Bill Burr recently spoke to The New York Times and shrugged off Ben Shapiro‘s criticism of him. The conservative political commentator and Daily Wire co-founder called out Burr in December for “going woke” after the comedian lashed out at “selfish” and “greedy” CEOs in the wake of the murder of UnitedHealthcare chief executive Brian Thompson.
“All he knew is if he put ‘woke’ on what I said, he would make more money,” Burr now said of Shapiro’s claim. “I don’t know who he is, but that guy is a jerk-off.”
While Burr did not support Thompson’s killing, he observed on an episode of his “Monday Morning Podcast” in December that news organizations were not taking note of “the incredible lack of empathy from the general public about this because of how these insurance companies treat people when they at their most vulnerable, after we’ve all given them our money every fucking month, and now we finally need you and all you do is deny us.”
“And then these pussies and all of these things are taking the pictures of their CEOs off of their websites,” Burr continued at the time. “You know, I gotta be honest with you, okay? I love that fucking CEOs are fucking afraid right now. You should be! By and large, you’re all a bunch of selfish, greedy, fucking pieces of shit, and a lot of you are mass murderers. You just don’t pull the trigger. That’s why it looks clean.”
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Burr clarified on a following podcast that he did not mean in any way that Thompson deserved to be killed. He was only talking about how the public reacted to the killing and how it was hard to fault those who did not take issue with it.
“For them to be like, ‘Oh, why would anybody want to do this?’ — they’re denying claims and people are dying!” Burr said.
Shapiro responded to Burr on The Daily Wire with a written critique in which Shaprio claimed “Burr has become woke. Over time, I think he became embarrassed that many people on the right thought he was very funny, so he decided he was going to go woke.”
“Burr openly cheered the murder of the UnitedHealthcare executive because he says CEOs should live in fear if they don’t act in the way that he would have them act — in a system that he has no fixes for, by the way,” Shapiro added despite Burr stressing he was never cheering the murder but simply understanding the public’s reaction to it.
Shapiro went on to call Burr’s comment’s “truly evil,” adding: “He’s saying you should live in fear if you’re the CEO of a company that does things that Burr deems to be bad or wrong.”
Burr spoke to The New York Times ahead of his Broadway debut in “Glengarry Glen Ross,” in which he’s starring in opposite Bob Odenkirk and Kieran Culkin.