Political commentator Ben Shapiro is facing criticism after he defended President Donald Trump retweeting a video in which one of his supporters yelled “white power.” Speaking during Monday’s The Ben Shapiro Show, Shapiro suggested that “the sound was off” on Trump’s computer when he retweeted the clip and said that the outrage sparked by the retweet is “reflective of a narrative that the left would like to push, which is that President Trump is a white supremacist.”
Shapiro went on to challenge people, asking, “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 added that the president likely saw “a person yelling with a Trump 2020 sticker on the front of the golf cart” and decided to retweet the video, according to MEAWW. He also said that “when you are bored, you just start retweeting things” and that “when you retweet things, you don’t always watch the video all the way to the end.”
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The controversy started Sunday when the president retweeted a video showing one of his supporters chanting “white power.” Taken at The Villages, a Florida retirement community, the video showed a verbal clash between Trump supporters and opponents, with a man chanting the racist phrase from his golf cart just moments into the clip, which Trump had shared with the caption, “Thank you to the great people of The Villages.” White House spokesman Judd Deere later suggested that the president “did not hear the one statement made on the video,” according to CNN.
Just as Trump’s retweet had, Shapiro’s defense of it sparked a fierce discussion on social media. Many pointed out that Shapiro’s case for Trump wasn’t necessarily a good reflection of the president. Keep scrolling to see what social media has to say.
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?
— Natasha Chandel (@Natasha_Chandel) June 29, 2020
Ben Shapiro working his way through the excuses that Trump followers use after each atrocious statement:
— JRehling (@JRehling) June 30, 2020
• 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.
Ben Shapiro’s entire position for the past three years has been that Donald Trump is too incompetent and ignorant to be racist. https://t.co/FTPWrgwmSC
— Cody Johnston (@drmistercody) June 29, 2020
It’s great how Ben Shapiro is trying to defend Trump by suggesting he had the sound off when he retweeted the white power video which is basically saying “He’s not racist, he’s just careless and stupid! Checkmate, libs!”
— The Volatile Mermaid (@OhNoSheTwitnt) June 30, 2020
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?
— Nico COVID Haircut XW (@Nicoxw1) June 30, 2020
The famous “He’s not racist, he’s just a fucking dumbass” defense.
I love that the preface to excusing Trump involves declaring that he has no attention span, doesn’t read his own briefings and is “bored”. Why that’s just the person we want making decisions that affect millions of lives in the middle of a pandemic, recession and race protests.
— The Civil Liberal (@cfthepodcast) June 29, 2020
And you can’t possibly expect the President of the United States to carefully evaluate every bit of content he promotes from the single most influential office in the entire world. So unreasonable! Like, he’d need a whole communications staff or something!
— Verity Pace 🌐 (@VerityPace) June 29, 2020
All this means is that the president doesn’t take the power of his platform seriously. Otherwise he would act responsibly regarding what voices he chooses to bolster
— john (@mostlyfornews) June 29, 2020
They’ve even given up on good lies. Disgraceful.
— Benjamin Perri (@benperriphoto) June 29, 2020
That’s not an excuse. Especially for doing something a sitting president shouldn’t be doing anyways.
— Tom T. Choi (@tomtchoi) June 30, 2020
@benshapiro head of Trump’s Department of Excuses.
— Mark Stern (@mfstern) June 29, 2020
There’s no excuse for the Leader of the Free World to retweet a video that he hasn’t listened to. Not that ANYONE believes he didn’t!
— Sassy T (@Sassyt1274) June 29, 2020
Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that Shapiro is 100 percent correct here.
— IowaScribe (@IowaScribe) June 29, 2020
That means we have a President who just blindly re-tweets crap, with no idea what that crap is.
If my kids had done that, their screens would’ve been taken away from them. It’s irresponsible.
As if that is a valid excuse. He’s the fricking president of the USA! He should know better.
— ladydi80 (@ladydi1980) June 29, 2020
