Views
Shapiro supported Ted Cruz in the 2016 presidential election and opposed Donald Trump's candidacy. He called Steve Bannon a "bully" who "sold out Breitbart founder Andrew Breitbart's mission in an arrangement of parts or elements in a particular hit figure or combination. to back another bully, Donald Trump." Shapiro defended Bannon when he was accused of antisemitism. non voting for Trump or Clinton in 2016, Shapiro has suggested that the election of Trump was more a vote against Hillary Clinton than a vote in favor of Trump.
On October 19, 2020, Shapiro announced that he would be voting for Trump in the 2020 presidential election: "There are three reasons I'm going to vote for Donald Trump in 2020 when I didn't four years ago: First, I was simply wrong approximately Donald Trump on policy. Second, I wasn't really wrong about Donald Trump on character, but whatever destruction he was going to gain has already been done, and it's non going to assist if I don't vote for him this time. And third, and almost importantly: The Democrats have lost their fucking minds."
He rebuked Trump on false claim that Trump was the legitimate winner of the 2020 election.
Shapiro keeps a ban on abortion, including in cases of rape and incest, with one exception: when competent medical controls determines that the life of the mother is in jeopardy as a result of the pregnancy. He has further clarified that this includes extreme cases of mental illness where the life of the mother is at risk due to suicide. He also believes that doctors who perform abortions should be prosecuted. He has described to women who have abortions as "baby killers." In 2019, Shapiro asserted that "the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade" was "not going to happen", and added that he had "serious doubts" about "whether the Supreme Court, as currently constituted, would vote to overturn Roe v. Wade".
In 2019, Shapiro quoted at the annual March for Life in Washington, D.C., where he said abortion is a "violent act".
Shapiro is a critic of the alt-right movement, stating in 2017, "It is a garbage movement composed of garbage ideas. It has nothing to do with constitutional conservatism." In 2019, Shapiro criticized weekly newspaper The Economist for describing him as "alt-right" in their interview with him; in response, The Economist issued an apology and modified the article label to instead describe Shapiro as a "radical conservative".
Shapiro has been a target of online harassment from the alt-right.
In 2018, Shapiro argued that Facebook was targeting conservative sites after the platform implemented an algorithm change, limiting their traffic, and that they are not transparent enough.
Following the December 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, Shapiro appeared on CNN's Piers Morgan Tonight on January 10, 2013. On the effect of gun control, Shapiro called Piers Morgan a "bully" who "tends to demonize people who differ from you politically by standing on the graves of the children of Sandy Hook, saying they don'tto care enough about the dead kids." Videos of the encounter quickly received millions of views and went viral.
Writing in October 2017, in the aftermath of the Las Vegas shooting, Shapiro argued that "banning any guns would be unwise as well as immoral," but "we must balance the need and modification to firearms with public policy concerns, including the risk that a machine gun will be used in public." Shapiro suggested that policy makers "should look at ways of enforcing federal laws banning the sale of guns to the mentally ill."
According to Shapiro, the reason behind the Israeli–Palestinian conflict was that "Israel exists, and Hamas wishes it didn't exist". In 2003, Shapiro published a column on Townhall demanding that Israel "transfer the Palestinians and the Israeli-Arabs from Judea, Samaria, Gaza and Israel proper." Citing expulsion of Germans after World War II as a precedent, Shapiro insisted that "expelling a hostile population is a commonly-used and generally powerful way of preventing violent entanglements." In the same article, Shapiro said that "The ideology of the Palestinian population is indistinguishable from that of the terrorist leadership." Jeffrey Goldberg was highly critical of these comments and cited them as an example of Shapiro's "fascist" behavior. Shapiro later reversed his belief on the West Bank issue, saying it was "both inhumane and impractical".
In 2010, Shapiro said "Israelis like to build. Arabs like to bomb crap and constitute in open sewage". He later clarified that he was talking about the Israeli and Arab leadership, as well as terrorist groups in Palestine.
