Candace Owens and Ben Shapiro Get Personal About Life, Career, and Family

i like to travel a lot less than i did i was much easier traveling than than now like i don't want to be away from my kids as i was leaving to come here this week my four-year-old son turns to me and he goes don't go to nashville dad don't go to nashville and i was like that is the that is the saddest thing i i i like it it tears your heart out you're like why are you doing this i i did inform him he's like how am i gonna know when you're back it's like well because i was coming back late at night i'm coming back late at night and he says how do you how do i know then you're gonna be back so i'm gonna come in your room i'm gonna take pants out of your door and put them on your head and he said that's so cute and he said okay so tonight ben the dad we don't get this at the bend this is actually great [Music] do your best to give a summary of the history of candace owens and ben shapiro the actual history is that thank god i've had a really well when i say privileged life i don't mean privilege in terms of economics i grew up in a house with three younger sisters and all four of us shared one bedroom and a two bedroom house with one bathroom until i was 11. so uh it really isn't uh it really is a privilege that way i'm privileged because i have an amazing set of parents i have a two parent family uh i have great siblings um i grew up in a really solid community that shared i think a really great set of values i was able to go to good schools and i was able to have excellent teachers uh and my parents made sure that i learned from as many people as humanly possible they opened a lot of doors for me to be able to uh to experience different ideas uh and you know because of that and because i'm i'm i tend to be pretty hungry for knowledge uh i spent an enormous amount of time outside in in and outside of school reading educating myself becoming good at what it is that i do and i spent a lot of years perfecting that i mean i've been writing a syndicated column since i was 17 years old i'm now 37 years old i've been doing this for 20 years uh and uh and you know you try enough things and you fail at enough things and eventually you get good at things and and i think that's the story of this company uh i think that's the story of sort of my career i think most and the most important thing about me personally is that i happen to be a fantastic father and a fantastic husband they're really those are those are the two most important things about me and i say that with with all due humility but actually i'm really like of the things in my life that i'm good at i am the best at being a father and i'm the best of being a husband i'm excellent at it that's right and i take great pride in that i love that because i think family is the most important thing like it really is like none of it means anything if you don't have your family um if you don't have your family in order if you have your house in order and i think that that's kind of one of the things that we really get right as conservatives and the left really gets wrong with them trying to strip down the family because it all starts from there if that's i mean if that's if that's not right nothing in your life can really be right um i guess i don't my story is very i guess very opposite in that i came from nothing i had a very disruptive household growing up but i was very fortunate to have my grandparents and when they saw what we were living in which was you know a roach infested apartment me and my two sisters shared a bedroom my grandfather just said i don't want my grand babies to grow up like that because i worked too hard for them to grow up like that he grew up on a sharecropping farm grew up in the segregated south never ever heard from his mouth growing up in his household i moved into his house when i was nine um he's never ordered a one bad sentence about a white person and so it was sort of that quiet knowledge um he never ever said anything against white people and i think just being able to sit around the breakfast table with him every morning he was you know all about reading the bible we had to we had prayers we had to study from the bible every single morning as he'd make us this big southern breakfast like that is what shaped candace owens that is the cannatone story and it was happening subliminally i mean i did i never never meant politics to me i just knew my parents got something wrong my grandparents got something right and that's ironic because we're supposed to believe that the way my grandfather suffered is why we're dealing with all the stuff now my father obviously grew up in a later time and yet he got something wrong and my grandfather got something right growing up in the 40s married at 17 never you know divorced my grandmother uh you know stayed with her until her dying day in 2013. so you know my story is my grandfather's story and i think my perspective of the world is informed by how could i as a black american complain when my grandfather never did and his first job was when he was five you know laying tobacco out to dry on a sharecropping farm it's i'm insulted by black americans that complained today um i'm genuinely insulted by i think we do our ancestors the greatest disservice the ones who worked hard so that we could have these opportunities um to walk into any room and to not say look me i'm a black person and so i deserve this um so the people that worked you know didn't live through a day of strife are the ones with all the complaints and my granddad was just sort of a no-nonsense you're going to work every day um kind of guy and he's he still remains the greatest blessing and the biggest influence in my life out of the two of you which one trends on twitter more