# The Daily Wire A conservative media company founded in 2015 by [[Ben Shapiro]] and [[Jeremy Boreing]], built on Texas fracking money and grown into one of the largest right-wing content operations in the United States — a vertically integrated platform spanning podcasts, news, opinion, a streaming service (DailyWire+), original films and series, and a kids' app (Bentkey). For nearly a decade the Daily Wire has positioned itself as the *respectable* mainstream of conservative media, contrasting with the conspiratorial fringe of [[InfoWars]] or [[The Gateway Pundit]] while still occupying maximalist positions on culture-war issues — most notably anti-trans content, which became the company's signature editorial pillar. By 2025–2026 the empire is showing severe strain: Co-CEO Jeremy Boreing has stepped down, the company has hired a bankruptcy lawyer, layoffs have hit roughly a quarter of staff, and the streaming bet (especially Bentkey and the unreleased *Pendragon Cycle*) has burned through capital faster than subscription revenue could replace it. ## Founding: From TruthRevolt to the Daily Wire Before the Daily Wire, [[Ben Shapiro]] and Jeremy Boreing ran TruthRevolt, a [[David Horowitz]] Freedom Center project that targeted progressive media and advertisers. TruthRevolt was the staging ground — when it was wound down, Shapiro and Boreing took the operational template and the donor relationships into a new vehicle. Shapiro had also briefly been editor-at-large of [[Breitbart News]], resigning in March 2016 over the Michelle Fields incident — when [[Steve Bannon]]'s Breitbart protected Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski after he grabbed reporter Michelle Fields. In his resignation Shapiro called Bannon "a bully" who had "sold out [[Andrew Breitbart]]'s mission in order to back another bully, [[Donald Trump]]." This break gave the Daily Wire its founding posture: anti-Trump enough in 2016 to seem like principled conservatism, conservative enough to keep the audience. The Daily Wire launched with a $4.7 million initial investment from Texas fracking billionaire [[Farris Wilks]] — the most consequential check in the company's history. ## Funding and Ownership: The Wilks Brothers The Daily Wire's founding capital came from Farris and Dan Wilks, brothers who built Frac Tech (later FTS International) into one of the largest hydraulic fracturing services companies in the U.S. before selling much of it for billions during the shale boom. The Wilkses are devout social conservatives — they helped fund Ted Cruz's 2016 presidential super PAC, bankrolled the anti-abortion documentary infrastructure, and have been among the largest donors to school-choice campaigns and Christian-conservative legal groups. Their checkbook is one of the under-discussed engines of the modern right. In late 2020 / early 2021 the company restructured. The Wilks brothers' direct majority control was unwound, with internal restructuring creating Daily Wire LLC and shifting voting control toward executive leadership — Boreing, Shapiro, and CFO Caleb Robinson. The Wilkses are reported to have remained substantial passive investors. By early 2026, private-market valuations from industry advisers (PwC, Deloitte) put Daily Wire LLC at roughly **$600M–$800M**, though the company is private and reports nothing. The funding origin story matters: the Daily Wire is not a grassroots conservative startup that went viral. It is a fossil-fuel-fortune project built by people who explicitly wanted a parallel cultural infrastructure for the right, and who were willing to absorb years of losses to build it. The Vice profile of the Wilks–Shapiro–[[PragerU]] axis framed it as "How Fracking Billionaires Built a Climate Crisis–Denial Empire" — the climate-denial framing is correct as far as it goes, but the actual product the Wilkses bought is broader: a vertically integrated conservative media stack. ## The Nashville Move (2020) In September 2020, citing California governance, COVID restrictions, and a hostile tax/regulatory environment, the Daily Wire announced it was relocating from Los Angeles to Nashville, Tennessee. The move was both branding and economics: Tennessee has no state income tax, Nashville's media labor pool was filling out, and the relocation underlined the company's "we left the blue state" identity. Several Daily Wire personalities (Shapiro, Walsh, Knowles) personally moved to the Nashville area. Nashville also positioned the company alongside the country-music conservative-celebrity infrastructure and adjacent to [[PragerU]], which has its own footprint in conservative-friendly states. ## The Talent Roster The Daily Wire's product is hosts. The frontmatter lists key personalities; the editorial logic is to give each host a vertical and let the brand monetize across them: - **[[Ben Shapiro]]** — Flagship host, founder, "Facts don't care about your feelings" brand, college-debate format, prolific Trump-era pivot. Holds title of editor emeritus following internal restructuring; remains the public face of the empire. - **Jeremy Boreing** — Co-founder, longtime Co-CEO and operations chief who described himself as "the Godking" in a self-aware joke that nonetheless captured the management style. Stepped down March 2025. - **[[Matt Walsh]]** — Anti-trans activist, *What Is a Woman?