Once among the leading voices of the Never Trump movement, conservative commentator Ben Shapiro has finally done a full 180 on the issue of Donald Trump.
In an announcement on his podcast on Friday, the co-founder of The Daily Wire confirmed that he would be co-hosting a fundraiser for the presumed Republican nominee as part of an effort to get Joe Biden out of office.
Shapiro said he would have preferred to support Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis but, now that Trump was the nominee, he would "walk over broken glass" to vote for him.
"My calculus is very simple, America was better off under Donald Trump than it is under Joe Biden. At home, America was safer and more prosperous," he explained. "When Donald Trump was president, America was better off."
I’m co-hosting a fundraiser for Donald Trump next week. Here’s why.
— Ben Shapiro (@benshapiro) March 15, 2024
pic.twitter.com/K4vf2Tv4l5
Shapiro then proceeded to list all the aspects of American society that were better under Donald Trump, from the strength of the economy and the crackdown on illegal immigration to the lack of woke ideology across the federal government and his foreign policy successes.
He explained:
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 gonna 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 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. 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. America cannot afford another term of Joe Biden, or perhaps more realistically, a Kamala Harris term. Joe Biden is here to finish the job Barack Obama started of fundamentally transforming America into the image of the far-left. That cannot happen. 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.
Shapiro, who once penned a column entitled, 'I Will Never Vote For Donald Trump. Here’s Why,' previously voted for Trump in the 2020 presidential election after recognizing that he had governed as a conservative.
However, his willingness to host a fundraiser seems to indicate his total acceptance of Trump as both the presumptive nominee and leader of the Republican Party.
While Shapiro will go out to bat for Trump, the former vice president, Mike Pence, confirmed on Friday that he would not be endorsing Trump in this election cycle.
READ MORE: Mike Pence Makes Announcement About Whether He Will Endorse Donald Trump
"It should come as no surprise that I will not be endorsing Donald Trump this year," Pence said during an appearance on Fox News.
He continued, "I'm incredibly proud of the record of our administration. It was a conservative record that made America more prosperous, more secure and saw conservatives appointed to our courts in a more peaceful world."
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