often i think i tread i trend more violently if that makes any more sense i was gonna i kind of think that's true yeah i kind of think that's true although right now it seems like there is this sort of ping pong effect where you trend and then i defend you and i trend right or vice versa or vice versa yeah so it's good we've created a sort of twitter dynamic here right but i think if you went back he's probably trended more but when i trend it it will last for 72 hours i think that's right yeah when you guys find out that you're trending what is the process from there do you stop and look at everything or you just a normal part of your day always late we both always find out like 12 hours after the trend has started yeah so i tend to trend disproportionately on sabbath so i don't find out until after sabbath is over i'm like wow that's i had a good day so i don't really care but it actually it used to bother me like two three years ago it used to bother me and i actually did remove twitter from my phone so i don't actually have twitter on my phone specifically because i don't want to know and i figure i have enough people who work at this company that if something is really bad they'll let me know and it's never anything bad it's always something dumb that media matters took out of context and that makes perfect sense in context and it trends for no reason right exactly i feel the same way i feel like it's usually something really stupid and when i look at it i'm like what am i even trending over and as of recently it's been extra stupid because it's surrounding cardi b when was the first time that you both heard about the other i knew about ben i know the first time i started watching his videos um when i started working for turning point usa when charlie kirk first reached out to me and wanted me to work for turning point he said every single day you need to train to debate because they will try to kill you before you can even become big and he gave me a video of ben shapiro on stage with black lives matter and it's an epic video by the way i think it's like one of the best videos like completely by himself and there's like three woke black lives matter activists and he shuts the entire room up including them by asking them uh you know just about their entire ideology i mean i can't even do it like i would do a complete i'd like to see if you should have a spa because it's pretty amazing but i think he was just fired up and they all just get quiet talking about black on black crime and black culture and it's pretty beautiful so i believe the first time i heard of you is when you were working with charlie right um but you know i'd obviously that's the first time that i i know i'd come across your name before uh and i'm sure it was because of one of the viral videos that you had made talking about race in america and saying things that no one else will say and i was like every other conservative going who is this and how does she have the bravery to say that so that was that was a new one yeah which one of you would win in a debate what are we debating hmm that's a good question that is a good question it's a good question i feel like there are certain subjects definitely going to be some topics that ben's going to be like you know he could probably hand me my ass and there's definitely going to be some topics that i think i could hand him his ass on i think that's fair yeah how should people respond to the cancel mob um i mean [Laughter] pretty much me if you don't if you start apologizing to the left you'll never stop apologizing so don't apologize ever for anything to them because for them it's not about them actually wanting an apology it's what they actually want is submission they just want to see you submit and you should never submit to somebody that's just looking for dominance never show your neck to somebody who's seeking to chop off your head yup can political conservatives ever be cancelled or is it just people who come out as conservatives well i mean listen i think there are certain rules that if you violate them it's a problem i'm not going to pretend there are no rules in the public discourse there are certain people who say things that are so wildly out of bounds that it's very difficult to defend the things that they say um but uh i will say that typically speaking you can only be canceled by your own side uh it's it's people who come out as conservatives who are in real danger because those people have not yet established a base inside conservative movements uh so if you are working in hollywood and you're not openly conservative you can be canceled because the people who surround you are not people who you can trust but if you're you or if you're me and in that way we're safer than a lot of the people who are you know in hollywood and who are living undercover right for us we get to say what we want for a living yeah and if the left comes after us so what we have a huge base of people who support us and love us and and back what we do but i'm not going to pretend that it's easy for people who are out there there are a lot of people in kind of the conservative side who say well you know no matter what your job you should stand up and you should speak out right now a lot of those people have families to support and have a lot of sympathy for them yeah i totally agree and that's actually that's a really solid point like you're more at risk if you're lying about who you are because if you're already out and you are who you are then it's like all right well you're amongst friends and really it would take a mob of conservatives to be upset with something that i did to really cancel me because i obviously the left's not going to take you you don't want to be on the left and the conservatives won't have you so i