Ben Shapiro Endorses Donald Trump: ‘It’s Time for the Party to Coalesce’
Left: Ben Shapiro Right: Donald Trump (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
Prominent conservative commentator Ben Shapiro endorsed former President Donald Trump on Monday, one day after Florida Governor Ron DeSantis dropped out of the Republican presidential primary.
“Obviously, Governor DeSantis was my favorite candidate in the race. I think he would have made the best president of all the candidates who are in the race,” began Shapiro in a video of himself he posted on X (formerly Twitter). “And obviously the Republican voting base wants Donald Trump. And you know what? That’s the Republican voting base’s prerogative.”
He continued:
I think there will be a future for Ron DeSantis in the movement. I think there will be another time for Governor DeSantis — again, best governor in the country. With that said, this primary race, as I said after Iowa, is over, it remains over. New Hampshire will be won by Donald Trump. It’s time for the party coalesced around the guy who is going to beat Joe Biden. And that guy is Donald Trump.
My reaction to DeSantis dropping out of the race pic.twitter.com/5jm6dveso2
— Ben Shapiro (@benshapiro) January 22, 2024
The Daily Wire personality has been critical of Trump and his boosters in the media throughout the primary cycle.
In an interview with DeSantis last Summer, Shapiro blasted Trump for “suggesting that Andrew Cuomo had done a better job in New York” during the Covid-19 pandemic than DeSantis had done in Florida.
“Andrew Cuomo, of course, did not do a better job. He’s [Trump’s] been citing statistics using sort of absolute numbers of people who died per state as opposed to looking at population adjusted, which of course seems deeply dishonest — just on a statistical level,” argued Shapiro at the time.
Shapiro is following the lead of DeSantis himself, who endorsed Trump on Sunday after enduring a year and change of smears hurled at him by the former president.
“He [Trump] has my endorsement because we can’t go back to the old Republican guard of yesteryear, a repackaged form of warmed-over corporatism that Nikki Haley represents,” declared DeSantis in a video announcing the end of his campaign. “The days of putting Americans last, of kowtowing to large corporations, of caving to woke ideology, are over.”
