Ben Shapiro, the conservative pundit well-known for opposing Donald Trump in the 2016 primaries, has declared that he will fully back the candidate for president in 2024.
Using his highly popular show, “The Ben Shapiro Show,” he announced that he would vote for Trump and that he would support the former president monetarily by co-hosting a fundraiser. Considering that Shapiro has previously been reluctant to fully back Trump, this represents a dramatic change in his political outlook.
“As most of you know, I’m voting for Donald Trump in November. I’ve said so many, many times at this point, but I’m not just voting for Donald Trump,” Shapiro said. “Next week, I will be co-hosting a fundraiser for him. Now, this may come as a surprise to some of you. I want to tell you why. As you know, I didn’t support Trump in the primaries.”
“I don’t endorse candidates in Republican primaries, but I do tell you who I would have voted for. And I told you I would have voted for Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida if given the choice. But Ron DeSantis isn’t the nominee. Donald Trump is the nominee. And he’s facing Joe Biden who is the worst president of my lifetime,” he continued.
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He persisted in criticizing the Biden administration, enumerating certain shortcomings and drawing negative comparisons to the Trump presidency: “Because Donald Trump is the nominee against Joe Biden, I won’t just vote for him. I will walk over broken glass to vote for him. Actually, I will go into my own pocket to support him, which is what I’m doing. My calculus is really simple. America was better off under Donald Trump than it is under Joe Biden.”
“I’ve been open in my criticisms of Trump on both character and policy, and I’m not gonna stop criticizing Donald Trump when I disagree with him,” Shapiro said. “I always will be honest about that, and I always will. That’s my job. It’s the job of all Americans because Donald Trump as a presidential candidate works for us.”
Shapiro’s opinions on Trump have changed over time. He first criticized the outgoing president in the 2016 Republican primary because he didn’t believe Trump was a true conservative and didn’t agree with his style of politics and leadership. But after winning the election, Trump’s position changed. Shapiro has stated repeatedly that he would support Trump when he thought the president was correct and condemn him when he wasn’t.
“But Donald Trump is the man standing between America and a second Joe Biden term. And a second Joe Biden term means America is in dire, dire trouble. It is that simple. I encourage all of you who, like me, would have preferred another nominee for the GOP to recognize this is now a binary race. It is Trump or it is Biden.”
Shapiro emphasized the seriousness of the election throughout his program, defending his endorsement of Trump as a choice taken with the welfare of the nation in mind, notwithstanding his misgivings about the former president’s temperament and policies.
One of the most prominent voices in the conservative movement has unexpectedly endorsed the idea.