think that you kind of nailed that answer what is something that you're most proud of in your career yeah what have you been ben i mean i mean i mean honestly for me it's the number of is the number of people who i get letters from who say that they have not just switched their their political viewpoint which is nice uh but they've actually changed how they live their lives i get a lot of these kinds of letters from people thank god it means that uh you know when they listen to the show they're getting something more than just the politics from it and people who say that they felt like their their life was on the wrong track you know they i've gotten letters from women who said that they've not had abortions because they've listened to show wow or men who've said that they've uh were thinking about breaking up with a girlfriend who was pregnant and said they got together and they got married and he got a job i've got a lot of those kind of letters people who have decided that they were going to get a job and i got one letter from a guy who said that when he started listening to the show he was homeless and then he decided he was going to uh somehow enroll himself in college and go to law school he ended up at i believe at harvard law school according to him yeah those kind of stories are pretty amazing it does show that politics has outsized influence especially when you're discussing things that aren't just politics but deeper values underlying politics yeah i would say two things that i'm proud of the first is that i never compromised who i was and um i think that that's really hard uh well you know when you're in the political space because there's a lot of temptation to compromise who you are and people telling you what you have to be and i think i've stood firm on that but then secondly which is more in line with what we are saying is nothing makes my heart um feel bigger than when a black person comes up to me and says i feel like you gave me my life back and it's such a heavy compliment because i know exactly what they're saying black people in particular don't even it's like running around and not realizing that you're in prison you know and and then suddenly somebody says to you i mean i really i always say it's like the allegory of the cave you know what i mean you don't even know that you're living in this cave you have no idea these are shadows on the wall and it's not reality and then suddenly somebody goes oh wait here's all of this the entire world outside and you can see for the first time and when so when they say that to me when they say candace i feel like you're giving my life back that's how i felt i felt like thomas soul gave me my life back i didn't even know that my life was taken away so that compliment always hits me the hardest um because i just i've been there before what is something about you that you think each other would be surprised to know i think i'm probably nerdier than people probably have me pegged like me my husband it's weird i think people don't think i'm as much of a bookworm as i am i'm very much into books and i think when i first hit the scene probably so many people were like oh she's just doing the like cute servative thing you know what i mean i'm like no no no like i'm i actually love to read i've always been a bit of a dweeb and english was always my favorite subject so i love like the greats plato aristotle like all that stuff and i think that that probably doesn't read when i'm like smacking down celebs on twitter yeah i mean for me obviously it's that i'm a platinum award winning rap artist if you just looked at me you wouldn't know that but but the truth is that i do do a version of whap that absolutely slap a trend it does okay here's the thing you wouldn't be that bad of a rapper because you speak fast oh yeah and if you talk fast you you all you need is a little bit of flow and some rhymes you probably would actually kill it i will never try that that sounds amazingly terrible you never know it'll just be a mystery wrapped in enigma forever what is your least favorite part of being a political commentator oh i 100 would say it is the exposure unnecessarily that my family has to it meaning that like it's very difficult i think for my sisters when they go online and people are debating me so it's like i don't care whatever i have to receive but it always sucks when people that i care about who have nothing to do with this lifestyle suddenly have to answer for statements that i've said and things that i believe in so i think that's probably that's definitely a good answer i it for me it was probably the security that has been attendant around everything uh so it went from being i could walk around anywhere without any security to my wife having to get used to security my kids having to get used to security now they think it's natural because they've had it since they're very small um but it's at the beginning it was it was a bit of a culture shock for them unfortunately it's it's a nasty world out there and you know it twitter is just a terrible place it's just a terrible place filled with horrible people it is hell on earth so naturally it's where we make a good deal of our money so right i totally agree i totally agree family uh you're both stranded on a desert island separately how was cardi b what are three things you'd want to have with you a family yeah exactly i mean it can't be people so um things are people yeah yeah and i assume there's enough food right because otherwise this is a real short stay so um well yeah if there's food because let me just be frank about this in an apocalypse i'm the first one to go right like my skill set just does not apply in an apocalypse right if there's a zombie apocalypse like i can't do plumbing i'm not like i'm not a great shot