The Upside of Being Canceled | Rob Schneider
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I tell this to people, I said, we're America. We have freedom in America. We're not China. China, they tell you who to vote for. They get one part in China, not in America. We get two. Can we at least have two? I think that this was important because I think we were teetering on making America like California. And you don't want that. Rob Schneider is a beloved American entertainer, comedian, actor, best known for his work on Saturday Night Live and dozens of comedies, including 50 First Dates, Grown Ups,

and you don't mess with the Zohan. Schneider is also the author of his latest book, You Can Do It, which shares lessons learned from Hollywood and makes the case for pushing the boundaries of free speech with comedy. In today's episode, we discuss his frustrations with the Democratic establishment in Hollywood, why he left California, and the upsides of being canceled.

Schneider also forecasts trends in the comedy industry, offers his diagnosis of the liberal establishment, and encourages other entertainers to follow his lead. As a Hollywood veteran and advocate of free speech, Rob is on a mission to shape the future of his industry. Don't miss Rob Schneider's wit and wisdom in this latest episode of the Sunday Special.

Rob Schneider, it's great to see you here on the Sunday special. Thanks for the time. Thank you for having me. I have my smarty pants glasses on so that I appear intelligent and don't have the usual meltdown as your university students have when you tear them apart on the debate stage. I appreciate that, although I don't know what Rachel Maddow will do without her glasses now that you've got them.

Or without her ratings. I saw the ratings go down about 56%. Hard to believe. People, after a while of being called, calling people racist and misogynist, it runs its course for their audience. And I think they're moving on to some other...

more or less hateful program to watch. You know, I didn't know that it was possible for one person to go down 56%. Like, what is 56% of an individual if their ratings decline by 56%? Only like their lower half is watching MSNBC now. Their ratings were so low to begin with, there wasn't much to do. But, you know, that does speak to a sea change that's happening in public life. You know, obviously, you've been in the comedy world for your entire career. I've never seen a more hilarious time that has

less people laughing about it than right now. Like everything is absolutely hilarious, but you're really not supposed to laugh at any of it. Well, you have to laugh at it. That's the thing about it. I mean, when you have, it's just so funny that they spent $1.2 billion and they still lost

I mean, that is hilarious. And you're finding out stuff that's comedy. If you are writing a script, even in Hollywood, you go, I don't know if that's believable, but supposedly, supposedly Biden, when he stepped down was, was stepped down when he was forced to step down. Remember the, in the July 24th, I'm the candidate and I'm not backing away. And it says, I support Kamala Harris as the next, but supposedly he didn't have the, the, um, support, uh,

or the backing of the Democratic Party

Elite to go ahead and and push that ascend button, but he's not sending that anyway Somebody on his staff is but somebody did send out ice completely support Kamala supposedly before the Democratic intelligentsia all got behind her and that's why supposedly another supposedly That's why Obama waited three days to see if they can kind of undo this and they realized they couldn't they made the fake phone call with Michelle and

and supported Kamala. Does any of that ring true to you? - Yes, I mean, so I think that they tried to blame Biden twice over. So they tried to blame him for not getting out earlier, which is actually true. There's no way he should have run. And then they tried to blame him for not allowing them to have their little mini primary process,

Which would have been rigged in Kamala Harris' favor anyway because there was no way they could shove aside the black female intersectional hero in favor of, like, what, the Jew, Josh Shapiro in Pennsylvania, or in favor of, you know, genderless Kendall Gavin Newsom in California, or J.B. Pritzker, who has to be lowered into the state capitol by Crane. Like, who exactly was going to be their candidate?

It was really funny when Pritzker, the governor of Illinois, would ever come out during COVID and talk about health. It's like, no, talk about what you don't talk about. You don't know health. Talk about what you do know. What kind of diabetes and heart pressure medication are you taking? What belt do you have to keep your pants from falling down? You're right. They were stuck in a really tough, tough position. They could never have

passed over Kamala because a woman, you know, with many ethnicities and many accents, God knows seeing her, you know, down South and also, you know, you gotta cite democracy and then seeing her in Pittsburgh. Let me tell you something. You don't vote. Let me know. And then seeing her at a 7-Eleven. It's very important that we support democracy. Very, very, very important that we...

I come from a middle-class family, Ben. Not like you, I do. So it seemed like she wasn't the best prepared person for this very important job of running for president. Well, I mean, that's one side of the hilarious coin. The other side of the hilarious coin is just the fact that Donald Trump is a world historical figure. And that is in and of itself innately hilarious. Like if you had made a joke about that in 2002, and many people made jokes about this sort of thing in 2002, it would have just been a joke.

And then it turns out that actually he is a world historically important figure, Donald Trump, with all the foibles, with all the craziness, with all of the hilarity that is attendant upon him. But you're not supposed to even laugh at him. According to the left, you're not allowed to laugh at Kamala Harris because she's a magical person. And you're not allowed to laugh at Donald Trump because he's Hitler. And you can't laugh at Hitler. You can't really make jokes about him. The only thing you can make jokes about is that maybe he's Hitler. But you can't just make jokes about the fact that Donald Trump is innately, like he himself is a very funny person. Like he is a stand-up comedian working a room.

