Political commentator Ben Shapiro speaks during the UT Austin stop of Turning Point USA’s “America: Love It or Leave It Tour” at the Lady Bird Johnson Auditorium on Wednesday, Oct. 7, 2026.
Nearly 1,000 eager audience members gathered in the Lady Bird Johnson Auditorium on Wednesday as UT’s chapter of Turning Point USA hosted conservative political commentator Ben Shapiro, who discussed the Israel-Hamas war and midterm congressional elections.
Shapiro is a conservative political commentator, author and co-founder of the right-wing media company The Daily Wire. He has four million followers on Instagram and over 1 million monthly listeners to his podcast, “The Ben Shapiro Show,” where he discusses daily political events. Shapiro is an Orthodox Jew, which he says influences many of his political opinions. He is known for being anti-transgender, anti-censorship and pro-Israel.
“The West is currently experiencing a deep crisis over what we are and what we ought to be,” Shapiro said. “On one side, lie people who look at the prosperity, freedom and strength of the West, and in particular the United States, and attribute it to the founding ideals. … And then on the other side, there are people who reject all those principles.”
Shapiro began his speech saying he would focus on two things: October 7th and James Talarico.
Wednesday’s event fell on the third anniversary of the Oct. 7 Hamas attack in Israel. Shapiro said pro-Palestine Americans in the time since the attack have become a symbol of the left and “radical movement(s).”
“(There is a) rejection of foundational principles that make the West and America in particular great, and that malady is spreading like the ideological cancer that it is,” Shapiro said. “That ideological cancer is terminal. It threatens to bring down America and therefore the West.”
Shapiro also discussed James Talarico, the Democratic nominee running against Ken Paxton for the U.S. Senate in Texas. Shapiro said that Democrats like Talarico “undermine the very basis of Americanism,” but have a real chance of winning in November.
“James Talarico cosplays as a ‘normie Christian,’ while promoting every single anti-Biblical stance he can find, up to and including ‘trans-ing’ the kids,” Shapiro said.
Shapiro encouraged audience members to vote to stop Democratic candidates from overtaking Congress and quoted a passage from Genesis in the Bible, telling the audience that the future is in their own hands.
“If we make the right choices, not only do we stand alongside our brothers, but we save America and the West,” he said.
In a Q&A session after the speech, a student asked Shapiro his thoughts on controversies surrounding Hasan Piker, a left-wing Twitch streamer who visited campus last week. Piker’s event was moved multiple times, ultimately taking place in a smaller venue than originally planned and causing University Democrats to return over 2,000 RSVPs.
The situation has since garnered more controversy with allegations that the Office of the University President personally reserved the LBJ auditorium for Turning Point’s event, despite not affording the same privilege to UDems, according to reporting from the Austin American-Statesman.
“If the University is on the basis of speech discriminating against him, then obviously it’s a violation of the First Amendment,” Shapiro said. “They shouldn’t do that.”