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.
Next week I will be co-hosting a fundraiser for him.
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 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.
Ben Shapiro, who has been very critical of Donald Trump, especially in recent months,
has now declared that he will not only, support Donald Trump, but he'll do it
enthusiastically, in fact, go into his own finances and help support him financially.
And Shapiro is also holding a fundraiser for Donald Trump.
So that's really fascinating news, because
I get finding yourself in a position where you have two candidates you can't stand.
I'm in that position right now.
I'm not going to vote for either one of them.
Sorry. And, if I were goaded into or pressured
into supporting Biden, I wouldn't frame it in the way that Shapiro did there.
I wouldn't talk about walking over broken glass in order to support Biden.
I wouldn't talk about hosting a fundraiser to support Biden.
So, like, why is Shapiro going the extra mile on behalf of Donald Trump,
someone who he has said some pretty negative things about?
Yeah, I think it's super obvious. So he's trying to get attention.
I presumably both from his own audience, which I think is probably more relevant
here, but maybe even from investors, funders, I don't know, because once the
primary is over, it happens on both sides.
They circle the wagons. Right.
So a great example of this was, Ted Cruz does not endorse Donald Trump
in the 2016 RNC at the convention.
And then, the Mercers, which had given who had given him $13 million in the primary,
slammed the door in his face.
And once he was spurned by his donors, he immediately turned around
and endorsed Donald Trump and kissed his ass for the rest of the time.
So if you don't circle the wagons, there are consequences.
So and also but more likely it's his audience in this case.
But there's consequences from your audience, too.
If you don't kiss Trump's ass, they get super mad at you.
So it's not an accident that he's saying it in such a flamboyant way.
So, okay, I can see saying, hey, look, I hate Biden if you're a right winger like
Shapiro, so I'm going to vote for Trump. I can see that.
I hate Trump, and so I am definitely not going to vote for Trump.
And it might force me to vote for Biden. I get that.
But saying I'll walk over broken glass, I'll do a fundraiser for him.
I'll do anything for him.
He's basically saying, look at me, daddy, look at me.
And here I'm a good boy. Okay, congrats.
You're a good boy.
So let's go to one more clip of him explaining himself.
And then I have some pretty hilarious, criticisms that Shapiro had
against Donald Trump.
- Let's watch. - My calculus is really simple.
America was better off under Donald Trump than it is under Joe Biden.
At home, America was safer and more prosperous
when Donald Trump was president.
We didn't have a war in Ukraine when Donald Trump was president,
we didn't have China threatening imminent blockade of Taiwan.
When Donald Trump was president. America was better off.
Now, as I've said, I will always be honest with you about Donald Trump.
He was not my first choice in the primaries.
He's a deeply flawed human.
I've been open in my criticisms of Trump on both character and policy,
and I'm not going to stop criticizing Donald Trump when I disagree with him.
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.
But Donald Trump is the man standing between America and a second Joe Biden
terms and a second Joe Biden terms.
It 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.
And unlike in 2016, we don't have to guess at what a Trump administration will be.
We also don't have to guess what a Biden administration will be.
We know.
That's why I'm not just giving Donald Trump my vote.
I'm giving him my money because this election matters and Donald Trump must be
the next president of the United States.
Trump must be the next president of the United States.
So look, the one comment I'll make before I go to you, Jake, is I don't understand
why I don't like Biden, as you guys know.
Right. But I don't understand placing blame
for Putin's invasion of Ukraine on Biden.
Like what?
So I don't understand, like, how do you you could argue against the way
Biden has responded to the war in Ukraine, but be specific about what you.
You would critique there.
But blaming Biden for Putin invading Ukraine makes no sense to me.
Well, look, that's because they're not.
If, look, they're not doing an honest show.
They're doing advocacy.
So he's saying all these things that Biden, everything he did is wrong.
That's absurd.
So I got I don't have much love for Biden, but I can tell you what he did wrong.
And I can tell you what he did right. It's not that hard, right?
Even with Trump, I can tell you a couple of things he did right
and a lot of things he did wrong.
It's not that hard.
But for it, I think that the rest of the media, especially the talk shows,
view themselves as advocates rather than truth tellers.
