Is an X post purportedly published by conservative commentator Ben Shapiro saying he believed Tracy Chapman stole the spotlight from Luke Combs at the 2024 Grammy Awards show real? No, that's not true: On February 7, 2024, Shapiro publicly debunked the post as fake from his verified X account. Before that, Shapiro had also posted a link to an article in which the author praised Chapman's performance with Combs.
The claim appeared in a post on Facebook (archived here) on February 6, 2024. The caption opened:
This guy. 🙄
The image in the post appeared to be a screenshot of a purported tweet attributed to Shapiro, with the post saying:
Of course the Grammy cultural Marxists had to force us to watch some black queer female perform and steal the spotlight from Luke Comb's popular new country music song. The woke war on straight white male success continues.
This is what the post looked like on Facebook at the time of writing:
(Source: Facebook screenshot taken on Mon Feb 12 13:49:29 2024 UTC)
The X post attributed to Shapiro is fake, and he publicly addressed it on February 7, 2024, by reposting a version of the fake on his verified X account along with the line, "'Don't believe in the veracity of every tweet you see on X.' -- Julius Caesar" (archived here):
(Source: X screenshot taken on Mon Feb 12 13:28:29 2024 UTC)
Shapiro also reposted an X post (archived here) on February 7, 2024, by BBC News journalist Shayan Sardarizadeh that debunked the claim as false and the post as fake:
(Source: X screenshot taken on Mon Feb 12 13:28:29 2024 UTC)
A search (archived here) of Shapiro's account and a search (archived here) of Shapiro's show account on the X platform using the keywords found in the post attributed to Shapiro produced no results to substantiate Shapiro ever having published such a post on the platform.
On February 6, 2024, the day before Shapiro addressed the fake post on his official X account, he posted a link on his verified Facebook account (archived here) that led to an article on his website, The Daily Wire, titled, "WATCH: Tracy Chapman's Unforgettable Grammys Performance Singing 'Fast Car' With Luke Combs." In it, reporter Katie Jerkovich (archived here) praised the performers saying that Chapman "sounded as beautiful as ever as the two took turns with the verses in a duet that wowed the star-studded audience in the room and viewers at home."
Lead Stories reached out to Shapiro and his representatives at the Daily Wire. This fact check will be updated if a response is received.
Additional Lead Stories fact checks that mention Ben Shapiro can be read here.