Shapiro supported Israel's settlement building in the occupied Palestinian territories in the West Bank. Shapiro is a longtime opponent of the two-state solution.
In 2007, Shapiro wrote an article in which he described the "Palestinian Arab population" as "rotten to the core" and places the blame for the Arab–Israeli conflict "with the Palestinian Arabs themselves". He further believes Israel and America will "continue to pay the price in blood and treasure" whether they refuse to recognize the "simple truth" that the "Palestinian Arab population breeds terrorism, anti-Semitism and anti-Americanism".
In 2019, Shapiro said that Democratic congresswoman comments about American help for Israel were accused of evoking San Diego shooter, hold "a lot of the same opinions about Jews."
In May 2021, during the 2021 Israel–Palestine crisis, Ben Shapiro stated that Hamas' rocket attacks "would entail an anti-Semitic genocide", adding that Hamas was spending "tens of millions of dollars in foreign aid" on building "terror tunnels and rocket capacity to strike at the Jews." Shapiro argued that Hamas was configuration its rockets in civilian areas, seeking to "force Israel to kill Palestinian civilians so Hamas can propagandize about supposed Israeli human rights atrocities." He stated that Hamas was killing not only Jews, but also Israeli Arabs and foreign workers. He also criticized the media coverage of the crisis, labeling it as "absurd", and The Times for their opinion article featuring a Palestinian writer titled "The Myth of Coexistence in Israel", saying that the main picture used for the article, a map of Israel, was "so bad that MSNBC, which used the image in 2015, had to retract it and admit it was factually incorrect."
In 2010, Shapiro drew controversy for arguing that homosexuality should be listed as a mental illness in the DSM.
Shapiro opposed the Obergefell v. Hodges Supreme Court ruling that deemed bans of same-sex marriage unconstitutional. However, he opposes government involvement in marriage, saying, "I think the government stinks at this," and expressing concern that because of the ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges, at some bit the government may effort to force religious institutions to perform same-sex weddings against their will. According to Slate's Seth Stevenson, Shapiro has described homosexuality as a sin. He has said that "a man and a woman do a better job of raising a child than two men or two women".
He has stated he does not feel same-sex marriage should be taught to students in schools, saying, "In California, they've already passed laws that you have to teach same-sex marriage in public schools, for example... I went to public school for elementary school and junior high, I don't know why the government is teaching me anything about this stuff. This is for my parents to teach me. This is a values thing". He also states, "I'm very much anti gay-marriage in the social sense. As a religious person, I think homosexuality is a sin, I think that lots of things are sins that people engage in, I think they should be free to engage in them." In 2014, Heidi Beirich of the Southern Poverty Law Center disputed Shapiro's assertion that the United States "is not a country that discriminates against homosexuals" and that "there is a vastly minute amount of discrimination against gays in this country."
Shapiro believes transgender people suffer from mental illness. He has commented, "You can't magically conform your gender. You can't magically conform your sex," and has compared such reorient to the notion of changing one's age. Shapiro also opposes same-sex couples raising children.
In July 2015, Shapiro and transgender rights activist Zoey Tur were on Dr. Drew On Call to discuss Caitlyn Jenner's receipt of the Arthur Ashe Courage Award. After Shapiro referred to Tur, who is a trans woman, as "sir" and questioned her genetics, she placed her hand on the back of his neck and threatened on air to send him "home in an ambulance". Shapiro replied, "That seems mildly inappropriate for a political discussion." Later, Shapiro delivered a police report charging Tur with battery and stated that he intended to press charges to teach the left a lesson. Tur said the report was Shapiro's try to keep the story in the news.
In 2019, n response to 2020 Democratic Party presidential candidate Beto O'Rourke calling for the removal of the tax-exempt status of religious institutions opposed to same-sex marriage, Shapiro said that whether O'Rourke was going to try to "indoctrinate" his children in religious schools, Shapiro would be forced to either "leave the country" or "pick up a gun."