Trump got votes because he was a “giant pulsating middle finger,” the conservative pundit told World Israel News.
By Debbie Reiss, World Israel News
The left was about to “get it right in the mouth, as they should,” conservative media personality Ben Shapiro told World Israel News in an exclusive interview in Israel on Wednesday, blaming the left for declaring a “culture war.”
After Donald Trump won the election in 2016, the Democratic party moved so radically to the left and keeps moving the needle, Shapiro said, adding that the Democrats stand to lose both the House and Senate following November’s midterm elections.
“They started a transgender agenda which is such an insane proposition that if anybody would have said this to a mainstream Democrat in 2012, they literally would’ve laughed at you,” he said.
He expressed his hope that the Democratic Party would eventually go back to being pro-Israel.
Asked whether he thought attacking cultural issues like critical race theory and gender identity was a better strategy for the right than focusing on other key ticket items like inflation and gas, Shapiro was resolute.
“Yes, it’s a great strategy,” Shapiro said.
“The culture war that’s been declared by the Democrats is a huge mistake, and for the Republicans to neglect that would be an even bigger mistake,” he said.
He went on to say that contrary to popular opinion, the people who voted for Trump did not do so out of economic distress.
“People think that it was a bunch of economically distressed people from the middle of the country who had been losing their jobs because of globalization with China and so they reacted by voting for Trump,” he said. “Nobody there was voting for Trump because of his economic policy, nobody knows what his economic policy was.”
People vote for Trump, Shapiro said, because he’s “a giant pulsating middle finger to a bunch of cultural elite who believe they have a better way to live.”
“That better way to live,” he continued, “involves them looking down their nose at people who attend church regularly and at people who believe in traditional marriage and people who are pro-life on abortion issues, American exceptionalism and who tend to like the flag.”
Asked about Trump’s chances in the 2024 elections, Shapiro, once a Never Trumper who subsequently softened his stance, said the former president would need to massively dial down his rhetoric on the 2020 elections being rigged – which Shapiro does not believe was the case – in order to have a chance at winning.
“Enthusiasm for Trump is not nearly what it was a year and a half ago. That’s Trump’s fault,” he said. “He’s forgotten that Americans actually care about things that are not his grievances in 2020. His whole pitch in 2016 and 2020 is ‘they’re hitting me because they’re trying to hit you. I’m taking the bullet for you.’ And now it seems his pitch is ‘I want you to take the bullet for me.’”
Shapiro hailed Ron DeSantis as a “spectacular” potential candidate, saying he had a strong chance because the media has “made him their enemy” and that Republicans always like whoever the media attacks. “The media has a unique capacity to choose the Republican nominee,” the conservative commentator said.
According to Shapiro, Trump’s former envoy to the UN, Nikki Haley, whom he said he “love[s] as a person,” was ideally placed to become a candidate but did herself a disservice by coming out against Trump following the Jan 6 riots, losing a large portion of her base.
Biden remained the only viable Democratic nominee, Shapiro asserted.
“They will prop him up ‘Weekend at Bernie’-style on a gurney and trot him around if they can,” Shapiro quipped, referencing the 1980s cult classic in which the eponymous hero’s corpse is dragged around to make it appear as if he’s still alive.
He called Biden an “idiot” who went to Saudi Arabia and undermined his own climate policy. “He somehow wanted to signal that fist-bumping is less intimate than a handshake, which is ridiculous.”
Nevertheless, said Shapiro, no matter how much the Democrats dislike Biden, they have to stick with him in 2024. “The alternative is essentially blood in the streets,” he said.
The only other person the Democrats could run, according to Shapiro, is Michelle Obama, and she would be a “truly dangerous” option for Republicans.
“She’s very, very popular. I think she’s extremely radical but she’s done a very good job of moderating her image,” he said.
Addressing an audience of thousands Wednesday evening at a sold-out event in Tel Aviv – co-organized by the Tel Aviv International Salon, Israel’s largest speakers forum, the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), and conservative publishers Sella Meir and Shibolet Press – Shapiro said that the U.S. and Israel could learn from one another.
“Our countries have something profound and vital in common; they are both gifts from G-d, blessed by him, founded in liberty, consecrated to the idea that he is present in history and that he guides history towards his ends,” he said.
Israel could learn from the U.S. about better regulatory and bureaucratic processes, noting that building a home takes months in the U.S. and years in Israel. Israel would also do well to borrow from the American system of appointing Supreme Court justices and strike down its self-appointed judicial branch that sees legal Knesset acts overturned. Finally, Shapiro said, the Israeli workforce should be de-unionized.
The U.S., Shapiro said, could learn from Israel about nationhood.
“America has one major thing it can learn from Israel: that a nation-state must have, at its heart, a nation,” he said. “And what that really means is that America has to learn from Israel the necessity of common history, common culture and common destiny.
According to Shapiro, the U.S. has a “special history and a special purpose,” and has spread freedom and prosperity to all corners of the world.
But now, “that history and purpose are being purposefully undermined by people who despise what America stands for and who wish to substitute utopias of their own for [the] covenantal destiny America represents.”
“It’s not a coincidence that those who oppose American exceptionalism also oppose Israel,” he said.
Shapiro told World Israel News his predictions for the Israeli elections (Benjamin Netanyahu will win), his thoughts on President Joe Biden’s visit to Israel (he’s an “idiot who’s very, very bad at this”), and Chinese investments in the Jewish state (“they’re not a trustworthy ally but Israel needs to pursue its national interests”).
Asked by an audience member what his solution is for solving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Shapiro responded: “The Palestinian Authority is a terrorist group, Hamas is a terrorist group, Islamic Jihad is a terrorist group, and negotiating with a terrorist group will never work.”