When he says, I'm going to be, you know, dictator, but just on day one, he's joking. And then for them to run with it, like he promised he's going to be dictator. I mean, when Robert Kennedy said a couple of days ago, if he follows through on what he says he's going to do with free speech and hopefully getting rid of the Department of Education,

He stands to be the most consequential president since Lincoln. I mean, isn't that an odd thing to not only to say, not only to hear, but to realize that there's truth in it? Isn't it? It's unbelievable. It's wild because, again, I think that because he shatters the image that so many people have of what the president is or quote unquote should be, they miss the fact that underneath all of the showmanship is a very serious person who has very serious policies and

and who is bringing in an excellent team at this point. And so what I start off by saying with you is just like, all of this should be really, really funny, right? I mean, the fact that Donald Trump was at a McDonald's and that he has the sort of, you know, he has the sort of

self-knowledge to understand, okay, I'm not going to like put on jeans and a t-shirt and work. I'm going to wear like a $2,000 suit and I'm going to wear my tie. And then I'm just put on like an apron and serve people fries out the window and make some of the funniest images in the history of presidential politics. I mean, how many memes did you see of him waving out the window? And it was like Donald Trump to illegal immigrants in 2026, right? Like that, like that stuff is innately funny, but if you make jokes about it on the left,

then they get angry at you because you're not supposed to laugh at the fact that Donald Trump's a funny person or that this whole thing is really funny. You're supposed to be perturbed. You're supposed to be upset. You're supposed to be deeply angry. Who wants to live like that?

Well, the the beautiful thing was how fast and how confident he was in his moves. I mean, really, the the the race was over several weeks before. And when Biden said he only garbages his supporters and then trying to put an apostrophe to say, no, it wasn't his supporters garbage is the garbage of his supporters too late. And for and then when Trump showed up in a garbage truck, I knew that at that point.

he's got you, he's got you. He's so deep in their psyche. So deep. And then, then, you know, the,

you know that because it would it is you write the policies they wouldn't even say the policies here you had somebody but kamala harris saying that she is the the you know the justice in the the you know that the attorney general california she she's going to be the one who prosecutes uh... you know these across national uh... terrorists and uh... i mean are these gangs issue would need to come out against proposition thirty six which is a very mild thing about shoplifting which you know if you look at the bill which i didn't until last night

was it doesn't even say that you have to prosecute them. It says that you, that at least has to go to the, you know, the district attorney and the district attorney will have to decide, but that's something. And she couldn't even come out against that. So she really had no policy. So, but the policies of the democratic party for the last four years was, was too hard for the Americans to stomach. Now the policies, uh,

of, of, uh, Trump are good and sound, but the form for a lot of Americans was hard to stomach in the form of Donald Trump and how he, um, manages to, uh, to goad the democratic party and, and, and people in the middle. And, and I think people just got to get over it. And I tell people, I don't think there's such thing as conservatives anymore. I can't get people. I said, there's no such thing as conservatives. There's just traditional liberals that aren't crazy.

And I said, and that seems to get through to people. And, um, and, and I think that it's, people are coming back over to saying, look, this is somebody we want to fix the problem. Just like you have a plumbing problem and there's,

everywhere. Well, then, you know, you need to get somebody. You don't have him staying for dinner. And I tell you, Donald Trump's not going to come to your bar mitzvah, your son's bar mitzvah. He's certainly not going to come for Thanksgiving. You don't have to invite him, but he's going to clean up. He's going to do that. And you want him to do that. That's 100% right. I mean, that's exactly what I said. I did a debate with Sam Harris, and that's exactly the analogy I use. It's like when I elect a politician, I'm not electing a moral exemplar. I have plenty of people in my life who I look to when I'm looking for

you know, moral ways to live. If I'm looking for a piece of life advice, I'm not going to go to President Trump. When I want somebody to threaten Iran to back down, then I go to President Trump. When I want somebody who's going to make sure that the gas prices aren't too high by drilling more, I go to President Trump. As you say, when you call this whole bizarre notion that we're supposed to look at the president of the United States as though he's a

a great angelic leader who descends from on high with a halo around his head. We tried that with Barack Obama and it was terrible because he tried to embody all those qualities. And it turns out that he was just as venal and corrupt and terrible as anybody in the history of American politics. But you couldn't criticize him because he had the angel wings on. And so Donald Trump just took all that stuff off. He's like, listen, there ain't gonna be no halo. Ain't gonna be no angel wings. Here's my tool set. There's the toilet. Let me at it. And I think that that's actually like a pretty good way of doing government.

I think so, too. And also, it's a way to communicate with people who seem to have a real problem with the character over substance and with the person over policy. And I think Americans are going to have to get over that. And I think they were forced to get over it this time. I mean, I tell this to people. I say, we had people who snuck in over the border a couple of months ago. They didn't want more people coming in.

You know, like, hey, I don't want somebody to try to take the job I just took. I just took it an hour ago. I need it. Come on, man. Give me at least a couple of weeks. They lost the illegal Mexican vote. You know, the Democrats. I mean, can you imagine how fast they would have shut down the Haitians from flying into Ohio if they knew they were going to vote for Republicans? And...

And they would have said no more, you know? So, um, and it, it just became, it did become a great comedy. It just became a comedy that was too close for most Americans to laugh at the

The fact that they were discussing eating cats in Ohio and the fact that that somehow Democrats were so offended by the idea that these immigrants were being accused of eating pets. Well, I was there in 1979 in San Francisco when the Vietnamese people came over and they saw they were eating the ducks in Golden Gate Park.

because nobody told them and that's what they eat. And they said, they go fishing. They also get ducks. If they see a duck, that's a potential food. And so it just, it had to be an education process. They weren't doing it to like, out of spite, they're doing this out of lunch, out of a necessity to have lunch. They've got the sauce. They've got the rice patty. They're ready to go. They've got the thin noodles. And so I found it to be hilarious that people got so upset about,

that they were accusing these Haitians, whose part of their practice and their religion is animal sacrifice, that they would be accused of this horrible thing. Also, I mean, like, listen, Donald Trump, like, his inflection is hilarious. Okay, my kids walk around the house going, they're eating the dogs, they're eating the cats. I had my four-year-old yesterday, she has a shirt that says on it, they're eating the dogs.

