Everything you need to know about Ben Shapiro, in one tweet.

en Shapiro, as you will have heard, was “destroyed” in an inter­view with BBC jour­nal­ist Andrew Neil. Even Mr. Shapiro admits to his destruc­tion, upon which he cried: “I’m pop­u­lar and no one’s ever heard of you!” and ran away. (Embrace the argu­men­tum ad pop­u­lum.)

If you’ve not heard about this, the gist of it is that Shapiro was first trig­gered by Neil’s descrip­tion of the Geor­gia abor­tion law as “bar­bar­ic” and a “return to the Dark Ages.” Then he grew increas­ing­ly petu­lant as Neil con­front­ed him with his own tweets. In one such tweet, Shapiro claimed that Arabs “like to live in open sewage.” In anoth­er, Shapiro described Jew­ish Oba­ma vot­ers as “Jews in name only,” or “JINOs.” How does this con­sti­tute civ­il dis­course? Neil asked. Shapiro’s only response was to accuse the con­ser­v­a­tive Neil of being a “left­ist” and ask­ing “gotcha ques­tions”; he nev­er offered any coher­ent answer, despite his oft-stat­ed claim that he wel­comes debates.

After the destruc­tion, Shapiro tweet­ed the fol­low­ing apol­o­gy, of sorts:

Just pre-taped an inter­view with BBC’s [Andrew Neil]. As I’m not famil­iar with him or his work, I mis­in­ter­pret­ed his antag­o­nism as polit­i­cal Left­ism (he termed the pro-life posi­tion in Amer­i­ca ‘barbaric’)—and that was appar­ent­ly inac­cu­rate. For that, I apol­o­gize.

So we learn sev­er­al things here.

First, we learn that Ben Shapiro does not pre­pare for inter­views. He does not both­er to make him­self famil­iar with the per­son doing the inter­view. Per­haps he’s used to being giv­en soft­ball ques­tions from the like-mind­ed, rather than actu­al­ly being chal­lenged. You can judge that. Mr. Neil, whom Shapiro false­ly described as a left­ist, read Shapiro’s book, read what he has said, and asked him about his spe­cif­ic words. This, Shapiro char­ac­ter­izes as the gotcha behav­ior of the left.

Sec­ond, we learn that Ben Shapiro, despite all his rhetoric about wel­com­ing a good debate, does not real­ly like to be chal­lenged: No soon­er is he chal­lenged by an actu­al jour­nal­ist than he com­plains about “antag­o­nism.” This is the behav­ior of the petu­lant, not the intel­lec­tu­al.

Third, we learn that Ben Shapiro lies. Mr. Neil did not describe the “pro-life posi­tion” as “bar­bar­ic.” He said that a law could poten­tial­ly jail women for hav­ing mis­car­riages was bar­bar­ic. And as Neil him­self lat­er clar­i­fied, the intent of the ques­tion was, in so many words, to find out how Shapiro would respond to some­one who described Geor­gia’s law as “bar­bar­ic” and a “return to the Dark Ages.” The point was not that this was Neil’s own descrip­tion of the law.

If you think the char­ac­ter­i­za­tion “bar­bar­ic” is inac­cu­rate, say why. If you think the claim that the Geor­gia law would jail women for hav­ing mis­car­riages, say why. Or if you think abor­tion itself is more accu­rate­ly described as “bar­bar­ic” than a law restrict­ing it, point that out.

But Mr. Shapiro said none of these things. He had no response at all, oth­er than to accuse Neil of being a left­ist and don out­rage that he would describe the “pro-life posi­tion” in such a way. But Neil was not talk­ing about “the pro life posi­tion” (as though there is such a thing as a sin­gle “pro life posi­tion”). And Shapiro did not once give an answer to the ques­tion; he mere­ly whined that the ques­tion could be asked in the first place.

And fourth, we learn that Ben Shapiro is not real­ly intel­lec­tu­al­ly capa­ble of the kind of debate he claims to want. His repeat­ed desire for a “debate” is a ruse. Claim­ing to want a debate is not hav­ing a debate. No soon­er is Shapiro actu­al­ly chal­lenged, than all he can do is com­plain of antag­o­nism, char­ac­ter­ize the ques­tions as left­ist, and run away. He does not con­ceive the pos­si­bil­i­ty that there can be dis­agree­ment among pro-lif­ers about abor­tion laws.

We learn that Ben Shapiro is not intel­lec­tu­al­ly impres­sive. And we learn much about the kind of “thinker” the Amer­i­can right holds up as sem­i­nal. “I’m pop­u­lar!” Shapiro cried, as though pop­u­lar­i­ty is a bul­wark against intel­li­gence.