* documentary author, the company's most aggressive culture-war voice. Walsh's editorial line on "transgenderism" set the platform's identity for years. - **Michael Knowles** — Catholic traditionalist, *Speechless* author, made international headlines at CPAC 2023 by declaring that "transgenderism must be eradicated from public life entirely." Knowles' positioning is more theologically explicit than Shapiro's, more directly aligned with [[Christian Nationalism]] and integralism. - **Andrew Klavan** — Crime novelist turned conservative cultural commentator, host of *The Andrew Klavan Show*, the boomer-friendly cultural-criticism beat. - **[[Jordan Peterson]]** — Clinical psychologist, anchor of the DailyWire+ launch in 2022, with management of his sales/distribution and exclusive bonus content. Peterson's deal was the most expensive talent acquisition in the company's history and the centerpiece of the streaming pivot. - **[[Candace Owens]]** — Departed March 2024 (covered below). - **Steven Crowder** — Almost joined in 2023; the deal collapsed publicly and acrimoniously (covered below). - **Mike Richards** — Former *Jeopardy!* executive producer, hired December 2024, elevated to President of Daily Wire Entertainment / Chief Content Officer in May 2025 to replace Boreing's content function. Richards arrived under his own scandal cloud (his abortive 2021 stint as *Jeopardy!* host ended over revived past comments and harassment claims) — a hire that signaled the Daily Wire would absorb mainstream-Hollywood "canceled" talent as a matter of policy. ## DailyWire+ and the Streaming Strategy DailyWire+ launched June 30, 2022, as the company's pivot from podcast/website operation to vertically integrated streaming platform. The launch was timed to and anchored by the [[Jordan Peterson]] multi-year deal — Peterson's existing podcast and video library (over half a billion downloads/views since 2016) was migrated to DailyWire+, and his new content went exclusive. Boreing positioned DailyWire+ as the umbrella covering The Daily Wire content, the World of Jordan Peterson, [[PragerU]] integration, original films, and (from 2023) the kids platform. The film slate is the most ideologically explicit part of the operation: - ***[[What Is a Woman]]*** (Matt Walsh, 2022) — flagship documentary of political [[Transphobia]], 170M+ views after being released free on Twitter/X in 2023 in a deal with Elon Musk. Functions as both content and recruitment funnel. - ***Run Hide Fight*** (2020, acquired) — school-shooting thriller that became one of the company's first festival pickups. - ***Lady Ballers*** (2023) — broad satirical comedy about trans athletes in women's sports; critically panned but worked as base-energizer content. Shapiro personally bought $250K of X advertising for the film during the December 2023 Disney/X advertiser-boycott showdown. - ***Mr. Birchum*** (2024) — adult animated series, the company's attempt at the *King of the Hill* / *Beavis and Butt-Head* slot. - ***Pendragon Cycle*** (in production, repeatedly delayed) — high-budget Arthurian fantasy series, reportedly costing nearly $100 million, originally targeted for 2024 release but still without a release window as of 2026. The Pendragon overrun is a leading suspect in the 2025 cash crunch. - ***Snow White and the Evil Queen*** — counter-programming to Disney's troubled live-action *Snow White*, released as a contrarian cultural product. The film strategy is explicitly designed to create a parallel conservative entertainment ecosystem — making cultural products that reflect Daily Wire values rather than only commenting on Hollywood ones. The strategy's commercial premise is that there is a sufficiently large underserved conservative audience willing to pay for content that mainstream Hollywood will not make. Whether that audience is large enough at $99/year to justify the production budgets is the unresolved question that 2025's layoffs are answering in real time. ## Anti-Trans Content as Core Editorial Pillar The Daily Wire's editorial identity centers on opposition to trans rights. This is not incidental — it is the most consistent, most heavily resourced, and most strategically deployed content theme in the company's portfolio. The pillar manifests across formats: - Daily news coverage focused on detransitioners, school policy fights, and pediatric gender-affirming care - [[Matt Walsh]]'s daily show, social media activity, and book *What Is a Woman?