Ben Shapiro did not vote for Donald Trump in 2016, but he will be voting for President Trump in 2020 and he explains why on The Ben Shapiro Show.
Transcript
I am voting for Donald Trump in 2020. There are three reasons I’m going to vote for Donald Trump in 2020 when I didn’t four years ago.
First, I was a really wrong about Donald Trump on policy. Second, I wasn’t really wrong about Donald Trump on character, but whatever damage he was going to do has already been done. It’s not going to help if I don’t vote for him this time. And third, most importantly, the Democrats have lost they’re f**king minds.
So first of all, Donald Trump has governed pretty conservatively. I thought he would not be considerate in his governance. I was just wrong on that. Donald Trump radically cut regulations. You actually saw reductions in the number of man-hours dedicated to dealing with regulation, the first time in a long time, under Donald Trump. He appointed originalist judges to the best of his ability, we’re talking dozens of them, textualist, originalist judges who actually care about the role of the Judiciary. He cut taxes, jogging the economy, raising it heights not seen in half a century, the lowest unemployment rate in half a century, people having their wages rise at bottom of the spectrum. He appointed pro-life people to the executive branch and pursued pro-life policy via executive order. He jumped out of the idiotic Paris Accords, which were useless and counterproductive. He dumped the even more idiotic and evil Iran Deal which gave money to the Iranian mullahs to use for terrorism, which John Kerry freely admitted. Donald Trump crushed ISIS, he killed Al Baghdadi. He killed Kasem Solamani. Donald Trump is the first president in my lifetime not to start any wars, which is kind of a big thing. He moved the American Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem. He brokered the first meaningful peace deals there in three decades, in the Middle East. He cracked down on China in unprecedented ways. He resisted using the federal government to control everybody’s life during COVID. That’s a big thing. This is the biggest government power grab of my lifetime and Trump refused to do it.
Donald Trump restored due process on college campuses because he actually cares about due process, or at least the Secretary of Education does, contrary to popular opinion.
Donald Trump has not actually threatened the institutions. The fact is that Donald Trump may have been hemmed in by his own people. Whatever the rationale, he has not threatened the press, he has not threatened the legislature. He has not used the executive branch in nearly as powerful ways as Barack Obama did. Trump hasn’t been as conservative as I would like on everything. He spent way too much money, like oodles too much money. I actually care about that stuff.
His perspective on trade is a zero-sum game. I think it’s wrong-headed. He still signed into law the USMCA, which is a pretty good trade deal. But these are problems I’ve had with a variety of Republicans including George W Bush. Trump has governed overall in a far more conservative fashion than W on policy. He is the most conservative president of my lifetime on policy. Of course, Ronald Reagan left office when I was four years old.
Second, times change. When I said I wouldn’t vote for Trump in 2016, I was worried about three things, one, policy, again, and I was wrong. Second, I was worried about the soul-sucking of the Republican party to approve bad behavior, people nodding and grinning at bad stuff Trump did. A lot of that has happened.
And third, I was worried about toxicity down ballot, losing House Seats, losing Senate seats, blowing out the Republican party with minorities and women and young people. A lot of that has manifested, but, here’s the thing, it’s already manifested, and me not voting for Trump in 2020 doesn’t stop that from manifesting.
Look, I’ve been very, very clear on my feelings about Donald Trump’s character. I have serious reservations to say the least. Trump has some good qualities. Raise a hammer in search of a nail. Sometimes he hits the nail. It’s super satisfying, and sometimes he hits a baby, and it is far less satisfying.
Trump hitting the media is often justified. I mean, the media have exposed themselves as just a pure dumpster fire of leftist garbage. They treated him as an enemy from the very first day. They have promulgated false narratives. They’ve lied about things that he has said. They have taken the worst interpretation of everything he could possibly have said. That doesn’t mean that Trump hasn’t been vindictive or petty or immoral. He does all those things. Trump being unwilling to focus and willing to jump on any rake is not just immoral, it is very often stupid and counterproductive, I mean, you know my opinion on this. Everybody knows, deep down in the cockles of your heart no matter how much you love Trump, everybody knows the Trump Administration, with Trump on teleprompter more often and less on Twitter, would be in a position to win the 2020 election more easily. Everybody also knows the Trump’s tweets damage him with people who don’t already love him. All of that is true, but all of it is not changing. Their is a group of people out there who, every time Trump tweets something newly stupid, they get newly enraged. I think most Americas basically, this is all baked into the cake at this point. I mean it’s important, deeply important, for conservatives to criticize Trump when he requires it, when Trump does something bad, we should say it out loud. We shouldn’t hide that, and that’s why I’ve been calling balls and strikes on Trump as president since the day he was elected. But 2020 is not 2016. Everything that is bad about Trump is already part of the system, it’s already part of the new normal, for better or for worse, and me avoiding voting for him in 2020 doesn’t change that.