like i'm like i can i can talk to the zombies but i feel like it won't be super convincing like so my skill might yeah my skill set just does not meet with the with the approval of pre-civilization so is it so yeah i mean but if if the question is what can i bring with me uh copy of the complete uh tanakh which would be the uh the old testament the prophets and the writings um the uh complete works of shakespeare and uh the complete audio playlist of probably beethoven guys he just took all all books well beethoven i guess the audio playlist music's a good one music is a good one gosh i don't know what i would take that's really hard for me i don't know i i mean i definitely would take a bible but it would be one object i don't know about the other two if i can't take people i don't i don't really know i mean i feel like i don't have that much of an attachment to anything that's on this earth that i'd be like i must take this without me it would always it would always be people you know it would be my husband i'm actually by the way if you're trying to survive i'm pretty i can cut a pipe my dad was a plumber so i'm i'm oh no you i have no question i'm good here's the thing you need to take pick me so number one you're gonna be 100 more useful than i am but that's true of every single person who's in this room in this building and probably in this city right like i'm a trained lawyer okay like i'm the person that they kill for food first like an accountable zombie you might get it together and you're an accountable situation my only saving grace is that i am not a large person right because i would be certainly the first to be sacrificed without a doubt yeah i feel like we have to get you like remember the survivor on an island that would be some really good reality tv survivor with like ben on an island i i feel like i feel like naked and alone i'm toast right survivor i'd be okay yeah oh yeah i could manipulate my way out of that yeah come on like that's that's i love that yeah convincing that's all you really need to be exact right you don't have to be good at anything yeah survivor you just have to be convincing and then i feel like i could i could handle myself but if it involves like starting a fire killing an animal yeah like no this is where's the supermarket yeah are there matches yeah this makes no sense no how will conservatives know when we're making progress in the culture war i think we are now i think the fact that we were just asked you know how do you respond to all the times you're trending i mean the only reason we're trending is because the left is threatened by us um and we're able to drum up enough conversation regarding what we've said or you know regarding what we're doing and i think that that is one of the good things about daily wire is they understand that there is this this huge hole this vacuous space right now being created by the cancel culture um where eventually daily wire could be the new nbc abc because you know cancer culture is a cancer and it will eventually eat itself and something else will have to pop up in its place um so i think conservatives get that and we're kind of kind of out there doing what we have to do i mean candace's rise in the cultural space is really an excellent indicator as to as to where we are i mean the fact is that people who are you know most respected and most successful members of the culture are responding directly to things that candace is saying because they are concerned that conservatives might be making inroads in this particular space and you know i think that they are going to the left is just going to continue to provide the right with opportunities by taking popular things and destroying them because they have to destroy everything that is good and decent about the country right now including all of its fundamental institutions the more they continue to destroy that stuff the more ground they're going to open up for us i mean they can continue to do this but they should understand that they are alienating a huge number of americans and there are those of us out there who are entrepreneurial enough to fill that space and provide alternatives yep what do your spouses love or hate about what you do my husband hates that social media is a part of what i have to do because it's such a time suck i hate it too though so we agree on that front it's just like i have to do a video and respond and do all this because you kind of you have to be engaged in social media at least i do in a way um that's meaningful um what do you i mean he loves everything i do my husband's my biggest fan so um he's always amazed at things that i'm doing and we're just such a great partnership i mean he is truly the business mind i'm the creative mind and it just works so so number one how long have you been married i have been married for i should just under two years yeah so he loves what you do now um i've married for almost 13 years so like a long time uh and you know it starts off with a lot of enthusiasm candace and over time over time certain things become more irksome yeah like what uh into my future yeah it mostly just it's always the time suck and because i mean now you have a kid so as as you have more kids and as the family becomes bigger and the time demands become larger it's not just i need to take off time to do a video it's like you don't have time to go to the bathroom right you don't have time to do anything like all time is just gone and the demands on the time are extraordinary and so it used to be that my wife was deeply concerned with what happened during the week and you know on a normal day we'd sort of sit down and discuss what had happened at my work during the week and now it's like we look at each other it's 9 30 at night the kids have finally gone to