Breitbart News sat down with comedian Ben Bankas to discuss the left’s attempts to cancel him over his comedy and how those attempts actually grew his brand and his audience.
Our time together began with a discussion about his shows that were canceled in Minnesota after he added material on the January 7, 2026, incident in which an ICE agent shot and killed Renee Good, the woman who allegedly drove her vehicle into an agent.
Bankas said, “The cancellation was one venue where we were going to do six shows, no one else canceled in America.”
He noted there was pushback in Canada, which is where he is from originally, and he pointed out, “They are extremely sensitive to anything that’s offensive.”
But Bankas explained that predominant reaction was positive, saying, “We added hundreds of thousands of new followers. People who already knew who I was but they were like, ‘Now I really want to follow this guy.’ We actually added way more shows than those six shows that were canceled, and they were added in way more markets.”
He continued, “In January 2026 I had, I think, 121 million views on Facebook and on Instagram there were somewhere between 30 and 50 million. So obviously, people like my comedy.”
“The Democrat-liberal thing on all this is, whenever someone is doing well with something they don’t agree with, they make it into this whole thing that it’s evil, it’s bad, when at the end of the day it’s art,” Bankas said. “And all the evil, bad things, like the fraud scandal in Minnesota and the idea that ICE should be arrested and prosecuted when Trump’s out of office, or if he’s out of office, and going after people who simply supported Trump, they make it seem like those things are normal but making a joke on a stage in a comedy setting for comedy fans is somehow a problem.”
He observed, “I’ve said this on stage before, but the people who hate and want me to have shows canceled, they are jealous and they don’t like seeing things with which they disagree get popular.”
We sat back a second, noting the irony of how the attempt to cancel his comedy shows actually resulted in exponential growth in his popularity.
“Yes, my fan base grew by almost 200,000 followers on Instagram alone. And it made me realize just how aggressive the haters were,” Bankas said. “They were trying to do anything and everything to make sure my shows were canceled. There were emails that were like death threats, you know, ‘I’m going to string you up in garage’ and ‘I have a trans kid and my trans kid’s not safe while you’re out there doing comedy,’ and ‘I’m going to find you’ and ‘We’re going to get you,’ and things like that. But you know what? I’m honestly okay with all of it because, if you’re going to become somebody, people are not going to be okay with it at first.”
Bankas added, “But at the same time, I got tons and tons really positive emails, begging me to come to this town and that town, this city and that city, and it was awesome at the end of the day.”
The comedian said he lives in Texas now and people in the Lone Star State really “get it.”
“They have a good sense of humor. Americans in general get it,” He said. “But it’s this other half of America that sees what I’m doing as a threat to their ideology, because it’s one thing to say something on a podcast, where there’s no reaction, but when you say it on stage and people die laughing, when you put that online it hurts way more for the left to watch it and hear it because they are like, ‘Oh no, look how many people are enjoying this.'”
This is part one of the Breitbart News interview with Ben Bankas, part two will follow.
AWR Hawkins is an award-winning Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and the writer/curator of Down Range with AWR Hawkins, a weekly newsletter focused on all things Second Amendment, also for Breitbart News. He is the political analyst for Armed American Radio and the director of global marketing for Lone Star Hunts. He holds a PhD in Military History with a focus on the Vietnam War (brown water navy), U.S. Navy since Inception, the Civil War, and Early Modern Europe. He enjoys reading Philosophy and novels by Jack Carr and Nelson DeMille. Follow him on X: @awrhawkins. You can sign up to get Down Range at breitbart.com/downrange. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com.
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