Gas Prices, Scapegoats, and “Real” Americans

How Ben Shapiro and Benny Johnson are selling Trump’s agenda to divergent audiences.

Jan 12, 2026

Welcome back to UNASB! This newsletter serves as a recap of our last meeting. As a reminder, here at UNSAB, we listen to conservative-leaning podcasts, analyze their messaging and themes, and brainstorm actionable ideas for how the Democratic coalition can strengthen its own approach.

UNASB kicked off our first meeting of 2026 by listening to the right’s most infamous and influential Bens: Ben Shapiro (The Ben Shapiro Show) and Benny Johnson (The Benny Show). We listened to episodes covering Trump’s December 17 address to the nation to better understand why the Bens are such effective communicators and marketers for the conservative movement.

ICYMI Benny Johnson is a prolific conservative commentator who has written for Breitbart, The Blaze, National Review, and is known to many as “Godfather of the Conservative Internet”. His YouTube channel has 6M+ subscribers and he has 2M+ followers on Instagram. Ben Shapiro’s an establishment figure in the right-wing media ecosystem with 7M+ followers on YouTube and 4M+ on Instagram. He co-founded prominent conservative platform The Daily Wire in 2015, and has described his political views as economically libertarian and socially conservative, and is critical of the alt-right movement.

The Benny Show “Trump BREAKS Internet With Primetime Address, TROLLS Media Into Covering His WINS | 2025 IN REVIEW.”

Benny, who has been steadily rising in popularity among MAGA’s base, has a bluntness the left often lacks. He brazenly scapegoats immigrants, whom he sees as not real Americans, for seemingly every problem most of us are facing.

Lack of community? Immigrants.

High cost of living? Immigrants.

Housing shortage? Immigrants.

No roadside farm stand? Yes, really, it’s immigrants.

Throughout his xenophobic tirade, Benny frames Trump as having obvious, practical solutions that are making America great. In contrast to the havoc immigrants are wreaking on farm stands and housing prices, Trump’s actions during his first year back in office have been a great success. The cherry on top was Trump “trolling” the media into covering his wins during the much-derided end-of-year affordability address.

Benny also has a near-constant interaction with his audience via livestream, which brings us to…

Gas Prices!

In a style reminiscent of Dora the Explorer, Johnson spent much of this episode asking viewers a single, repetitive question and taking notable pauses to wait for those interacting on a livestream to respond.

How cheap is your gas?

Benny comes back to this question about gas prices over and over, interrupting himself to ask viewers how cheap gas has gotten, and reinforcing the idea that any decrease in gas prices is because of Trump. This focus on a gimmicky metric works. As he rattles off deluges of cheap gas prices, he’s also authentically engaging with his audience and calling out the names and locations of those participating in his livestream. This call-and-response format helps him both energize his audience and makes them feel seen.

Repetition of a core message or issue is marketing 101, and throughout this episode, Benny does just this by using immigrants as a scapegoat and gas prices getting lower as definitive proof of Trump’s success. It doesn’t matter that what he is saying isn’t entirely accurate either; his audience is already bought in. Benny isn’t trying to change anyone’s mind; he’s merely reinforcing the beliefs they already have and hyping them up so they feel part of something bigger. He validates his audience by letting them know they are right in blaming immigrants for the very real problems they are facing, and that Trump is the best and only solution they have.

The Ben Shapiro Show, “President Trump Pushes The Affordability “RESET” Button”

In contrast to Benny Johnson’s rising popularity, we have Ben Shapiro, whose approval is starting to decline among the MAGA base. While Benny’s listeners are turning to him for energy and engagement, Ben’s are looking for a more thorough analysis of our current political environment. He talks quickly and emphatically, in an almost sermon-like manner. Unlike Benny, Ben is willing to critique Trump and his affordability address, acknowledging the speech wasn’t perfect. He has a much more nuanced discussion about affordability. Instead of a rap sheet of gas prices, Ben argued that affordability is a feeling, not a tangible metric.

While Benny is quick to scapegoat immigrants, Ben is critical of full-scale anti-immigrant rhetoric and urges his listeners to be more ideological about who constitutes as a real American. Ben argues that what makes America unique is that we are a nation built on ideals, specifically Judeo-Christian ones. Therefore, we should welcome those who share these ideals and want to contribute to them.

This focus on Judeo-Christian values can be deceptive. It may decenter immigrants at large (specifically Jewish/Christian immigrants), but inadvertently shifts blame onto non-Jewish/Christian immigrants, and more broadly onto anybody who may be critical of conservative values, which he repeatedly conflates with American values. Ben’s opinion on immigrants may sound more open-minded than Benny’s, but if you look past his reframing, you can read it as just a more digestible version. His sentiment is the same: people who are different from you are to blame.

Ben’s rhetoric about immigrants ties into his long-term approach to the conservative movement. He’s trying to build a conservative coalition that can withstand an election sans Trump by attracting moderate and conservative-curious voters. While Benny’s content is more aggressive on the surface, Ben’s may be more insidious– he’s padding conservative ideology in an academic-sounding marketing pitch to make it palatable to voters not fully bought into MAGA

Key Takeaways:

Basic marketing tactics are really effective. Ben and Benny both use repetition, pathos/logos/ethos persuasion, and engagement to hype up, engage, and persuade their audiences.

Everyone wants affordable, strong communities. The largest common ground between conservatives and liberals is the concern about the rising cost of living and a lack of community. Conservatives are scapegoating immigrants, and the left doesn’t seem to have an actionable solution.

Confidence is key. Both Ben and Benny ooze confidence, and you don’t have a single doubt about where they stand on any issue they address

MAGA isn’t uniform. Despite both being influential figures within MAGA, Ben and Benny talk about Trump (and to their audiences) in vastly different ways. While Benny is tripling down on xenophobia, Ben is trying to make conservative policies enticing to a broader audience. A subset of MAGA is firmly rooted in the present, relishing Trump’s victories, but there is growing tension among MAGA factions, especially over what the party looks like post-Trump.

Making what we learned actionable

We should both recognize and steal the basic marketing tactics that the right is using.

We need to focus on affordability and building strong communities. These are issues we all face and want solutions to. With the right messaging, they could be especially helpful in getting voters who aren’t fully bought into the conservative movement to vote blue.

Say it with our chest! Left-leaning podcasts and think pieces tend to tiptoe around the point and come across as nervous to take a definitive stand (looking at you, Ezra Klein!). If we can take anything from Ben and Benny, it’s their confidence to just say what we mean, totally unapologetically.

We need to reclaim American values: Republicans love to harken back to our founding fathers and the importance of upholding American ideals. Liberal candidates should lean into this and emphasize how their policies protect and advance freedom, equality, unalienable rights, self-governance, and justice. Right now, conservatives see liberal policies as un-American; we need to change that.

WHAT UNASB MEMBERS ARE READING:

Thanks for reading! Want to get involved? Click here.

A guest post by

Aleigh Meredith

Look what I wrote!

Discussion about this post

Ready for more?