Like, it's just, like, it's innately the funniest thing. Like, this whole race, like, from just a comedic perspective, this race is hysterical. I said this right after the first Trump-Biden debate. I was talking to actually a foreign leader, and the foreign leader was kind of freaking out. I said, you need to understand something about America. Here's how amazing America is in our institutions. We will run two 80-year-old men against one another. One of them will be totally senile. Whichever one of those two men golfs better, we will make president of the United States. He

He'll be introduced at the RNC by Hulk Hogan, who will tear open his shirt to reveal that he's supporting Donald Trump. And then that presidential candidate will get up on stage and ramble for 93 straight minutes. And you will love it because this is America. You know what? You're just going to have to eat it because this is America. Like everyone takes these elections as a sign that American weakness. Oh, America and disrepair.

Like, you know how powerful we are? You know how amazing our institutions are? That's what we could just do for like an entire election cycle. And then at the end of it, we're still the most powerful country on earth. We got the most powerful military and don't screw with us.

But I will tell you, though, as I agree with you, we've become a worldwide wrestling enterprise of entertainment. At the same time, we really were, Ben, and you would agree with this, I would hope, teetering on the abyss with these elites. And it's a strange aristocracy that seems to be taking over American society, which instead of a lord or duke, it was Ph.D. and elite and expert aristocracy.

And these people who were telling us basically who we have to vote for, who we need to vote for. And we really were, you know, once you dig underneath and see some of the bad things that the Biden-Harris regime was doing was...

was, I mean, censorship and silencing Americans from their first amendment rights. I mean, that was pretty, I mean, I don't think that that's something to be taken lightly. I think they really were in danger of moving us towards a truthfully a one party system like they have in California. And I tell this to people, I said, we're America, we have freedom in America. We're not China. China, they tell you who to vote for. They get one party in China, not in America, we get two. Can we at least have two?

And what the Democrats were really trying to do for the last four years, I mean, actually for the last, I think 20 years was to have a forever Democrat party. And they said, you can have free elections. You can elect whoever, whichever Democrat you want, this one or this one. And we'll have the, and the Republicans, of course, the cowardly Congress, you know, they're happy because 93%, they get elected, they get reelected. And so they would like to lose gracefully and honorably and shake their finger at the

And so I think that this was important because I think we were teetering on making America like California. And you don't want- I totally agree. I think we're both California expatriates, right? I spent my entire life in California until the last four years. We moved in the middle of COVID and Black Lives Matter riots and wildfires and the rest of the biblical plagues. We moved from there to the great free state of Florida. You're in Arizona, as I understand it, which is a state that is increasingly turning red. Donald Trump has turned it back from it.

was red, it went kind of purpley blue, and now it's turning back red again. And some of that is Donald Trump, and some of that is when you let in 10 million illegal immigrants across borders, including Arizona's border, that has some pretty dire effects on the state of Arizona. You know, what was it that caused you to leave California? Well, I mean, I knew that there was a pincher move happening, and as soon as Obama in 2013...

or allowed the governmental agencies to have propaganda in America against Americans in 2013. That was the beginning of, I felt, tyranny coming from the left.

And I always just assume because of your I'm kind of brainwashed like everybody else in California. You just assume it's the left's always good and that the right is the problem. And that if problems do come, if you know, if there's a fascism coming, whatever that is, depending on what the definition of the day is, then it's going to come from the right. I didn't because what happened was if you grew up in the late 70s and if it was

If the consequential power of the Democrats, it was a mess under Jimmy Carter. It just was. And the thing is, there seemed to be an appeal that the Democrats had for the fellow man to help the average worker. But what the truth is,

They will say they'll be behind the average worker when they have no power. But when they do have power, they don't do anything. Obama didn't do anything for the people. And that was such a real turnoff for a lot of people and people who thought there could be good, you know, good could come out of that administration. But it clearly didn't. As far as, you know, taking...

the American public and the goodwill that was given. And instead of saying, you know, maybe we're less racist now, uh, because we elected a black president two times to exacerbate it into, um, to further, you know, throw, um, gasoline on the flames and say, you know, this has never been just as Douglas Murray says, just when the race has never been better in America, they accuse it as never being worse.

So I think that was the time. And then by the time COVID came in, I knew they were going to close society down. I knew that this was not the place to be. I got young kids as well. And I wanted to get them the hell out. And I said, you know, because California is a dangerous place for if you've got little kids, you know, public school, you know, in the morning, you take, you know, in the morning, you take your school, drop off a little girl in the afternoon, you pick up a little boy, you know, so.

That's right. I mean, we were in California just a couple of weeks ago and right there on the street. We were we'd had dinner with a couple of friends who are still unfortunately trapped in California. And we had dinner. I have 24 seven security. Unfortunately, I have to have that. So I went down the street one way with my wife. My friends went down the street the other way. They go about three cars down. They're getting into their Tesla. Another car pulls up right in front of them. Three guys jump out, grab my friend, pull him out of his car, steal his phone, steal his wallet, steal his keys, run around to his wife.

started taping her jewelry off of her. And then she screamed and they realized their time had run and they ran away. I mean, it's just like open air robberies in California now. I mean, the quality of life has declined so markedly. I thought you were going to say, and that was in a gated community. Exactly.

It was on 3rd Street. It was on 3rd Street and La Cienega, right? I mean, we're not talking about, like, the worst areas of L.A. here. We're not talking about, like, you're in the heart of East L.A. or in South Central, which has now been retitled South L.A., so that means it's okay now. It's not like you're in Crenshaw or something, like high-crime areas of the city. You're talking about, like, a fairly decent area of L.A., and it's just been totally trashed. It's amazing what they've done to the state of California, and that caused me to go on the air the next day.

and say, listen, you know, you think out there, you in political land, you think that Donald Trump, he says offensive things, and he says mean things, and you don't like his tweets. They say the normal American, you know what we care about? We care about not getting robbed on the street. We care about our gas prices going down. We care about, you know, inflation not eating up our entire checkbook. We care about mortgages going, like, we care about no wars. Like, basic practical things are the things we care about, and the worst you make it,

And then insist that actually we're stupid for not understanding what you're doing. Then the more we want to vote for the other guy. And the crazier he is, kind of the more we want to vote for him a little bit. I know when I heard Bruce Springsteen at a diner and trying to be like an average guy, looking like an average guy, you know, knowing that he had sold his catalog for $800 million like 36 months ago.

