Ben Shapiro's 'he's not racist, has the attention span of a gnat' defense of Trump slammed in 'white power' scandal
Conservative political commentator Ben Shapiro is being slammed over his defense of President Donald Trump retweeting a video which features a supporter of the president yelling "white power". The tweet showed footage of supporters and opponents of the president hurling abuse and swearing at one another.
In the retweet which has since been deleted, Trump thanked "the great people of The Villages" -- referring to the retirement community north-west of Orlando where the rally took place. "The Radical Left Do Nothing Democrats will Fall in the Fall. Corrupt Joe is shot. See you soon!!!," he wrote. The video included in the tweet that showed a Trump supporter in a golf cart raising a clenched fist and shouting "white power". He appeared to be responding to a protester calling him a racist and using profanities. Other anti-Trump protesters shouted "Nazi" and other accusations at the rally-goers.
White House spokesman Judd Deere said the president "did not hear the one statement made on the video" but saw "tremendous enthusiasm from his many supporters". The president has yet to condemn the use of the term, distance himself from the supporter, or apologize for sharing it with his 82 million Twitter followers.
In the June 29 edition of The Daily Wire's 'The Ben Shapiro Show' the host referred to the controversy saying that the uproar over the president's retweet is "reflective of a narrative that the left would like to push, which is that President Trump is a white supremacist."
Shapiro goes on to say that what actually is happened is instead something "that happens to a lot of people on Twitter". He said, "When you are bored, you just start retweeting things. And when you retweet things, you don't always watch the video all the way to the end. And President Trump, as we know, has the attention span of a gnat. Right? The President of the United States -- he literally will not read presidential briefings that are put on his desk. They have to put them in bullet point form and then he doesn't even read those. He will ask for those to be shortened. Again, the man is not famous for sitting there and reading tomes of Winston Churchill. Right?"
Shapiro guessed that when Trump saw a person with a Trump sign, "he just retweeted it". He asked, "Do you think that he really would intentionally retweet a video in which somebody is shouting 'white power', which is what happens in this video?" He explains that it is more likely that "the sound was off on his computer, he sees a person yelling with a Trump 2020 sticker on the front of the golf cart. Trump loves everybody who loves him, this is a simple fact of the matter. And so, he retweets the thing."
Many took to social media to slam Shapiro's weak defense of the president. One user wrote, "Ben Shapiro working his way through the excuses that Trump followers use after each atrocious statement: • He didn't say that. • He didn't mean to say that. • He was kidding/sarcastic. • It's not that bad that he said it. • Others have said worse." Another tweeted, "Donald Trump: re-tweets white power video from white supremacists Ben Shapiro: 'The left wants to push the narrative that Donald Trump is a white supremacist'. Me: I think Donald Trump is the one pushing that 'narrative'."
A user opined, "So even if Ben Shapiro is right and Trump had the sound off, what does it say about the President’s judgment that he’d retweet a video to 82.5 million followers w/o watching/hearing the content or thinking of the repercussions of that?" Another shared, "Ben Shapiro's defense of Trump's RT of a white power video: He has the attention span of a goldfish, he can't even read bullet points, he was bored and RTed random stuff, do you think he can watch a 25s video? The famous 'He's not racist, he's just a f***ing dumbass' defense."
One user joked, "Ben Shapiro is living proof that going to an Ivy League school doesn’t make you smart," while another wrote, "How could anyone be as stupid and short-sighted as Ben Shapiro?"