* (2023) - The flagship documentary *[[What Is a Woman]]* (2022), free-released to maximize spread - *Lady Ballers* (2023) as comedic counter-programming - Michael Knowles' CPAC 2023 "eradicate transgenderism from public life" speech - Editorial alignment with state-level legislative campaigns (bathroom bills, sports bans, gender-affirming-care bans) Internal logic: trans rights is the wedge issue with the highest political salience-to-cost ratio for the Daily Wire's audience. It draws clicks, mobilizes the base, attracts donor approval, and creates conflict with mainstream advertisers and platforms in ways that reinforce the "we are the only ones telling the truth" branding. See [[Transphobia]] for the broader ideology file; the Daily Wire is the most institutionally significant production engine of that ideology in U.S. media. ## The Steven Crowder Fight (January 2023) In January 2023, comedian and longtime conservative talker Steven Crowder publicly attacked the Daily Wire after its $50 million / four-year contract offer — making it the largest deal the company had ever extended. Crowder framed the offer as a "slave contract" because of clauses tying compensation to advertiser-friendly content (i.e., demonetization-risk language could reduce his pay). Crowder leaked secretly recorded calls with Boreing. Boreing replied on-camera. Shapiro called Crowder's behavior "despicable." The fight tore through right-wing media for weeks and exposed the actual economics of the conservative-content business: the platforms depend on advertiser tolerance even when their brand identity is "we are too edgy for advertisers." Strategic significance: the Crowder fight was the moment the Daily Wire publicly admitted that even a $50M offer comes with content guardrails. Crowder declined the deal, launched his own platform (Mug Club at Rumble), and the Daily Wire moved on — but the fight foreshadowed every later cash-and-content tension at the company. ## The Candace Owens Departure (March 2024) [[Candace Owens]] joined the Daily Wire in 2021 with her own marquee show and grew quickly into one of its highest-traffic personalities. Her departure on March 22–23, 2024, announced by Boreing as "Daily Wire and Candace Owens have ended their relationship," was the most significant talent loss in company history. The split had layered causes: 1. **Substantive disagreement on Israel.** Owens broke publicly with Shapiro's strongly pro-Israel position after the October 7, 2023, Hamas attacks and Israel's Gaza response, calling for restraint and questioning U.S. support. Shapiro is the most prominent pro-Israel voice in conservative media; Owens' position was incompatible with the platform's editorial line. 2. **Antisemitism allegations.** Owens publicly liked a tweet referencing the medieval blood-libel trope; said on her Daily Wire show that a Jewish "gang" in Hollywood was committing "horrific things"; and drew sustained pressure from the ADL. Shapiro and Owens had a public on-air confrontation; Boreing repeatedly addressed the issue on company channels. 3. **Personal deterioration.** Reporting consistently described the Shapiro–Owens working relationship as functionally collapsed by early 2024. Owens rebuilt as an independent operation, reportedly hitting $10M+ revenue in her first year on her own — and then expanded into the Macron defamation arc that has consumed much of her 2024–2026 output. Her departure validated the Crowder thesis that conservative talent could increasingly leave centralized platforms and own their own audience economics. See [[Candace Owens]] for the full arc. ## The Bentkey Bet and the Bentkey Bust In October 2023, on the 100th anniversary of Disney's founding, the Daily Wire launched **Bentkey** — a kids-entertainment streaming service positioned as the conservative alternative to Disney+ and Netflix Kids. Subscriptions ran $99/year; original shows included *Chip Chilla* (homeschooling chinchilla family), *Tish Tash* (girl + imaginary friend), *Kid Fit Go*, and *Jasmine & Jambo*. Boreing committed publicly to "a minimum of $100 million" investment over three years. In 2025 the Daily Wire reportedly laid off the entire Bentkey staff and shut down the original kids programming operation. The investment ran the full $100M+ but did not produce the subscriber pull needed to sustain the slate. Bentkey became the most concrete example of the Daily Wire's pattern: reach for a big content swing, fund it from operating cash, fail to convert it into recurring subscription