Steven “Destiny” Bonnell was challenged on his past remarks that made light of violence against conservatives, including Charlie Kirk.
Lucas Miller
Staff Writer, The Buckley Beacon
On Wednesday, Steven “Destiny” Bonnell, a popular and controversial political commentator and YouTube streamer, visited Yale at the invitation of Yale Effective Altruism (YEA) to debate with selected Yale students on Medicare and Medicaid, political violence, and the state of discourse in the United States.
Bonnell is a well-known voice in left-of-center political circles, amassing some 850,000 subscribers on YouTube and more than 300,000 followers on X. Bonnell has sparked repeated controversy for his promotion of political violence, including his mocking the shooting of Trump supporter Corey Comperatore at a July 2024 rally. More recently, Bonnell tweeted a video that accused Erika Kirk, Charlie Kirk’s widow, of “fake cries” following her husband’s assassination.
YEA, which hosted Bonnell, is a “philosophy and community focused on maximizing the good you can do through your career, projects, and donations,” according to a statement on the student organization’s website. YEA divided the debate into quarters, allocating twenty minutes per round. The first half of the debate focused on policy issues, namely the future of Medicare and Medicaid following cuts to the programs by the Trump administration.
In the first quarter of the debate, Bonnell and Hassaan Qadir (YC ‘26) debated the abolition and replacement of Medicare and Medicaid.
Qadir highlighted inefficiencies in Medicare and Medicaid while arguing for a voucher-based alternative healthcare system. “One argument that I’m making is that much of the spending in Medicare and Medicaid, in fact, around one-third, is estimated to be of no clinical value,” Qadir said.
Bonnell defended Medicare by arguing that alternative systems are unlikely to improve on the status quo. “Whatever system we put in place is either going to be so absurdly complicated, you’ve either reinvented some form of Medicaid or Medicare, or it becomes more bureaucratic and less efficient than if we were to just do Medicaid or Medicare.”
A voucher system like that described by Qadir already exists in Hong Kong, with Hong Kong’s government-provided vouchers totaling $2,000 annually to elderly patients to aid in healthcare expenses. Hong Kong also provides government-subsidized healthcare. In its 2024 index, the Foundation for Research on Equal Opportunity ranked Hong Kong’s healthcare system 16th out of 32 nations, with the United States’ healthcare system ranking 7th in the same index.
Later, Bonnell debated Sherry Huang (YC ‘29) on the resolution, “corporate greed kills abundance,” with Huang arguing for the resolution and Bonnell against. Huang cited the pharmaceutical industry and others as industries antithetical to “liberal abundance,” a philosophy in which policymakers determine how to eliminate, rather than reallocate, scarce resources.
“It’s not just the pharmaceutical industry,” Huang said. “There is general lobbying in a lot of sectors, like public transit, healthcare, oil, and surveillance companies, specifically, just gave 40 million dollars to both political candidates from both parties during the 2020 electoral cycle, which prevents government action from regulating them.”
Bonnell replied that corporations are profit-driven, but can be regulated through government policies that align with the natural tendencies of businesses.
“Markets are real. When I say markets are real, what I mean is that there are times when I think that even if the government needs to intervene, we have to understand that if the government intervenes in some way, there are going to be all of these extra effects that we have to be aware of, and we can’t just hope those effects away,” Bonnell said.
Later on in the debate, Hannah Owens Pierre (YC ‘28), a member of YEA and the Yale Debate Association, challenged Bonnell on some of his past controversial remarks.
“You have made the statement, ‘conservatives need to be afraid of getting killed when they go to their events so that they turn down the temperature,’” Owens Pierre recounted. “You repeatedly refused to condemn the murder of Charlie Kirk, and after his murder, you tweeted, making fun of his death, saying ‘I heard when he died, he fed an entire village of vampires because so much blood came out of his neck.’”
In addition to the vampire comment referenced by Owens Pierre, Bonnell openly refused to condemn Charlie Kirk’s September assassination. “I won’t condemn anything until the president of the United States can go on air and say, ‘all of us need to calm down,’” Bonnell told a panel on Piers Morgan Uncensored shortly after Kirk’s death.
Owens Pierre summarized, “Ultimately, you are personally responsible for the extreme and divisive political climate that you critique. Your rhetoric inflames the American political climate, and I think you have a net-negative impact on the political space.”
Bonnell responded by arguing that his inflammatory style is a political necessity given the virulent state of political discourse, while deflecting from his own remarks and advocating a form of mutually assured destruction. “When it comes time to be civil in a conversation, both sides have to agree to that. One side can’t agree and the other side not agree, and one side can’t force agreement on that,” Bonnell said.
Bonnell later alluded to the use of violent rhetoric as a political strategy, given left-wing electoral losses in 2024. “It feels like the left isn’t fighting for the American public when they just allow themselves to be steamrolled over and over and over again by a right whose rhetoric is getting increasingly unhinged,” Bonnell said.
Owens Pierre later raised the issue of the January 2021 riot on the U.S. Capitol, asking Bonnell, “So just to be clear, you think if democrats get into office, they should do a January 6th-style insurrection, because conservatives already did it, right?” Bonnell responded, “If we do it, hopefully we don’t fail like they did.”
Following Wednesday’s debate, Owens Pierre reflected on her exchange with Bonnell and expressed gratitude for the opportunity to debate. “I believe that Destiny’s approach to politics, if generalized, would lead to an escalatory spiral that would harm our country. Nevertheless, I’m glad to have had the opportunity to confront Destiny on this matter and give him a chance to explain his position,” Owens Pierre told The Buckley Beacon in an email.
On December 13, Bonnell will debate right-wing commentator Dinesh D’Souza in Washington, D.C.