You're not an average guy. You are protected. You know, Oprah, you live in it. You know, not only a gated community, you live in the inside of the gated, gated community. You know, like in the old days of Jack Nicholson, there'd be at a party and then there's a VIP section and there's a VIP VIP. And then there's one room, the one guy in it is Jack Nicholson. Well, this is the same with Oprah.

Oprah has her own spot. And then like, like, cause I lived up in Calabasas and that we were in a gated community, but then there was another part that was like Kim Kardashian. She was in there. That's another, you couldn't get in there, you know, for, you couldn't take your kids. Wouldn't allow to do, um, you know, trick or treating and Halloween over there, Kim Kardashians. But, uh, you know, so, um, I, I think that there was just, um,

I hope that that the people who are trying to shame the celebrities, trying to shame people and scare people and say it's the end of democracy, you may never get to vote again. It was just so stupid. And it doesn't they don't know what it's like. I mean, like when Jimmy Kimmel's crying about like you, you Trump support, you guys voted, you made a mistake, too, which is pathetic.

What a wuss he's turned into. But the fact of the matter is we get two choices and we're going to choose somebody to date. And I said this, I said, if avocados go up, you know, if the food prices go up 26%, it's not going to bother Jimmy Kimmel and his family or Oprah's family, but the average person driving their kid to school and then having to drive to work and then get groceries and having to think, I don't know if I can do both this week.

And that's a real issue because, and I said this, if avocado prices go up to $5,000 an avocado, you know, I mean, Oprah and Jimmy Kimmel are just going to have $5,000 guacamole. Yep, that's exactly right. Get some more on that in a moment. First, let's talk about something that affects all of us responsible, hardworking Americans, taxes. The Act

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I want to ask you about sort of the impact that you think Hollywood has had on all of this, because one of the things that I think about the Trump phenomenon is that there's a lot of talk about the economic outreach that Trump has done to blue collar communities and kind of working people. But when I go and I speak in these communities, and I spent a lot of time on the road this election cycle going and talking everywhere from the southern border, campaigning with Senator Cruz to now Senator Moreno up in Ohio and all the way up to the tip top of Ohio. And the thing that you see when you do this is that

it's really not about government subsidies. It really isn't about a hatred of trade. What it really is is they're sick of being told that their church is bad. They're sick of being told that their culture is bad. And so to me, it seems like a lot of this is a rebellion against the moral values that they see mostly coming from Hollywood, a Hollywood that insists that the morality

of, you know, moonlight is the morality that we all must, that we all must, you know, love. Like, the thing that we really need is a shape-of-water lecture about how capitalism is bad and about how traditional churchgoing is bad. And I think people just rebelled against that. They said, okay, all you schmucks who are going to P. Diddy's white parties and then telling us that we're bad for having gone to church this Sunday, like, here's a giant middle finger. It's really, it's a giant orange middle finger just for you. And I feel like it's been the...

the thing since about 2015, 2016. Well, you have a group of people and it isn't any coincidence that every place that the Democrats and Kamala Harris won had no voter ID.

I mean, there's no coincidence that that happened. You have people that are getting tired of being told that they're racist when they're not racist. You're getting tired of telling people that they are in a, whether they know it or not, they're in a system of white supremacy.

And just, it just doesn't fly anymore. You can't make people, you can't tell them they're racist when they know they're not. They can't make them feel bad about that or, or make them feel like, and then force things upon them. And, and this is something that we're still, I'm still kind of getting my hands on is this, this kind of lecturing or, you know,

Oprah crapping on the average worker, the average family who is struggling because they're not voting the way she wants. This is the same system that allowed her to become a billionaire. And unlike other countries like in England, they don't root for people to become billionaires. Here we do. If you become a billionaire, we're gonna applaud you. You go girl, because we know that this is a system that allows that potentiality.

And so for you to crap on it and to crap on people who are just trying to get by and just going month to month and paycheck to paycheck, and that's getting harder and harder. And you seem to think that there's other things more important than that. And by exaggerating a situation, which isn't true, that that that Donald Trump is going to turn this into a dictatorship and a fascist state. I think you the belittling was was just vomitous at a certain point.

Um, I think that if you look at where the Democrats have come and what they've tried to do, and you just have to look at California as, as the, what they would like for the rest of the country. There's not one aspect of our life that they don't want to interfere with. Not one that in schools, they passed, you know, a Gavin Newsom who, um, I just don't understand how people, um,

Think that they that the state of California thinks I'm going to co-parent with the state of California. It's like, no, you're out. You don't have nothing to do with it. The fact that the teachers that they passed the law legislation that the school and the teachers could keep information away from the parents.

That to me was is borderline criminal. I mean, so and then, you know, they also had legislation didn't pass, but was brought up in committee in California to stop your car from that to not have cars allowed in California to go more than 80 miles an hour. And I don't know what like, hey, listen, I don't want to drive 80 miles an hour in a school zone. But if I'm trying to get to San Francisco.

uh, from Los Angeles and it's three o'clock in the morning, I'm going to go a hundred. And if I get a ticket, I'm sorry, but, um, that's just it. That's my choice. Maybe it's a bad choice, but it's up to me and the government, they just keep growing. They also want to change your stoves.

I'll tell you what kind of stove, I'll tell you what kind of car to drive. At what point is it lay off of me? We don't want a, we don't want government to be that big. And I think that they, they finally, the voters said enough with this, enough with the calling me names, enough with boys and, you know, failed narcissistic male athletes in girls' sports, taking refuge in girls' sports, enough of that. So I think Americans rejected this soundly. And I think what you're going to have, if you take a look at history, and I think you, you might agree with this, and I definitely think you would hope for this.