So now he's turned into full time advocate.
Trump's the best on everything you're going to see.
He didn't always think that. And Biden's the worst.
No, the Taiwan and China problems existed for a long, long time.
I think that Trump exasperated him, exasperated them.
But so did, Nancy Pelosi by going to Taiwan needlessly.
Right.
And so Trump made the Iran situation way worse by getting out of the peace treaty
we had with him.
So they went back to developing uranium. It was a disaster.
But Ben's not going to tell you that because he's advocating for
a certain ideology, a certain candidate.
And look, guys, I held my nose and voted for Hillary Clinton and Joe
Biden in 2016 and 2020, despite all the terrible things they did in the primary,
despite how unfair and how establishment and I can't stand them, etc.
Because Trump was worse, and I get that.
But if I had come out and was like, I will walk over broken glass
for Hillary Clinton, that's insane.
Come on, come on. Right.
But our audience expects better.
And unfortunately, a lot of audiences out there don't expect better.
They just expect you to be subservient to whichever candidate that they favor.
So let's take a trip down memory lane.
Let's go to March of 2016, when Shapiro wrote an opinion piece
on Donald Trump and declared the following I will never vote for Donald Trump.
Here's why. Oops.
Okay, then the subheadline I will never vote for Donald Trump.
Ever. Oops.
That's I count two nevers and an ever.
Okay, now that's by by never what I really meant.
You see you see what had happened was I actually meant if it's convenient for me
and I think that my audience really wants it or someone else does, and I'm going to
make more money doing it, not only will I vote for him, I'll crawl over broken glass
and shot stab myself with it.
For my beloved Donald Trump.
I can't help but think of Peter Griffin like nursing his hurt knee as he's like
rocking back and forth, going, repeatedly.
Okay, like that's what I think of when I read the rest of Shapiro's 2016 piece.
He also wrote in it, quote, I will never vote for Donald Trump
because I stand with certain principles.
Do you?
I stand with small government and free markets and religious freedom
and personal responsibility.
Donald Trump stands against all of these things.
So at some point you did know what was true.
Let's go to graphic four.
I stand with the Constitution of the United States and its embedded
protection of my God given rights through governmental checks and balances.
Donald Trump does not. I stand with conservatism.
Donald Trump stands against it. I stand with Never Trump.
So things have changed.
During Trump's 2016 campaign, Shapiro called Trump a liar, an ignoramus
and someone with fewer brain cells than his average supporter has teeth.
He. He also complained that Trump used language
that appealed to the racist alt right.
And so what? What is really behind it?
I'm going to go back to what Jenks said and provide, some reinforcement.
Look, the Republican voters overwhelmingly support Trump.
The Daily Wire puts out content that's meant to appeal
to right wing voters in the country.
Right wing voters aren't going to like a show or a network of shows
that are too critical of the presidential candidate that they prefer.
So let's skip ahead to the sixth graphic here.
Election year traffic to right wing news websites.
That's what you're looking at with this chart.
And we highlighted Daily Wire for you.
So apparently between January of 2020 and January of 2024, the Daily Wire has had
a 73% decrease in their unique viewership.
In January of 2020, it was 4579 unique visitors.
January of 2024 1248.
So look, I don't know if viewership is what's really pushing,
Shapiro to back someone that he very clearly does not like.
But look, again, it's one thing to back Trump because you look at the two options.
And as a conservative Republican, Trump makes more sense for you.
But again, the flamboyant, as Jenk put it, way in which Shapiro is doing this makes
me think there's more behind this than just choosing the lesser of two evils.
Yeah.
I can't help it. Ferris showing America.
It's probably not because he's lost viewers because of his views on Trump.
It's more likely because Facebook took the power of links away.
And Daily Wire was a huge on Facebook.
Once Facebook de-emphasized news, all those outlets, had huge drops.
Fair is fair. Okay.
But Ben Shapiro, when he criticized Donald Trump, takes a lot of heat for it.
He does.
And he does say that he admits that. Right.
So that phenomenon is real.
It's probably just not shown in those exact numbers.
Okay.
And finally, to quote Princess Bride when he says never, I do not think
it means what you think it means.
Thanks for watching.
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