Corporate sponsors of Ben Shapiro’s podcast withdrew support over the conservative commentator’s comments about Adolf Hitler at a pro-life rally Friday in Washington, D.C.
Quip toothbrushes and Calm, a relaxation and meditation app, cut ties with “The Ben Shapiro Show” in statements issued within hours of the host repeatedly referencing the Nazi leader at the annual “March for Life” event.
“The argument, I guess here, is that would you kill baby Hitler?” Mr. Shapiro, an Orthodox Jew, said during a live taping of his podcast. “And the truth is that no pro-life person on earth would kill baby Hitler, because baby Hitler wasn’t Hitler, adult Hitler was Hitler. Baby Hitler was a baby. What you presumably want to do with baby Hitler is take baby Hitler out of baby Hitler’s house and move baby Hitler into a better house where he would not grow up to be Hitler, right? That’s the idea.”
The terms “Ben Shapiro” and “Baby Hitler” soon trended on social media users as shared footage of his speech, and a video of his comments was viewed more than 4 million times on Twitter as of Saturday morning.
Quip and Calm issued statements in the interim cutting ties with Mr. Shapiro’s show.
“Our mission is to make good oral health more accessible to everyone, and podcast advertising is one way we’re able to realize this. However, following one of our ads being read in a venue we did not endorse, we have chosen to discontinue our advertising relationship with this show,” Quip said in a statement.
“We do not align with this message. We’re pulling our sponsorship,” Calm announced on Twitter.
Mr. Shaprio, 35, founded The Daily Wire, a conservative news site, in 2015. Monthly downloads of “The Ben Shapiro Show” totaled more than 10 million as of November 2017, The New York Times reported previously, and the program is currently syndicated on 60 radio stations through Westwood One.
“You shouldn’t go back in time and kill baby Hitler,” he previously said during a 2015 podcast. Mr. Shapiro was responding at the time to a recent New York Times poll.
• corrected from earlier version that incorrectly labeled Quip as Quist.
• Andrew Blake can be reached at ablake@washingtontimes.com.
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