The last time we had three one-term presidents, if you go, you know, Ford, well, Nixon, Ford, Carter. And then the last time we had that, now we have, you know, Trump, you know, Biden, and then another Trump. And he's, that's why I think it's wonderful that he's not going to seek reelection or because he's going to now have better people around him and put in policies where for his legacy. I think you might get lucky here and we can have a Trump,

Vance Vance. And then you'd have a Democratic Party that'll be able to come back to lose their extremists and realize if they want to be a party that's going to get elected at the highest level, they're going to have to come back from this crazy lunacy and do like what the Clinton administration, which was, we are pro-death penalty. We're C-super. It depends on what the definition of the word is. We were in the middle of the road. You got to vote for us.

Uh, and I, I'm hopeful that that's what's going to happen. And that's what we need to happen. Stabilize America, keep out the crazies and the Democrats come back to a place of normalcy. So, you know, I wanted to ask you about, you know, how things have gone for you in Hollywood since you become more overtly political. So back in 2014, uh, I wrote a book called primetime propaganda where I actually went and I spoke with the creators of pretty much every major television show over the last 50 years. And some of it was pretty shocking because when I went and did these interviews, uh,

I asked them if I wanted to write a book about the legacy of TV. They didn't know who I was at the time. I was not nearly as well-known as I am now. I wore my Harvard Law baseball cap and my last name was Shapiro, so they immediately assumed that I was basically a communist, which in 90% of cases is actually true. And so I would...

I will tell you, they took you too lightly. And that's why you decimated them because they, they didn't think that, that, um, well, first of all, they're lazy in Hollywood. They're all lazy and they just intellectually lazy because nobody challenges them. Cause that's the, one of the reasons why Kamala lost.

is that Kamala never ran for federal office. She just always was in California. She was in that bubble. So she was never challenged. That's why they were so desperate to keep her from being challenged by anybody because she didn't have the goods. So when you went there to California, you had the goods. You were prepared and you tore them apart. And they just, they're intellectually lazy in California. And as you saw, the thing is that they weren't able to,

So in that particular case, they didn't even. So I recorded all of these interviews and many of them in the interviews would openly say things like, I won't hire a conservative. If I find out that somebody is conservative in Hollywood, I'll fire them. I remember this created like a major scandal, actually, at the Directors Guild, because one of the directors said this and and our friend Lionel Chetwin, he came out really firing over it. And it was like it was a big deal at the time. You know, there's always been this sort of.

major issue inside of Hollywood. Can conservatives work? Can conservatives not work? Obviously, I know people on both sides of that particular argument, but it certainly makes it harder. Let's put it that way. I mean, people who have worked consistently, you've worked consistently. Patty Heaton's worked consistently. But when I've talked to Patty about this, I mean, Patty said at one point, she was working on a major network show at the time. She said, listen, I don't feel like I'm getting a lot of pushback on my politics. And then after I talked to her, she called back

maybe a few days later, and she said, I called around, I found out that over the years I've lost five specific jobs thanks to my politics. So what do you make of the sort of anti-conservative discrimination? Ben, I'm out. I'm going to get hired in Hollywood. But there's some things more important than getting hired in Hollywood. And that is, I felt that we were close to having

Our rights taken away. And I was close. I mean, when you have a when you have not just the presidential candidate who maybe she doesn't know, but, you know, I find it difficult for her to believe that she wouldn't know what our First Amendment that is a guaranteed right. And then, you know, Tim Wall's paper, who's ended up being such a gift to the Republican Party that she chose him and not Shapiro, that they would say that they would equate freedom of speech like a driver's license. And they called it a privilege.

and that those privilege can be revoked. If you drink and drive, you can have your driver's license rightly taken away. However, if you drink and talk, you cannot have your speech taken away because that is a guaranteed first amendment right. So it was, that was part of the encroachment that was happening. And I think that was down the line. And I think when they were able to really work with, um,

Work with tech companies, including Google. We don't even know what they're doing with Google and CIA's backdoor and how that is working. But when you actually saw the Twitter files and thank God for Elon Musk, but you know that the Biden-Harris administration was working through these companies, I mean, literally within 48 hours.

to silence Americans. And they weren't gonna stop that. They would have, I believe, completely gone after Elon Musk and destroyed Twitter, destroyed his business, because that's what they do. It's just government will keep growing until you beat it down with a stick.

And I think this was the beating that they needed. I mean, there's a very famous actor. I won't say his name, but he was a lead on Apple TV on a big TV series just this year. People can figure out who it is if they want to. He was told that he was not allowed to say anything on social media or they weren't going to hire him.

He was told that. Now, that has to stop. That is illegal. And that is a lawsuit. That is a billion dollar lawsuit that should happen. But at the same time, you want to get work. You know, every actor's out there trying to get work. But here's what's happening. You're having a shrinking of the traditional studio system right now.

because they've screwed it up. They screwed up Hollywood. Not only was there in the pandemic, but then the stupid idiots at the Screen Actors Guild Union, and I was one of those idiots on the union, but they're going for a strike after the pandemic just to destroy the average person on the crew and the average actor. It was beyond stupid. And then Disney making this woke crap to the point where my wife and I, we got little kids, both were under 10 a couple of years ago.

Now, we had to watch the Disney shows before we let the kids watch it, just in case this woke crap that there isn't some character that is indoctrinating our kids. So they have lost. They lost $2 billion two years ago at this stream. And then they had to fire a chap, which was a good firing.

and then bring back Bob Iger. So at a certain point, are you gonna do business or are you gonna just continue to lose business? And so you see the people who were able to look at the same stuff that you and I were, if you have any, whatever inside information, it didn't have to be too inside, but you saw that the Democrats are gonna get spanked this time. Jeff Bezos saw it. Mark Zuckerberg wanted to get out ahead of it as soon as he could and apologize for allowing his site to be censored by the government.

