MAGA loyalist Ben Shapiro has declared that the temporary suspension of production for his pro-ICE movie, Pawn Shop, is “content discrimination” and “a violation of the First Amendment.”
During a town hall meeting on Oct. 3, the City Commission of Livingston, Montana, unanimously passed a motion to temporarily suspend production on the film, which was slated to shoot in the small town through Oct. 10. Residents had been raising concerns over the movie’s disruption to businesses and to the city’s only food bank, and over neglecting to notify neighbors before shooting dangerous stunts.
After a seven-hour meeting, the Commission voted Oct. 5 to reinstate the film’s production permits, and filming is underway again. But the ability to shoot his movie isn’t enough to assuage Shapiro’s complaints; he whined that Livingston residents’ concerns centered on the movie’s content.
Pawn Shop’s opening scene appears to glorify the ICE agents who shot and killed Minneapolis mom Renée Good in January. The movie, which Shapiro’s company The Daily Wire is producing, centers around immigration enforcement officers saving the day despite evil progressive protesters’ efforts to stop deportations.
“Let us be clear: there’s only one reason the city commissioners ruled they were going to stop our production on the street: politics, pure and simple, and they pretty much admitted it,” Shapiro said. “One commissioner, Cindy Daniels, said, quote, ‘I’m not willing to sacrifice the resources of the safety, the security of the mental health of our community. Absolutely not. This wasn’t a Hallmark film. This wasn’t, you know, Christmastime in Livingston, and it wasn’t a romantic story.’ Well, I mean, I wasn’t aware that we had to fulfill your idea of what the story required.”
“In fact, I’m fairly certain the First Amendment says precisely the opposite of that,” he added. “So they’re saying a Hallmark romance would have been totally fine. But a Daily Wire film about enforcement of immigration law loses that. That is content discrimination openly performed and a violation of the First Amendment.”
Before the temporary suspension, residents said they felt unsafe in their town. The production had hired private, armed security personnel, who treated people as “obstacles on their own street,” one resident said during the town hall.
“I have been witnessing armed security recording and scoping my home for over a week now from right outside my window,” the resident said. “What I am witnessing is not routine traffic control. It is armed, private security in paramilitary-style tactical gear with firearms.”
Shapiro also called out the Daily Beast’s coverage of the town hall specifically.
“They are petty tyrants,” he said of the Beast and other publications. “They are petty tyrants. They are perfectly happy to shut down filmmaking so long as that film isn’t wildly leftist.”
