Comedian Bill Burr has again taken aim at conservative podcaster Ben Shapiro amid their ongoing feud.
Earlier this year, The Daily Wire co-founder Shapiro said he had been a fan of Burr’s until the comedian became “woke.” Shapiro also slammed Burr’s comedy as “one of the worst shows I have ever seen in my life” after attending a Florida show in December.
The two have since taken jabs at one another, with Burr calling Shapiro a “j***off,” but their feud heated up this week following Burr’s comments in a new interview with Vulture.
Burr slammed Shapiro over the “woke” comment, saying the right-wing media host “doesn’t even know what that word means.” Burr added that their “definition of woke is white liberals’ definition of woke, and they didn’t even know what it was.”
The comedian then accused Shapiro of attending his show “to be annoyed so he can then have something to talk about and then he can make money off dividing his own country. Those people, it’s treasonous what they do.”
When Vulture then asked if Shapiro achieved his goal of turning “a certain portion of the online right” against the comedian, Burr blasted those critics as “racists.”
“They send pictures of monkeys to me and my wife,” Burr, who has been married to Nia Renée Hill since 2013, said. “They’re f***ing horrible people. And they’re cowards, and they never say it to your face.”
Burr and Hill, who is Black, share two children.
“There’s an ugliness out there right now where if you’re a racist, if you’re an antisemite, if you’re a psycho nationalist and you want a softball interview, there’s podcasts out there where you can get one,” Burr continued.
Burr later said that his particular type of comedy is “deliberately misunderstood,” saying political figures as well as fans misinterpret his humor.
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On the political front, Burr said he trashes both sides if discussing politics during his shows “because that is my job.”
“I’m not flying either one of their flags; it’s the people who pay them that’s the problem,” he continued. “And they’re always distracting us with other stuff,” he said, calling both CNN and Fox News a “disease.”
Shapiro, meanwhile, has issued his own response to Burr’s latest comments in the form of a column via The Daily Wire, where he serves as editor emeritus after co-founding the publication in 2015.
“Here’s what I mean by wokeness: There is a definition, and I’ve explained it over and over and over again on the show. It’s not my definition. It’s the definition that Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic — who literally wrote a book on Critical Race Theory — laid out in explaining the basic principles that match up with wokeness,” Shapiro wrote.
“I call Bill Burr woke because he is. He believes that America is a deeply racist place and that it’s embedded in all of our social systems,” he continued.
Shapiro also spoke about the topic on his eponymous podcast, sharing clips to social media with the caption: “Bill Burr is STILL mad that I didn’t laugh?!”
