{"id":459857,"date":"2026-10-08T06:44:33","date_gmt":"2026-10-08T06:44:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/459857\/"},"modified":"2026-10-08T06:44:33","modified_gmt":"2026-10-08T06:44:33","slug":"save-america-and-the-west-ben-shapiro-talks-israel-hamas-war-midterm-elections-the-daily-texan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/459857\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Save America and the West\u2019: Ben Shapiro talks Israel-Hamas war, midterm elections \u2013 The Daily Texan"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\tPolitical commentator Ben Shapiro speaks during the UT Austin stop of Turning Point USA\u2019s “America: Love It or Leave It Tour” at the Lady Bird Johnson Auditorium on Wednesday, Oct. 7, 2026.\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

Nearly 1,000 eager audience members gathered in the Lady Bird Johnson Auditorium on Wednesday as UT\u2019s chapter of Turning Point USA hosted conservative political commentator Ben Shapiro, who discussed the Israel-Hamas war and midterm congressional elections.<\/p>\n

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, \u201cThe Ben Shapiro Show,\u201d 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.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe West is currently experiencing a deep crisis over what we are and what we ought to be,\u201d Shapiro said. \u201cOn 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. \u2026 And then on the other side, there are people who reject all those principles.\u201d<\/p>\n

Shapiro began his speech saying he would focus on two things: October 7th and James Talarico.<\/p>\n

Wednesday\u2019s 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 \u201cradical movement(s).\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201c(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,\u201d Shapiro said. \u201cThat ideological cancer is terminal. It threatens to bring down America and therefore the West.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

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 \u201cundermine the very basis of Americanism,\u201d but have a real chance of winning in November.<\/p>\n

\u201cJames Talarico cosplays as a \u2018normie Christian,\u2019 while promoting every single anti-Biblical stance he can find, up to and including \u2018trans-ing\u2019 the kids,\u201d Shapiro said.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf we make the right choices, not only do we stand alongside our brothers, but we save America and the West,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

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<\/a> last week. Piker\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

The situation has since garnered more controversy with allegations that the Office of the University President personally reserved the LBJ auditorium for Turning Point\u2019s event, despite not affording the same privilege to UDems, according to reporting<\/a> from the Austin American-Statesman.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf the University is on the basis of speech discriminating against him, then obviously it\u2019s a violation of the First Amendment,\u201d Shapiro said. \u201cThey shouldn\u2019t do that.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Political commentator Ben Shapiro speaks during the UT Austin stop of Turning Point USA\u2019s “America: Love It or…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":459858,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[132,134,133],"class_list":["post-459857","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-austin","tag-austin","tag-austin-headlines","tag-austin-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/459857","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=459857"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/459857\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/459858"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=459857"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=459857"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=459857"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}