bed they're going to wake me up at five o'clock in the morning and we look at each other and we're like okay we can spend some time and talk about our lives or we can just collapse and most nights you end up just collapsing and so that means that at the end of the week she'll say like well how was your week because i don't even remember the beginning of this week right so the thing that the thing that she she hates the most about my career is that it takes time away from you know all the stuff that actually matters all the family kind of stuff uh and the thing i do love the most about my wife is that she does not give a damn what i do i mean she really does not care she she doesn't she like she finds it interesting and she follows it sort of um but she she could not care less what who we are meeting i think we've you know met every important politician in the country she does not care right uh we've met a bunch of celebrities she does not care it's so charming it's so wonderful i i have so many great stories of her meeting people who are extremely famous and having no clue who they are and it's one of the most charming things about her it's also how i know that she she loves me for me number one because anyone who marries me would have to love me for me because there really is nothing else to offer but beyond that um she uh we we met when she was 20 and i was 23. uh and uh and so how did you meet where'd you meet uh my sister fixed us up she was at ucla at the time and i just graduated harvard law and i uh i came back and my sister said there's this really beautiful girl who's going to ucla and i think you're really going to like her i said it sounds great but she's dating somebody else well i can't do that so just waiting you know and then about six months later it's like whatever happened to that girl she's like well i think she's single now and i was like okay great and so we met uh our first date was september 5th i proposed on december 20 december 15th she accepted the same year oh yeah she accepted it on december 22nd so we did it for about three months wow and uh two weeks from meeting to engage really yeah i can't believe you beat me yeah that's amazing no one that no one will ever beat up i know normally my story is like wow three more months i'm like wow two weeks so long so how'd you guys meet uh i was speaking in it's actually one of the most hilarious stories that involves russell brand and paul joseph watson somehow i was speaking in london that's a weird story i know doing russell brand's podcast and i'm supposed to like meet pjw for a drink really quickly because we had known each other from the twitter verse but i didn't know him and because it was like i didn't really know him i was like kept pushing him back as i was working and russell brandt's podcast went over and three hours go by and i take my assistant like just tell peow like you know we'll do it tomorrow try to meet him tomorrow and she's like no there's like a dinner he had his friends stop at dinner and there's 30 of the biggest politicians in the uk waiting for you george farmer my husband was the one who wrestled up the dinner and so i was three hours late to a dinner that was like done in my honor and literally saw him knew the second i saw it it was the weirdest thing i saw his face and i felt like i knew in my whole life and he proposed to me followed me back to america i was speaking at um what's the thing at the end of the year that we did sas followed me back to sas we were engaged two weeks later everyone thought we were completely nuts we had our first kiss he probably he apologized um he um proposed on a plane going well that is the most romantic place yeah judge said literally he was like facetiming me going down to south to south africa a proposal plane i said yes he had our first kiss london heathrow airport after we were engaged uh yeah terminal five and we everyone thought we were nuts his parents my family best decision i ever made that we were just meant to be that's a great story yeah and by the way if my if my daughter or son ever came back i'd be like you're not marrying foreign are you crazy oh yeah another thing i definitely learned is that as soon as as soon as my kids get engaged within 48 hours they're getting married yeah because the period between engagement and marriage is like the worst period in the entire world i loved it terrible i loved it she loved it yeah i loved it it was everything's been such a walk in the park and i don't know i think i'm just getting lucky but my wife has been wonderful yeah my my wife she after i asked her to marry me she's like because the way that it works is i told her that i loved her on november 15th she did not say that she loved me until december 15th so for a month all of those conversations were super awkward and every conversation i love you okay bye bye so nice ben um bye right exactly so sweet of you ben i thank you so for like a month but it actually turned out that she was not wrong because as soon as she said i love you back the first words in my mouth were okay so we're getting married yeah it's like we're done okay done mission accomplished and she was like can't we just enjoy this time like you don't understand i'm not enjoying this time it's a very not enjoyable time like now i'm sitting here we love each other and i have to like sit here and wonder if something's getting this is a very not enjoyable time i love that you just execute immediately yeah exactly that's so sweet last question how is parenthood affected your political views or career aspirations definitely has made everything more severe where it's like it's not just it's not just a political debate anymore right like like we're talking about transgender russian we can have age we can say a thousand times why