Ben Shapiro ‘Wife’s Bedroom’ Columbus Day Tweet

An October 11 2021 tweet featured a purported Twitter screenshot, which was attributed to Ben Shapiro and mentioned his “wife’s bedroom” and “Columbus Day”:

In the screenshot (dated October 11 2021 at  4:50 PM), Shapiro purportedly said:

My daughter woke me up this morning and asked me what day it was. I asked, “is it Columbus Day?” She replied: “YEP!” She then went into my wife’s bedroom and asked her the same question. I couldn’t be prouder

Content of the tweet was similar to a viral, satirical tweet attributed to Shapiro in 2020:

According to Google Trends data for October 11 and 12 2021, searches for “Ben Shapiro Columbus Day tweet” and “Ben Shapiro wife’s bedroom” registered as frequent. In a reply tweet to the viral tweet above, the account acknowledged that the “wife’s bedroom” tweet was a “joke”:

As for the source of the tweet, once again, Reddit‘s r/ToiletPaperUSA featured the first iteration we located:

Even on r/ToiletPaperUSA — a subreddit for satirical tweets and related content — users seemed to be confused about the whether Shapiro genuinely tweeted the “wife’s bedroom” remark. Prolific viral satirical tweet creator u/carrorphcarp commented on the thread, reminding submitter u/troypaul1551 to add a “FAKE NEWS” flair to the post:

Holy shit. Bravo. Be sure to use the “FAKE NEWS” flair if posting a fake tweet, though[.]

Commenters debated the veracity of the tweet in subthreads; in one, u/carrorphcarp reiterated that the image originally lacked the “FAKE NEWS” flair (delineating fabricated tweets and similar content):

“Yes there is the fake news flair, but you wouldn’t know from the comments.”

“I actually added that on after it had been up for a bit”

As was often the case, a screenshot attributed to Ben Shapiro about his “wife’s bedroom” and “Columbus Day” was quickly decoupled from its notoriously satirical source, r/ToiletPaperUSA, spreading to Twitter and Facebook. Many users recognized its satirical nature, but due in part to an absence of Reddit’s usual labeling flair, the tweet spread in the wild and created confusion.