Third, and most importantly, the Democrats have lost their f**king minds, they lost their minds. So have members of the main stream media. So have members of our bureaucracy. So have members of academia. These people must not be allowed the mechanisms of power. Our most crucial institutions, from corporate America to the university, they’ve been corrupted, top to bottom, and giving them power over your life, more power over your lives, huge mistake.
The Democrats are no longer the party even if Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama. There the party of Bernie Sanders, and they’re just wearing around the mask of Joe Biden. They’re the party of Rahida Talib and Ilan Omar. Joe Biden is a Potemkin village of a candidate. He is not a bulwark against radicalism. He is a façade for it. Everybody knows it. That’s why Bernie is touting him as they most progressive presidential candidates in since FDR. There’s a reason that Noam Chomsky is on board with Joe. I mean, if you just watch this stuff it should scare the hell out of you. Today’s Democratic Party is not even the Democratic Party of Barack Obama circuit 2008. Barack Obama circuit 2008 supported traditional marriage. Barack Obama circuit 2008 was not openly in favor of packing the courts or getting rid of the filibuster. Barack Obama in 2008 used to speak about personal responsibility, sometimes, like all of this is just gone.
The Democratic party is now the party of radicalism. The simple mandate for the Democrats is this. They now believe in cramming down their perspective on everyone they can via any force that they can control. They believe that you should be forced by law to violate your religious beliefs if it conflicts with their social views.
They believe that the science says we have to destroy the free market in the name of the environment.
They say that unborn babies aren’t babies, that men can do women, and if you disagree with any of that, you’re a bigot, your a homophobe and you’re a terrible person.
They believe that your right to keep and bear arms should be heavily infringed, if not outright abolished.
They believe that due process comes second to intersectional identity, that we shouldn’t judge you as an individual, we should judge you based on your racial group.
They believe that America is systemically racist, rooted in sin and evil, founded in 1699 not in 1776.
They believe that every single disparity in America can be chalked up to racism and bigotry and America sucking.
They believe in racial, sexual, sexual orientation quotas, overt discrimination. They believe in a hierarchy of victimhood. If you’re low on that hierarchy of victimhood you should shut up. If you’re high on the hierarchy of victimhood you can say whatever the hell you want, you will never be held accountable.
They believe that economic freedom should be curbed in the name of income inequality. They care far less about growth and prosperity than they do about some bizarre notion that equality is its own good.
They’re complicit in a culture war on anybody who disagrees. They seek to ruin anybody who stands in their way, and they will activate the media, they’ll activate social media, they’ll activate their friends in Academia to get all of that done. Meanwhile they’ll make room for my Antifa and Black Lives Matter. They will cheer the rioting and looting, or at least they’ll go along with it and refuse to condemn it. But if you go to church during a pandemic for you are a danger to society. If you go to Grandma’s funeral, you’re super dangerous, but if you’re out there rioting and looting and burning things, that’s just a philosophy guys, its not a movement. It’s not an organization, as is Joe Biden said. They literally will not even condemned Antifa, okay. Antifa is a terrorist organization. They will not condemn it. They will not condemn Black Lives Matter protests that escalate into rioting and looting. They think there’s no relationship whatsoever between an ideology that suggests that America is at root evil and at every institution in American life is infected with that evil, and the rioting and the looting.
On foreign policy the Democrats want too kowtow to Iran. They want to re-enter the garbage Paris Accords. They want to make nice with China.
They’ve threatened to destroy the Electoral College, pack the Supreme Court, abolish the filibuster, add states by simple majority to vote Democrat.
They say they’ll use impeachment as a purely political tool. In fact they’ve even said they want to Congressional committee to use the 25th Amendment to get rid of a sitting president. They seek to centralize all power in the Executive Branch and they hope to overrun the powers of the states. They’re aided in all this by corporations, mainstream media, and pretty much anybody else they can get their hands on. They created a social structure dedicated to ostracizing anybody who dissents on leftist dogma. If you vote for Trump you are evil, your friends should stop talking to you. You should stop talking to your own parents. Maybe you should be fired. Certainly people should stop treating you like a human being.
So, here’s the deal, I’m voting for Trump. You don’t have to love Trumps character. You don’t have to like his Twitter account to vote for him. You don’t have to approve of the crazy or bad things that he says, or the way he often acts, but if you care about the Constitution and economic freedom and the security of the United States, you really don’t have a whole hell of a lot of choice. You should vote for Trump. You should certainly vote against Joe Biden and the Democratic party that is running completely off the rails and now threatens the integrity of the Republic, if they are given the levers of power.
