Ben Shapiro has officially responded to the recent shutdown of production on his immigration-themed Daily Wire movie Pawn Shop, which is now back in production in Livingston, Montana.
In an appearance on his podcast The Ben Shapiro Show, Shapiro said, “Let us be clear: there’s only one reason the city commissioners ruled they were going to stop our production on the street: politics, pure and simple, and they pretty much admitted it. One commissioner named Cindy Daniels said, quote, ‘I’m not willing to sacrifice the resources of the safety, the security of the mental health of our community. Absolutely not. This wasn’t a Hallmark film. This wasn’t, you know, Christmastime in Livingston, and it wasn’t a romantic story.’”
To that assertion, Shapiro replied, “Well, I mean, I wasn’t aware that we had to fulfill your idea of what the story required. In fact, I’m fairly certain the First Amendment says precisely the opposite of that… That is content discrimination openly performed and a violation of the First Amendment.”
The conservative political commentator later said: “These people are not even hiding the ball. These censorious jackasses just want things they do not like barred by law. It is that simple. They don’t give a sh*t about free speech. They don’t like free speech. Free speech is just for them. It is not for the people who oppose them.”
Alluding to “made up stories” regarding his production “from a bunch of left-wing protesters,” Shapiro said that the more they’re entertained, “the more justified our mission proves itself to be. We are obviously right over the target. When you try to shout us down, you only make us more powerful. Your antics are not going to work. The film will be completed and it will be released and it will be highly successful. We call those feathers in our cap. Trophies over our mantle.”
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