Daily Wire Editor Emeritus Ben Shapiro offered his thoughts Monday after learning that Governor Ron Desantis (R-FL) had bowed out of the 2024 presidential race – and had endorsed former President Donald Trump in the process.
Shapiro, who was in Poland with X and Tesla CEO Elon Musk for a tour of the infamous Nazi concentration camps Auschwitz and Birkenau, took a brief moment to share his thoughts in a video posted to X.
WATCH:
My reaction to DeSantis dropping out of the race pic.twitter.com/5jm6dveso2
— Ben Shapiro (@benshapiro) January 22, 2024
“Well, folks, I’m here in Poland, I was visiting Auschwitz with Elon Musk today,” Shapiro began, noting that he had not had time earlier to respond to Sunday afternoon’s breaking news that DeSantis was exiting the race.
“Obviously, Governor DeSantis was my favorite candidate in the race,” Shapiro continued. “I think he would have made the best president of all the candidates who are in the race, and obviously, the Republican voting base wants Donald Trump. And you know what? That’s the Republican voting base’s prerogative.”
Shapiro went on to say that he certainly believed there would be “a future for Ron DeSantis” and added, “I think there will be another time for Ron DeSantis again. Best Governor in the country.”
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“With that said, this primary race — as I said after Iowa – is over,” Shapiro concluded. “It remains over. New Hampshire will be won by Donald Trump. It’s time for the party to coalesce around the guy who is going to beat Joe Biden — and that guy is Donald Trump.”
Shapiro made a similar statement shortly after the results came in from the Iowa caucuses – which Trump won handily with 51% of the vote, followed by DeSantis with 21% and former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley with 19%.
“Donald Trump is so far out ahead that the rest of the field can’t even see him. This is Secretariat against the rest of the field in the 1973 Belmont Stakes,” he said at the time. “It means that, de facto, Trump is the nominee. If no one can challenge him in Iowa, if nobody really has a chance of challenging him based on the momentum going into New Hampshire, if nobody has a challenge for him in South Carolina, then all you can say at this point is that he is preparing for the general election against Joe Biden.”