PERSON: Benny Johnson

The Benny Show Podcast

Host

Benny Johnson (born May 27, 1987) is an American conservative political commentator and YouTuber.

In 2010, Johnson began contributing opinion pieces to the opinion website Breitbart. In 2011, he was hired as a full-time worker for conservative media website TheBlaze.

Johnson speaking at the 2014 International Students for Liberty Conference in Washington, D.C. In 2012, Johnson became a staff writer at Buzzfeed. In July 2014, Buzzfeed found 41 instances of plagiarism in Johnson’s writings, comprising almost 10 percent of his work. He was subsequently fired from Buzzfeed and apologized for the plagiarism.

In September 2014, Johnson became digital director at the National Review.

In 2015, Johnson joined the Independent Journal Review (IJR) as a creative content contributor. Later that year, the IJR staffers accused him of plagiarizing an article about then-House Republican Conference chairwoman Cathy McMorris Rodgers.

In March 2017, Johnson was suspended by the IJR after his involvement in an article which asserted that judge Derrick Watson’s partial blocking of Executive Order 13780 was connected to former president Barack Obama’s visit to Hawaii. Johnson had been warned that the IJR could potentially be promoting a conspiracy theory, but assigned the story anyway. That same month, Johnson was reported to have been verbally abusive and driven numerous staffers away from the IJR due to his management style; he was subsequently demoted.

In August 2017, Johnson wrote an article containing the most controversial tweets of what he thought was the Boston antifa Twitter account, but what was a fake account intended to lampoon antifa. Initially an editorial note was added, and the article was later removed.

A month after his relationship with the IJR was terminated in October 2017, Johnson joined The Daily Caller. In 2019, he became a chief creative officer at Turning Point USA. In 2020, Johnson was a host on Newsmax TV.

Johnson is married to Katelyn Rieley, with whom he has three children.

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