Episode 1732: Ben Shapiro | The Brogan Report

Introduction

Episode 1732 of the Joe Rogan Experience, featuring political commentator Ben Shapiro, aired on November 10, 2021. Over approximately two and a half hours, Shapiro promoted his book “The Authoritarian Moment” while discussing COVID-19 policies, alternative treatments, social media censorship, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and various political topics. While the episode is primarily political commentary rather than a single-topic misinformation deep dive, it is problematic because it frames legitimate public health measures and fact-checking as authoritarian censorship, dismisses the concept of misinformation itself, promotes misleading narratives about COVID-19 treatments like ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine, and platforms a guest with an extensively documented record of anti-trans rhetoric — all without meaningful pushback from Joe Rogan.

Ben Shapiro holds a B.A. in political science from UCLA and a J.D. from Harvard Law School. He is co-founder and editor emeritus of The Daily Wire, and host of The Ben Shapiro Show. He has no medical, epidemiological, or public health credentials, yet makes repeated claims about COVID-19 treatments, vaccine policy, and pandemic response throughout this episode.

The Guest’s Background

Ben Shapiro is one of the most prominent conservative media figures in the United States. He co-founded The Daily Wire in 2015 and has built a massive media platform. While his legal education and political commentary career are legitimate, several aspects of his track record are relevant to evaluating this episode:

COVID misinformation: NewsGuard found that The Daily Wire “published unsubstantiated and inaccurate claims about Covid-19,” and four of its top ten Facebook articles in the second half of 2021 were critical of vaccine mandates with misleading framing.
Anti-trans rhetoric: GLAAD, Media Matters, and numerous LGBTQ advocacy organizations have documented Shapiro’s long history of anti-trans statements, including promoting the debunked “social contagion” theory of gender identity, which has been rejected by the World Professional Association for Transgender Health and the American Psychological Association.
PolitiFact fact-checks: PolitiFact has rated multiple Shapiro claims as false, including misleading statistics about radicalized Muslims and inaccurate claims about government spending.

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Key Problematic Claims

Claim: Misinformation Is Just Politically Inconvenient Truth

Throughout the episode, Shapiro argued that “misinformation” is simply information that is “deemed inconvenient for a particular narrative,” and that fact-checking is a tool of political censorship rather than a legitimate practice. He stated: “It’s misinformation when it’s deemed inconvenient for a particular narrative. And then as soon as something is convenient for the narrative, it’s not misinformation.” He also characterized misinformation as something that “can be true, but if it’s missing context or if it’s presented in a way I don’t like, it’s misinformation.”

Fact-Check: While legitimate criticisms of fact-checking inconsistency exist, Shapiro’s framing fundamentally undermines the concept of factual accuracy itself. This is a rhetorical strategy that inoculates an audience against corrections by preemptively dismissing all fact-checking as politically motivated. In reality, major fact-checking organizations like PolitiFact, FactCheck.org, and Snopes use documented methodologies, cite their sources, and fact-check claims across the political spectrum. The International Fact-Checking Network maintains a code of principles that member organizations must adhere to, including nonpartisanship and transparency.

The specific examples Shapiro cited — the lab leak theory, ivermectin, hydroxychloroquine — conflate several distinct phenomena: the evolution of scientific understanding as new evidence emerges, the difference between legitimate scientific debate and premature clinical recommendations, and the distinction between censorship and content moderation of demonstrably false health claims during a public health emergency.

Source: International Fact-Checking Network - Code of Principles

Claim: Ivermectin and Hydroxychloroquine Were Unfairly Suppressed

Shapiro referenced ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine alongside monoclonal antibodies as treatments that were labeled misinformation due to political bias rather than scientific evidence, suggesting that people were “banned for six months from social media” for discussing these treatments and that “the fact checkers are okay with it so long as it’s the right people who are saying it now.”

Fact-Check: This framing is misleading. Ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine were not suppressed because of political inconvenience — they were flagged because large-scale clinical trials failed to demonstrate efficacy against COVID-19:

Ivermectin: Multiple large randomized controlled trials, including the TOGETHER trial (published in the New England Journal of Medicine), found no significant benefit of ivermectin for COVID-19 treatment. The WHO, FDA, and EMA all recommended against its use for COVID-19.
Hydroxychloroquine: The RECOVERY trial, one of the largest randomized controlled trials in history, found that hydroxychloroquine provided no benefit for hospitalized COVID-19 patients. The WHO’s Solidarity trial reached the same conclusion.
Monoclonal antibodies: These were actually authorized by the FDA under Emergency Use Authorization based on clinical trial evidence — they are not comparable to ivermectin or hydroxychloroquine, which lacked such evidence. Shapiro’s grouping of all three together as equally suppressed treatments is misleading.

Content moderation of unproven COVID treatments occurred because premature promotion of unproven therapies during a pandemic can lead people to forgo effective treatments and vaccination, directly endangering public health.

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Claim: COVID Risk to Children Does Not Justify Vaccination

Shapiro stated he had vaccinated himself and his wife but had no intention of vaccinating his children (ages 7, 5, and 1), citing “no track record for kids” and “minimal risk to them.” He also mentioned concerns about myocarditis following the second dose.

