It's funny how perception can differ from reality.
My perception of Daily Wire was as follows:
Ben Shapiro, an Orthodox Jew who was politically conservative and extremely smart. He also faced relentless bullying growing up due to being short, skinny, and very nerdy, and eschewed a social life in favor of becoming a very young political columnist. After finding some moderate success in this realm, and getting his law degree, he started doing some entertainment law on the side. He was eventually discovered by Andrew Breitbart, who brought him on and mentored him. After Breitbart's death, he had conflicts with the new management there, and decided to venture out on his own. He teamed up with Christian conservative Jeremy Boering, a guy with no college education, who was a behind-the-scenes worker in various conservative media spaces. Boering was the business guy, Shapiro was the face of the venture, and they expanded from there, now being the biggest conservative social media company in the US.
The truth is actually this:
In 2015, Boering and Shapiro raised $4.7 million in funding from a man named Farris Wilks. Who is Farris Wilks? He's a fracking billionaire. Wilks had previously given $6.5 million in 2013 to Dennis Prager's new "PragerU" conservative media project. Boering and Shapiro had a good relationship with PragerU, and that allowed them to meet Wilks through a man named Caleb Robinson, who was Wilks' go-between for the PragerU project.
Soon enough, Boering and Shapiro had their funding from Wilks.
VICE did a very biased article about this situation in 2022. Because the once-revered VICE had turned to shit long before 2022, the article quickly turned into a left-wing conspiracy hit piece about climate denial, rather than the quality investigative journalism for which they were once known.
So don't expect to learn much from the VICE situation beyond the facts I stated above. But those facts are indeed true.
Remember the stupid Bentkey children's programming venture, meant to compete with Disney? I wondered why Daily Wire would waste its precious funds on such a failproject. It turns out they're not wasting precious funds, nor is the stupid Bentkey name something new. It turns out Bentkey Holdings is the name of the company set up to be the parent of Daily Wire, and they are raising $120 million to fund the fail kids TV project.
According to the article linked above, Bentkey and Daily Wire is much bigger than it appears to be, has an extensive network of employees (not just the 4 people you see in the background of Ben's show), and there's 11 LLCs associated with Bentkey, registered in Delaware. Most of Bentkey/Daily Wire's operations are based out of Nashville. Shapiro himself lives in Florida, so he can be among his fellow Jewry, as Nashville is full of goys and he didn't want to live there. Originally Shapiro planned to live in Nashville, but he decided not to, and quietly bought a home in Florida. I believe there's a skeleton crew helping him broadcast from Florida, and everyone else is in Nashville for all the pre/post production, marketing, etc. Boering runs that office.
Is Ben Shapiro doing Wilks' bidding by spreading climate change lies, so Wilks can keep on frackin'? That's what VICE will have you believe, but I don't buy it. I watch Shapiro's show. There is relatively little mention of climate issues, and almost no mention of fracking. If Daily Wire is a pro-fracking propaganda arm, they're doing a very poor job of it. There's also the preaching-to-the-choir problem. It's not effective to push a pro-fracking message to a conservative audience who is largely pro-fracking anyway. If you are looking to move the public opinion needle on fracking, you quietly back some influential left wingers who are told to be their normal progressive selves, but to deviate on the fracking issue. But that's not what's happening here.
Anyway, I had wondered how Daily Wire was getting all this money. How were they paying for all these employees? How did they have $100m to spend on kids' programming? How could they offer Steven Fucking Crowder $50m, with a willingness to go up to $70m? How are they producing a bunch of dumb movies at a fairly rapid pace, all of which have decent production value (albeit poor acting and writing)?
I couldn't figure out how $99/year Daily Wire Plus memberships, plus YouTube monetization, were paying for all of this.
Turns out it's probably not paying for all of this.
So what's going on? I think that Wilks, a pastor-turned-billionaire-fracker, sees this as a passion project. Much like Sheldon Adelstein had two obsessions -- love for Israel and hatred of online gambling -- I think that Wilks wanted to push a strong, well-funded, well-viewed conservative message via social media. Like Adelstein, who was frequently (and incorrectly) accused of opposing online poker for selfish business reasons, I think the same is going on with Wilks. I don't believe Wilks wants a pro-fracking propaganda arm. I think the pastor in him just wants to see something like Daily Wire become a competitor to mainstream entertainment companies. He saw potential first in PragerU, and then more in Daily Wire, and he's putting his money behind it.
Funny enough, the right wing conspiratard contingent, who have turned against Daily Wire since Candace Owens was fired, are putting out false claims that Daily Wire is owned by big Israeli interests. That's just not true. Farris Wilks is not Jewish, and has no connection to Israel. Daily Wire is pro-Israel because its main personality and co-owner is a conservative Orthodox Jew. Duh. That's it Not more complex than that.
Funny enough, none of these same conspiratards are seeing the REAL story here, that Daily Wire is likely largely under the influence of a billionaire who has quietly funded them and stayed out of the spotlight.
