Conservative political commentator and writer Ben Shapiro is known for becoming the youngest nationally syndicated columnist in America at 17.
Ben Shapiro moved to Nashville, Tennessee in 2020. Before his move, he resided in Los Angeles, California but said that the move was partly due to disapproval of the Californian government.
The Independent notes that Ben Shapiro is not the only right-wing political figure to move from Silicon Valley to Nashville, as conservative political commentator Tomi Lahren and right-wing blogger Matt Walsh have also made a move to “Music City”; Nashville, Tennessee.
Nashville Move and The Daily Wire
Ben Shapiro is not only moving his family out to Nashville, Tennessee but his right-wing media company, The Daily Wire.
Tennessee may draw right-wing figures due to the states’ conservative politics, including no income tax, the lowest possible minimum wage, a law criminalizing peaceful protest, and another law that allows for anti-LGBTQ discrimination during the adoption process, according to The Independent.
Ben Shapiro himself tweeted that the move was at least partially in response to the government of California’s politics, writing, “We’ve been asked over and over and over again when we would leave California. The answer: now.” He followed the tweet up with a response that read, “We’re not the first. And we certainly won’t be the last. Terrible governance has consequences.”
Specifically, Deadline cited high-income taxes in California as the reason for the move. Hopefully, Ben Shapiro and The Daily Wire will find themselves more at home in Nashville than in California.
He certainly enjoyed pepper farming with his family in this January 2021 Instagram post, which he captioned, “People sometimes ask me how my tweets get so spicy…”
Ben Shapiro launched The Daily Wire in 2015 alongside Jeremy Boreing and Caleb Robinson.
Los Angeles Home
Before moving to Nashville, Tennessee, Ben Shapiro lived with this family in Los Angeles, California.
Dirt found his home, a historic 1930s Spanish revival house, listed for sale for just under $2.9 million. The home is located in the elite San Fernando Valley.
The house is 6,492 square feet with six bedrooms and five bathrooms. Ben Shapiro purchased the terracotta-tiled ranch home for approximately $1.7 million in 2015.
The property itself is on a considerable lot for the neighborhood of .6 acres. Although the renovations have mostly focused on restoring the historic house rather than redesigning it entirely, there are a few notable changes.
The home features a tiki bar, a pool, and a private spa area in the backyard.
Inside, there are hardwood floors, a chandelier original to the property, and two large fireplaces. The most renovated part of the home is the kitchen, which features black countertops and white cabinets alongside designer appliances.
In addition to the home’s public area, the two private wings include French doors from the bedrooms that open into a courtyard and a master bedroom ensuite bathroom with tilework from the original 1930s home.
Breitbart News
Ben Shapiro gained notoriety in the political community as an editor-at-large for the often-questionable right-wing news website Breitbart.
There, he penned articles such as a 2014 headline which read, “Sharpton: Blacks Can’t Act Decently Without More Government Payouts” and another 2014 article which argued that Eric Garner “yelled at officers and waved his arms about before he was put in a submission hold by an officer and died of a suffocation brought on by combination of heart disease and asthma, not directly by the hold itself.”
Breitbart is known for spreading misinformation, as fact-checked by PolitiFact, and articles such as these have caused Ben Shapiro to become an incredibly polarizing figure in American politics, among other reasons.
Ben Shapiro since left Breitbart, and there is now a deep divide between the two, as outlined in an Intelligencer article, after the site passed into Steve Bannon’s chairmanship, of whom Shapiro disapproved and he came out against Trump, of whom Breitbart strongly approved.
Nashville Scene also wrote of his “his deeply hateful and bigoted statements about Arabs or his transphobic fear mongering (in which he appears to envision a women’s restroom with urinals?). Yes, we confess, it triggers something inside us to see a prominent conservative like Shapiro delighting in the death of Trayvon Martin and fantasizing about the possibility that he might have to use a gun to defend his children against LGBT indoctrination.”
The article about Ben Shapiro’s move to Nashville ran under the headline, “Asshole Moving to Town.”