Fact-Check: Shapiro’s position contained some legitimate uncertainties that existed at the time but also reflected misleading framing:

Pediatric COVID risk: While children were at lower risk of severe COVID-19 than adults, they were not at zero risk. By November 2021, hundreds of children had died from COVID-19 in the U.S., and thousands had been hospitalized. Multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children (MIS-C) was a serious complication affecting over 5,000 children.
Myocarditis concerns: CDC data confirmed rare cases of myocarditis following mRNA vaccination, primarily in adolescent males after the second dose. However, COVID-19 infection itself carried a significantly higher risk of myocarditis than vaccination. As CDC pediatric cardiologist Dr. Matthew Oster stated: “The bottom line is getting COVID is much riskier to the heart than getting this vaccine.”
Clinical trial data: Pfizer’s clinical trial of approximately 4,600 children ages 5-11 demonstrated high efficacy in preventing symptomatic disease without serious safety concerns, which is why the CDC authorized the pediatric vaccine in November 2021.

Shapiro’s claim of “no track record” was misleading given the clinical trial data available at the time of authorization.

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Claim: COVID Risk Perception Is Media-Manufactured Fear

The episode included discussion of how the media’s portrayal of COVID-19 risks “creates disproportionate fear, which affects public health behavior and policy.” The framing suggested that public health concern about COVID-19 was overblown and politically motivated.

Fact-Check: By November 2021, over 750,000 Americans had died from COVID-19, making it one of the deadliest events in American history. While legitimate debates existed about the proportionality of specific policy responses, characterizing public concern about a pandemic that had killed hundreds of thousands as “disproportionate fear” manufactured by the media is dismissive of the real-world death toll and the genuine public health emergency.

Studies have shown that COVID risk perception varied significantly: some demographics underestimated risk (leading to lower vaccination rates and higher death rates), while others overestimated risk. The problem was not unidirectional “fear-mongering” but a complex information environment in which both over- and under-estimation of risk had serious consequences.

Source: Johns Hopkins COVID-19 Dashboard - Cumulative Deaths

Ben Shapiro’s Anti-Trans Record

While the specific content of anti-trans discussion in this episode is less extensively documented than the COVID content, Shapiro’s broader record is directly relevant because Rogan’s platforming of Shapiro exposes millions of listeners to a figure who has built his brand partly on anti-trans rhetoric:

Shapiro has promoted the debunked “rapid onset gender dysphoria” social contagion theory, which the World Professional Association for Transgender Health and the American Psychological Association have rejected.
He has publicly stated that “men cannot be women” and organized events under that banner.
The Daily Wire under his leadership published the anti-trans documentary “What Is a Woman?” which misrepresents the medical consensus on gender-affirming care.
A 2022 study by the American Academy of Pediatrics disproved the social contagion theory that Shapiro has promoted.

Platforming a figure with this record without challenge normalizes anti-trans positions and exposes them to an audience of millions who may not be aware of the scientific consensus on gender identity.

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Joe Rogan’s Role

Joe Rogan’s performance in this episode follows a familiar pattern of failing to challenge misinformation from ideologically aligned guests:

No pushback on COVID treatment claims: When Shapiro grouped ivermectin, hydroxychloroquine, and monoclonal antibodies together as unfairly suppressed treatments, Rogan did not point out that these treatments had vastly different evidence bases. Rogan himself had promoted ivermectin after his own COVID diagnosis, making him a sympathetic rather than skeptical interviewer on this topic.
Agreement on censorship framing: Rather than challenging Shapiro’s dismissal of fact-checking as political censorship, Rogan largely agreed, reinforcing the narrative that public health content moderation was politically motivated.
No challenge on anti-trans record: Rogan did not push back on or question Shapiro’s well-documented anti-trans positions, despite having a platform reaching millions of listeners.
Amplification of “authoritarian left” framing: Rogan provided a sympathetic platform for Shapiro’s book promoting the thesis that the primary authoritarian threat in America comes from the left — published the same year as the January 6 Capitol insurrection.

This episode aired at a critical moment in the pandemic (November 2021) when vaccine misinformation was contributing to preventable deaths. Rogan’s failure to challenge misleading claims about COVID treatments and vaccination contributed to the broader ecosystem of pandemic misinformation that public health officials were struggling to counter.

Source: Media Matters - Joe Rogan Wrapped: A year of COVID-19 misinformation

Real-World Harm

The misinformation patterns present in this episode contributed to documented real-world harm:

Vaccine hesitancy: Anti-mandate rhetoric that conflates government mandates with the safety and efficacy of vaccines themselves contributed to lower vaccination rates. The Kaiser Family Foundation found that vaccine misinformation was a significant factor in vaccine hesitancy, with unvaccinated Americans dying from COVID-19 at significantly higher rates than vaccinated Americans throughout late 2021 and 2022.
Alternative treatment promotion: Promotion of ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine as suppressed treatments led to documented cases of people self-medicating with veterinary formulations, causing hospitalizations and poison control center calls.
Anti-trans harm: Platforming anti-trans rhetoric without challenge contributes to a hostile environment for transgender individuals. The Trevor Project’s 2022 National Survey found that 45% of LGBTQ youth seriously considered attempting suicide in the past year, with rates higher among those who experienced discrimination.
Erosion of institutional trust: Framing public health measures and fact-checking as authoritarian censorship undermines trust in legitimate institutions at precisely the moments when that trust is most needed.

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Conclusion

JRE episode 1732 with Ben Shapiro is problematic not because it features explicitly outrageous claims like some other episodes, but because it systematically undermines the very concept of factual accountability. By framing misinformation as politically motivated censorship, dismissing fact-checking as partisan, and grouping unproven treatments with proven ones as equally “suppressed,” the episode erodes listeners’ ability to distinguish between legitimate scientific consensus and politically convenient narratives. Shapiro’s polished rhetorical style makes these arguments more persuasive and therefore more dangerous than cruder forms of misinformation. Joe Rogan’s failure to provide any meaningful pushback — and his active agreement with many of these framings — amplifies the harm to an audience of millions.