it's wrong why it's wrong well suddenly when the people are starting the politics sort of say okay no we need some laws now we need to make sure that there's no like california has proposed a bill no boy or girl like okay is my child gonna grow up in this is this even the same america that i'm gonna like that i grew up in like is everything about race my child's biracial like it just it's more severe now it kind of is like no no no i need to speak up even louder if i wasn't loud enough before like and we need to just say this is right and this is wrong it's not between right and left anymore it's between right and wrong and this is why the danger of people that say they're too fearful to speak out just now is not the time to be too fearful because this is this we don't recognize this country anymore if everyone just stays silent so i think the severity has changed that's 100 right i mean as soon as you have kids all of a sudden all the issues where you thought okay well you know what if you take it down the road is it really that big a deal everything becomes incredibly immediate because you can see that in 20 years you know i'm 37 and 20 years i'll be 57. well in 20 years my kids are just going to be young adults and so they're just going to be starting you know their life here what are things going to be like if things are this bad now what are things going to be like in 20 years if we continue along this trajectory yeah so there's that as far as sort of how it's affected career i i like to travel a lot less than i did i was much easier traveling than than now like i don't want to be away from my kids as i was leaving to come here this week my four-year-old son turns to me and he goes don't go to nashville dad don't go to nashville and i was like that is the that is the saddest thing i i i like it tears your heart out you're like why are you doing this i i did inform him he's like how am i gonna know when you're back it's like well because i was coming back late at night i'm coming back late at night and he says how do you how do i know then you're gonna be back so i'm gonna come in your room i'm gonna take pants out of your door and put them on your head and he said that's so cute and he said okay so tonight ben the dad we don't get this at the bend this is actually great yeah silly ben has been the dad my kid my kids don't know that i'm severe or harsh in any way like that's not no they think that i'm just a giant goofball i'm like i carry them around and flip them around and throw them up in the air and all that kind of stuff so um it changes it changes you that way you take yourself a lot less seriously because kids will absolutely wreck you yeah i mean like the most honest people in the world and and also they're just you realize that you're not in control of anything because the thing about kids especially like when they're babies they're super cute but then as soon as they you watch when they hit about it's not terrible twos it's terrible threes and fours okay once they hit three they turn in the worst people that ever live no they're violent yeah violent they're they're awful awful little people yeah they're innocent but they're terrible small children and if they ever that's why people like yeah a child should make up their own mind about their gender it's like i wouldn't let my kid i wouldn't let my kid choose what to eat for dinner are you insane are you a crazy person kids are the worst people on earth and when you realize that your job is to try and mold them and also that you have no control over them whatsoever beyond a certain point uh that is uh that is definitely a different feeling so it definitely kids humble you they make you take life a lot more seriously and also simultaneously not as seriously and they expand your emotional boundaries what i always say to folks about having kids is that when you're single your your spectrum of happiness to unhappiness ranges from about a seven to a zero right so zero's like you're pretty unhappy and seven is like you're pretty happy then you get married and your maximum happiness is like a ten and your minimum happiness like a negative ten because if something happens that's bad your spouse yeah then it actually affects you right so before you might have been to zero but it's worse when something bad happens absolutely and then you have kids in all limits and removed the best things that ever happened to you are your kids and by far the worst things that ever happened to you are things that have to do with your kids well and so it's walking a tightrope without any sort of net we'll always say the expression it's like you know see your heart being out of your chest and walking around and it's all you have no control over where it's going oh my god it's all the time yeah like when they do stuff that's wonderful it's so wonderful when they do stuff that's terrible it's so terrible and then they i'm so excited i'm just starting this chapter because i think family is just the best and i'm like now that i have a son i just everything he does and just like he's looking like he's perfect he's amazing look at this how dare you define his gender before he's 18. he how dare you you're assigning him a gender candice you're not allowed to do that yeah exactly how do you know you have a son wait until he wait until he turns six nine wait until he dies he might change a few times in between ridiculous yeah boy healthy boy did you know that every like on this video creates one additional leftist tier don't ask me why that's called science to take advantage of this amazing opportunity hit the like button

Channel: Ben Shapiro

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Id: _uJF4z1ZNT4

Length: 28min 20sec (1700 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 29 2021