And Jeff Bezos not supporting Kamala Harris and giving her endorsement. That's a big, I mean, so there is some correction happening. And at this point,

The podcast is something and independent people like you, the daily wire. The reason why you guys were able to become a big business, successful business, because you were you weren't trying to tell people how to think you were just providing another viewpoint that was rational, that was logical and that was more aligned with their families. That's going to continue to grow. And if they want to be in business, they're going to have to come over to our side of the fence.

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Do you think it's going to be easier for people who may be middle of the road or leaning conservative to actually start coming out of the woodwork in Hollywood? I mean, you and I know a bunch of people. I mean, I know a lot of people in Hollywood who definitely voted for Donald Trump, definitely would not say openly that they voted for Donald Trump for exactly the reasons you say, that they'll lose work. These are working actors who, and many of them very, very famous, and are still terrified that if they ever betray their politics,

to the people around them, that somehow this will have massive career ramifications. Do you think that's going to get easier or do you think that the system just continues to break because the people at the top can't let go? I think it's going to take another generation. It's just like when Moses took the tribe out to the deserts. We're going to have to have, you're going to just have to get that slave mentality out of you

I think it's the same thing with the liberals and the Democrats. They're going to have to get that constrictive. I mean, it's really what it is. It's vindictiveness. The left is absolutely crazy vindictive. It is an ugliness. And we've all experienced it and we've seen it. They would just they'll start yelling at you. And it is, as you know, more than probably any American. The worst form of debate is just somebody shouting you down.

They're not trying to beat you with ideas. They're not trying to dissuade you with something that could improve your foundational thinking. They are not critical thinkers. They just are simply yellers. And we as a society cannot go down the road any further with trying to stop our liberties and our free speech to calm down the irrational.

And that's what they've become. Will it get easier? Yes. But it's going to take people like I'm starting a media company, and I can't believe how many people are joining in and are making this a real media company because I want to be a centrist. If you're a liberal, if you're a conservative, you are welcome. And we are not going to do anything by the party line. We're going to do stuff that's rational, that's talent-based, but it's also American-based.

And, you know, that was such a pleasure to do your your first series of your show of your first animated show because it was about America and it wasn't you weren't indoctrinating people. But the fact that you're saying good things about America to liberals and to the Democratic Party, it was if you were saying something heretical to say something great about the country and our accomplishments.

So the attack on Western civilization, which I think is a bigger issue, which is the Democrats make that gigantic mistake of wanting this one world government, this elite, this elitist system where they have control, but they make the mistake of thinking it's going to be the American democratic party. That's going to be in control of this one world order. And it's going to be China. And that is a gigantic error on their part. And thankfully, I think this was a gigantic, um,

And, you know, it was a big fence to stop the further erosion of the American way of life. And,

And having Marxism to come in disguised as this woke set of nice manners when it's just communism dressed up as social justice. So obviously you've been doing comedy for decades at this point. Has there ever been such a fraught time in comedy? I mean, you see people like Dave Chappelle getting shouted down or you see Tony Hinchcliffe being made the centerpiece of the entire presidential campaign for the last week because he makes a bunch of Tony Hinchcliffe jokes.

at the, at Madison Square Garden. And listen, you can, you can make the case. I've made the case myself that, you know, maybe in the closing days of a campaign, you don't want to trot out an insult comedian to go after particular ethnic groups, you know, like at the very last moment of the campaign might not be like your chief. If you're like the chief political consultant for the Trump campaign, you're not like, okay, you know, we got to make a closing argument. Who can, let's look around. Tony Hinchcliffe, come on down like that. It's a, it's a weird move, but let's bring the guy that

Craps on everybody. Exactly. But the sort of outsized outrage where it's like, oh, my God, Tony Hinchcliffe, who does like insult comedy. That's what he does. I mean, he roasts people that we're going to that. Oh, my God. He roasted more people. I'm just I'm bewildered by the sort of argument that this is in and of itself a great horror.

Well, Tony made a mistake, though, in thinking that people knew about the past history and the garbage containers in Puerto Rico. It's like, sometimes you can be too insular. But Robert Kennedy called me and said, I don't know why we should have had you come out last night. There's 300,000 Puerto Rican votes out there. But I don't think Tony—I mean, you don't want a comedian. You don't want to do an own goal. And that's what Mark Cuban, who's a—

These are not people who need to be going out. You need to have people who've been two, three presidential. Carville never makes a mistake on a grand level. I mean, yes, he's not on a show of other entrepreneurs that's very popular, but Mark Cuban is not qualified.

as someone, he's not disciplined enough to not make an own goal. And that was another one of the final own goals there was saying that Trump doesn't surround himself with intelligent women. I mean, that just goes right down the garbage and deplorable route. So you, you,

you know, I think that people saw it really for what it was. Now, as far as comedy, I think it will correct, but I think it'll be a while. I mean, historically, you'd have to really go back to where comedy was silenced. Probably after the Kennedy assassination, you had one of the most prominent comedians, Mort Sahl. And I talk about this in my book, You Can Do It, which is

out now. Um, we talk about comedy, uh, and, and Mort Saul was after the Warren commission came out, he questioned the rightly. So the Warren commission's, um, uh,

findings and because of that uh that's that's where they you know it wasn't where the term conspiracy theorist originated but it was the first time that the cia used it to as a roadmap to get to silence people who are going against the the then government narrative about the warren report and people questioning the kennedy assassination so that was a time where comedy got silenced where do i think it's going now i think i remember steve martin talking um

years ago, like literally 40 years ago about what happened after Watergate and after Vietnam, people just wanted to get silly and forget about everything. And I think after this time, after the pandemic, which was really, I mean, we don't, we're not going to really know the ramifications, what happened to the students who were locked down and, you know, for the African-American reading skills that took decades to get up

to where they were on par with everyone else. And for that to collapse was very sad for educators. My mom was a school teacher for 30 years, a public school teacher. We don't know what's gonna happen with it. But I do think that now there is a chance

that we'll be able to have some normalcy in comedy. And people are gonna have to attack the power. I mean, we're gonna have to see what the Republic's gonna do. And then, I don't know if I have an act anymore because my whole act the last couple of years was just making fun of the wonderful material that was provided by Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, and the rest of the Democrats. So let's get to some of the stuff that you talk about in your book. You can do it, or I can't do an impression of you. You can do it! I can't do it, man! Ha ha ha ha!