revenue, retrench. ## The 2025 Crisis: Boreing Out, Layoffs, Bankruptcy Counsel The hinge year was 2025: - **March 2025** — Co-CEO Jeremy Boreing stepped down from his leadership role. Public framing was a move toward "founder mode" and creative work; reporting (Status, Will Sommer) indicated company financial distress was the actual driver. - **Late March / early April 2025** — Layoffs hit, including reports of as many as 25% of staff and the entirety of the Bentkey unit. The streaming division was the hardest hit. Multiple departments were affected. - **2025** — The company hired a bankruptcy lawyer. The Daily Wire publicly framed the layoffs as "aligning resources with priorities" — standard PR for cost-cutting — but the bankruptcy-counsel hire indicated more serious balance-sheet preparation. - **May 2025** — Mike Richards was elevated to President of Daily Wire Entertainment / Chief Content Officer, having joined in December 2024. Richards' brief was to operationalize the entertainment slate Boreing had been running and bring Hollywood production discipline to a slate that had run wildly over budget. - **Late 2025 / 2026** — The company continued to push DailyWire+ growth investment as its narrative even as it cut headcount. Industry-adviser private valuations remained in the $600M–$800M range, but those numbers reflect what acquirers might pay for the audience graph, not operating profitability. The 2025 crisis is the answer to the central strategic question of the 2022 streaming pivot: can a conservative media operation fund Hollywood-scale production from podcast/news subscription revenue? On the evidence so far, no — not on the schedule the Daily Wire attempted. - **June 2026 — the outside-capital endgame.** Semafor reported (June 23, 2026) the company "under pressure" and in talks for **at least $100M in investment**, with [[Highmount Capital]] — a firm founded by two former Koch Industries employees — positioned to lead at a **~$750M valuation**, and bankers pitching a **~$2B IPO within ~18 months**. Talks, not signed, as of July 2026. Tracked as a Deal at [[Daily Wire $100M Strategic Raise]]. ## Trump-Era Alignment and the Second Administration The Daily Wire's relationship to Trump has tracked Shapiro's personal arc (next section). By the second Trump administration (2025–), the company is functionally an MAGA-aligned outlet: - The [[Trump White House]] restored and expanded press passes for alternative outlets, including the Daily Wire, as part of the new Karoline Leavitt-led press operation - Daily Wire personalities have repeated regular access to administration sources and on-record interviews - The company's editorial line is supportive of administration priorities on immigration, anti-trans policy, [[Project 2025]] implementation, and DOGE-aligned spending cuts - The Daily Wire is one of the outlets Trump-administration officials use to launder messaging that mainstream press treats more skeptically — a role formerly held more centrally by [[Fox News]] and [[Breitbart News]] The shift from "respectable conservative" to "MAGA establishment" is complete. There is no longer a meaningful editorial distance between the Daily Wire and the second Trump administration on any major issue — a reversal from the 2016 founding posture. ## Ben Shapiro's Trump Arc Shapiro's personal evolution is the lens for understanding the Daily Wire's evolution: - **2016**: Resigned from [[Breitbart News]] over Bannon's protection of Lewandowski (the Michelle Fields incident). Backed [[Ted Cruz]] in the GOP primary. Did not vote for Trump in November; voted neither Trump nor Clinton. - **2017–2019**: "Reasonable conservative" positioning. Supportive of specific Trump policies (Soleimani strike, Jerusalem embassy move, Gorsuch/Kavanaugh/Barrett, deregulation, Paris withdrawal) but maintaining personal-character critiques. - **2020**: Announced he would vote for Trump, citing "Democrats have lost their f---ing minds." Stated: "I thought he would not be conservative in his governance. I was just wrong on that." - **2024**: Active fundraising for Trump and Republican candidates. Public statements praising Trump on debate prep and policy. The "I-told-you-so" arc was complete. - **2025–2026**: Editor emeritus role; positioned as senior MAGA-coalition figure; *Ben After Dark* late-night format launched on DailyWire+ in 2025 under Mike Richards. The Shapiro arc is the template for a generation of "Never Trump" conservatives who became Trump-aligned by 2020 and full MAGA-coalition members by 2024. His public reasoning was always policy-based ("the Democrats are worse"), but the trajectory is also commercial: the audience for "anti-Trump conservative" media collapsed; the audience for "MAGA-coalition conservative media" is