Daily Wire editor emeritus Ben Shapiro principally values a habit of telling the truth in any leader of the Republican Party.
Shapiro spoke about what he values in GOP politicians in an interview with The Daily Wire on the sidelines of the Turning Point USA AmericaFest conference that ended on Sunday.
“The number one thing that I would look for from any Republican leader at this point is simply telling the truth,” said Shapiro after he was asked a question on the future of Republican politics.
“I think the president has a habit of doing this in sort of pithy, short versions,” Shapiro said of President Donald Trump.
“He has a capacity for saying unpopular truths, which is great. We need more conservative leaders saying things that are true, even if, in the short-term, they’re not quote-unquote coalitional,” he continued, “because, again, you’re going to need to break whatever is here and you need to rebuild it stronger, and the only way to do that is with some true leadership.”
Shapiro spoke on the main stage at AmericaFest on the opening night in a speech that generated headlines because of its bomb-throwing, but put forward a message on the importance of truth in politics.
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“Because victory — true victory — cannot be achieved without truth. Victory without truth is victory for a lie. And that is no victory at all. And unity without truth is no unity. It is merely solidarity in falsehood,” said Shapiro in a version of his speech posted on The Free Press.
In the interview, Shapiro said that the conservative movement has drifted away from a commitment to truth as more “clowns” have come into the movement.
“You have people who were not conservative, who have entered, who have brought their non-assimilated, non-conservatism into the conservative tent,” said Shapiro. “To sort of pretend that the leadership of the movement ought to be vested in people who are either brand new and don’t hold those principles or people who have abandoned the key principles that have upheld the conservative movement for the last several decades, I think, is an enormous error.”
“A movement without principle is not a movement at all. It’s an agglomeration of people who are following whoever happens to be the leader that day,” he said.