because you can do it. Speak your mind, America, which just came out recently. So you sort of give over how, how you got into this industry in the first place. So how, how does, how does one go about becoming one of the most famous comedic actors of his generation? Well, thank you. Um, I just think that there's, you know, I was very lucky cause I was in San Francisco and they had, we had a guy there, Robin Williams, who was so talented and he was such a, uh, he was literally like, uh,

um this bright shining you couldn't deny that talent you know because we were there were some other good comedians up there we go okay we're good for that guy is on and so they plucked him hollywood and then um they plucked the next guy who was another brilliant guy that made probably the best comedian ever come out of san francisco was it was dana carvey and then he got plucked out and got to saturday night live and then um i guess i was i was up there too well maybe this guy and

But San Francisco was – and that's what was very interesting about a liberal city is

At that time, a liberal city, which wasn't in power, because we were at that point sad because Los Angeles got all the businesses moved. I remember there was Planters Peanuts moved from San Francisco to Los Angeles. And the whole town was like, no, we're losing business. They already have the weather. They have the supermodels. They got all the TV shows. We have nothing up here. We have the last place 49ers, the last place San Francisco Giants. So it was literally like a depression up there. So at the time, though, that

That kind of downtrodden liberalism created a very welcoming thing for comedians who were trying to do something different, as I was back in the early 80s, late 70s. And then we kind of came into something interesting, whereas there was an explosion of comedy. Not that it was all great. I mean, Jerry Seinfeld talks about like, Jerry Seinfeld says, in 1975, there were 40 comedians and eight of them were good.

In 1985, there were 4,000 comedians and eight of them were good. So, I mean, I think that, um,

Jay Leno took me aside and said, how much time you got, kid? I was driving him in my car to gigs when he would be coming to town. How much time you got, kid? And I said, I got about eight minutes. Good. You got eight minutes. That's all you know. Everybody said, I got two hours of comedy material. Who wants to hear two hours of comedy material? You either have five minutes to kill every time, everywhere you go, or you have nothing. So I spent the next eight months working on those five minutes. And then eight months after that, I was on David Letterman. Then I got on HBO. So, I mean, David Spade,

Chris Rock, Adam Sandler, or maybe Chris Rock had more material, but we basically had 20 really good minutes. That was enough. That's all you need. Who wants to hear more than that? That's all you needed in LA. And then you get on Saturday Night Live and it's like a rocket. You don't even know what happened. You have like one day you're completely unknown. The next day you're buying milk in a grocery store and people are doing your bits.

Ben, the Benster, Benorama, all right, Ben, buying milk. And then she's like, wow, I think they're doing me. And that was just, I just did that. And then you get movies, but there's no real career guidance. I mean, I didn't know what to do or what not to do. And it was great. The one great thing about being canceled or whatever has happened to me, I got to go back and do what I started out doing, which I don't think I ever really finished was really,

craft, you know, coming up with a really good standup, the craft of standup. That's why I never wanted to do it because unless you're doing it full time, I mean, you can't, I mean, Chris Rock was the one who talked me to go back into it. Adam Sandler too, but Chris Rock, who was, you know, the great, the greatest comedian of our generation. And he said, you know, you got to get back and do it. You could be the best at this. Um,

And I said, I don't even know what we talk about. He said, just talk about what we talk about every morning because we were doing grownups at the time. And then I took him up on it. And he was a real good supporter. And he doesn't align with me politically, but we know good jokes when we hear them. And then I really freed me because the interesting thing is when they try to cancel you,

It is a really interesting thing. I don't know how else to describe it, but like it's when they do go after you and they go after your pocketbook and your family and you think you may never work again. It reminds me of what Alan Watts talks about, the great British philosopher, um,

He said there was a Japanese pilot who was a kamikaze pilot that's crashing his plane. And this is it. And he's going to crash his plane. And so he said he knew he was going to die. And the release that happened by the time it was all over with, he said, what was I ever worrying about anything in life? It's all over. It doesn't matter any of it. He said that rush of freedom. And then his wing got blown off. And then he spun, spun, spun, spun and landed in the ocean and survived.

And he went on to become a Zen Buddhist monk and to relay these stories and that idea of Zazen, he called it. So in a much, much, much smaller way, I did feel like

When they try to cancel you and you survive, you do get emboldened. And to go, well, what do I really want to do? What do I really want to say? And I'm not going to be fearful anymore. And so if I've helped people be slightly less fearful, if I was able to be a voice for people who didn't feel like they could critique Hollywood. Because I said earlier, when Hillary lost, I said, I haven't seen the Democrats just pissed off since we freed the slaves.

And that went boom a while. And then, and then, um, you know, when, when,

When Newsom wasn't, when they tried to get rid of him, when they tried to recall Newsom, and it was so pathetically sad because like, here's a chance, let's vote him out. But then it's just like an abused spouse. You know, Ben, they finally get, I'm not taking this anymore. I'm calling the cops on you. And by the time they called, the woman calls the police. And then by the time the police come, stay away from my husband. I love, he loved me. I love him. There was something that happened. And so that's why they got reelected again. And I said this, I said, I said,

Californians would vote for a bowl of shit if it had a D next to it. And then that, you know, I guess that put the final nail on my Hollywood career. So, yeah, obviously you have the book, you have this media company. So what are the big projects that you're looking forward to doing now? Well,

Well, I'm going to work with a really terrific broadcaster from England, Andrew Doyle, who I know – did you know Andrew Doyle from GB News? He's coming over. His partner, producing partner for GB News is also coming over, Martin Gurley. And then the best comedy writer in England – I don't know. He wants me to say his name now, but he's going to be coming over, Graham Linehan. I'm just going to say it. Graham, you're going to have to deal with it. And he's one of the best writers ever.