the only viable subscription pool. The Daily Wire's editorial line tracks the audience. ## Relationship to Adjacent Outlets - **[[Breitbart News]]** — Shapiro's former employer. The Daily Wire defines itself partly in opposition to the Bannon-era Breitbart's alt-right alignment — though by 2024 the practical editorial gap is small. - **[[Fox News]]** — Competitive but complementary. Daily Wire personalities appear regularly on Fox; both outlets share talent-pipeline dynamics. The Daily Wire is younger-skewing and more digital/subscription-native. - **[[The Babylon Bee]]** — Independent satirical site under Seth Dillon's ownership, NOT acquired by the Daily Wire. The two outlets are aligned, frequently cross-promote, jointly led the December 2023 advertiser-boycott counter-spend on X, and share substantial audience overlap. They are best understood as adjacent peers in the same ecosystem. - **[[PragerU]]** — Integrated under the DailyWire+ umbrella for content cross-pollination. PragerU's K–12 curriculum push and the Daily Wire's Bentkey kids platform are parallel strategies for the same youth-conservative-content market. - **[[Turning Point USA Ecosystem]]** — TPUSA and the Daily Wire are the two major institutions of mainstream young-conservative media infrastructure, with significant overlap in audience, speakers, donor pool, and events. They compete for the same talent and donor dollars but rarely fight publicly. After [[Charlie Kirk]]'s 2025 death, Daily Wire personalities filled significant TPUSA programming gaps. - **[[Blaze TV]]** — [[Glenn Beck]]'s operation. Crowder went there after the Daily Wire deal collapsed and before launching his own platform. ## Analytical Framework The Daily Wire demonstrates several principles central to the right-wing media KB: 1. **Donor-subsidized media as ideological infrastructure.** The Wilks brothers' $4.7M 2015 check was not an investment in expected ROI; it was an investment in a parallel conservative culture. The first decade of the Daily Wire was, on conventional accounting, a money-losing operation propped up by donor-class belief in the long-run value of the platform. This is the template across the right-wing media ecosystem — the question is never "is this profitable on a standalone basis" but "is this load-bearing for the larger political project." 2. **Talent as both asset and risk.** The Crowder, Owens, and Bentkey episodes all revealed how dependent the platform is on individual hosts — and how violently those hosts can detach. Conservative talent increasingly knows the audience belongs to them, not the platform; this is the inverse of the Fox News logic where the platform owns the audience. 3. **Anti-trans content as commercial flywheel.** The decision to make trans-rights opposition the editorial centerpiece was strategic, not incidental. It produces high-engagement content cheaply, mobilizes the base, satisfies donors, and generates media controversy that drives subscriber acquisition. The pattern is replicable; the moral consequences are severe and well-documented. 4. **Streaming-platform overreach.** The 2022–2024 push to be a vertically integrated Netflix-of-the-right ran into the same constraint that has crushed all sub-Netflix streamers: production budgets at scale require subscriber bases the niche can't supply. The 2025 layoffs and the Bentkey shutdown are the forced reckoning. DailyWire+ may survive at a smaller, podcast-heavier footprint; the films-and-series ambition is in retreat. 5. **The Trump-era "reasonable conservative" arc.** Shapiro's evolution from 2016 anti-Trump principled-conservative to 2024 MAGA-coalition fundraiser is the modal trajectory of the entire never-Trump intellectual right. Tracking the Daily Wire's editorial line is a useful proxy for tracking where the median paid-subscription right-wing audience actually is — which is where the politicians follow. ## See Also - [[Ben Shapiro]] — Founder, public face, the Trump-arc protagonist - [[Matt Walsh]] — The anti-trans content engine - [[Jordan Peterson]] — The DailyWire+ anchor signing - [[Candace Owens]] — The most significant talent departure - [[Charlie Kirk]] — The TPUSA peer; covered separately - [[Breitbart News]] — Shapiro's prior shop, the contrast case - [[Fox News]] — The mothership of mainstream conservative media - [[The Babylon Bee]] — The aligned satirical sister-outlet (independently owned) - [[Turning Point USA Ecosystem]] — The peer institution in young-conservative media - [[Transphobia]] — The ideology the Daily Wire most institutionally produces - [[The Unholy Alliance]] — The framework connecting Daily Wire to broader donor/politician/platform infrastructure - [[Project 2025]] — The policy program the Daily Wire's editorial line consistently supports