2:49)
Go for it.

**Ben Shapiro** (2:50)
Ben and I had a meeting with Lachlan Murdoch early. Not too early, it was probably 2019 or 2020 even.
So the Daily Wire was a thing.

**SPEAKER_1** (3:01)
Pre-COVID.

**Ben Shapiro** (3:02)
Must have been pre-COVID. Time becomes a little flat to me, but I'm almost certain we still lived in LA, which would mean pre-COVID.
And we were in Lachlan's office having a great conversation and he has a large office, and so we were sitting on this sofa. And then there's a kind of an unusually large space and then a desk and he's at the desk. And there's a door that's sort of in the center of the room. And we're talking, we're having a really nice conversation. It wasn't about acquisitions, it wasn't about anything like that. It was more like a meet and greet talent kind of meeting, right?
And this little old man comes in that door in the middle of the room to see Lachlan. And because of the way the room is oriented, he doesn't even see us. He kind of comes in at this angle to us. And he says, when are we going to have lunch? What are you thinking about lunch? And Lachlan says, Dad, I want you to meet Ben Shapiro and Jeremy Boring. And this little old man who's wearing little old man jeans and little old man white tennis shoes and literally shuffling, kind of moving around like this, turns, sees us, realizes he's not alone. And it was exactly like the moment in Richard Donner's Superman, 1978, when Clark decides he's going to tell Lois who he is, and she turns around to go find her purse or something, and he takes off the Clark Kent glasses, and his shoulders come back, and he becomes three inches taller, and he is Superman.