I mean BAFTA winning best comedy writer. He is the best comedy writer in England. And so we're going to start shows here in Arizona. And I think we're going to do, and I think what's going to have to happen in the studios, independent producers are the ones that are going to be taking the risks and providing content for content for people that will, that people are going to want to watch content. That's for everybody that isn't trying to, you know, indoctrinate people with this woke nonsense.

So that's it, you know, in a nutshell. And I will say that the stand-up tour has been really educational and fun because that's the truth. The audience will tell you the truth what they laugh at. And it was nice to see this happen because honestly, Ben, traveling around the country, as I'm sure you have too, there was a stress level that I'd never seen in Americans. I felt they were about ready to crack. I felt they were so worried. And I feel a real sense of, I wouldn't say joy, fear.

I would say a sense of relief, uh, just the, uh, thank goodness. And that's the kind of, when you try to scare people for years and try to make them feel bad, try to call them racist, white supremacists, try to make them disparage them and call them garbage and deplorable. And that their, their women aren't intelligent or smart. It does, it beats them down. And this was a real rejection of that, um,

narcissistic name-calling. And hopefully the Democrats will, or maybe they won't, hopefully they won't wake up to it and they'll keep losing. What are your thoughts about that? - Yeah, I mean, I think that it's gonna take a little while in the wilderness. You're starting to see this battle play out now where the heads of the Democratic Party who obviously have a stake in saying they did nothing wrong are fighting some of the people who have been outside. And so it's almost a tripartite battle. You have sort of the establishment of the Democratic Party

which feels that it did a great job, and then they are split between the wokest and the people who kind of want to do the Carvillian reset, the sort of Democratic Leadership Council circa 1990 reset where they figure out what they did wrong, it's going to take a while for them to hash that out, especially because they don't have sort of a charismatic leader to fill in all the gaps for them. I think the answer on the Republican side, by the way, is that

There is the possibility of Republicans and conservatives and everybody who's part of the Trump coalition thinking that the referendum wasn't

It was sort of a justification for everything Republicans have ever said. I think you see this usually in party politics where Obama was a unique political figure. Everybody on the left sort of assumed that because he was popular, that meant everything they were doing was popular. And it turned out that wasn't true at all. And I think the right, you could see something pretty similar where it turns out that Trump has a unique draw. He's a unique character in American life and that that's not actually quite duplicable.

that you can't just shove anybody else into that seat and then magically get the same sort of response from the American public. You're not going to get low propensity voters to show up for, you know, a J.D. Vance or Marco Rubio or whomever else. And that's going to be a new challenge. Well,

You have to have somebody arrested 37 times or seven convictions, felony, felony, felony New York City convictions by an impartial, democratically insane jury. And then you're going to have to have those seven convictions. And then you're going to have to have somebody who's almost murdered in public. And then that was that was the thing like why what the Republicans really need to do is to focus in and do the job that they've been asked to do.

And that's going to have to do that. I mean, they're going to have to like the FBI when they're asked at the congressional hearing, were there any FBI dressed up as Trump supporters inciting and inviting people in the Capitol? And he said, I'm not allowed to give out that information. The answer is no.

You know, Jimmy Dore says, you know, you got to say, no, that didn't happen or it did happen. So these guys get cleaned out. He was one of the guys, the head of the FBI. He's one of the guys said, like, well, we don't know if he was really shot. It could have been a piece of strap. Now, why even make that crazy statement? So you really have these entrenched. And this guy was was appointed by by Trump. So you really have an entrenched group of people.

who don't seem to have a grasp on what the average American wants, what the average American's life is like. And I think that's got to get cleaned up. I mean, if he says, you know, Trump said he's going to get rid of the Department of Education. I think that is a phenomenal,

It's a phenomenally important first gesture for many reasons, because one thing, 13% of the public of the public schools is funded by the fed feds. Now they wanted to increase that if Biden Harris, this is one of the things that moms for Liberty educated me about.

Tiffany Justice. They wanted to increase that to 26%. If that increase, Ben, would have happened, that means the local school boards would have been irrelevant because then everything would have gone from the federal. And then you're not going to have states...

You're not going to have the states being able to decide what their education is, what the school boards are going to decide, what the parents want to decide. So that was, I mean, this was a critical turning point. I do think that this election is going to turn out to be one of the most critical turning points in American history. And I don't say that lightly, and I don't want to say that, but it's just factual. It is true. What was potentially tipping if they would have let in 11 million more people, if

If they were able to flood Florida, so that floor, even Florida and then Texas and then, then Ohio. So that there, we wouldn't get a choice next time. We really were on, on a razor's edge tipping. And I do think that that was avoided and avoided by the American people. Totally agree. Well, Rob Schneider, it's been great to see you. Can't wait to see what you do next. Really. Thanks for taking the time.

Thank you very much. And I wish you had been a hero for me. And you've actually, you know, as helped a lot of us to to to communicate better and to be more specific and precise. And you really led the charge. There was nobody doing what you were doing. And you really are. If you look at anybody who's was out there in the public square talking about conservative values and being able to back them up, it was you started that. So thank you for that. You really appreciate it. Great to see you.

Executive Producer, Justin Siegel. Executive Producer, Jeremy Boring.

The Ben Shapiro Show Sunday special is a Daily Wire production. Copyright Daily Wire 2024.

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