Daily Wire Editor Emeritus Ben Shapiro, along with hosts Matt Walsh, Andrew Klavan, and company co-founder Jeremy Boreing discussed the state of the 2024 presidential election before President Joe Biden gave his State of the Union address on Thursday.
During the Daily Wire “Backstage” episode, the hosts argued that former President Donald Trump is the clear moderate in the race while Biden has moved to the radical Left.
“[Biden] came into office as a supposed moderate. He was somebody who was going to unify the country and govern from the center-Left,” Shapiro said. “He won the entire race on the basis of not being Bernie Sanders on the one hand and not being Donald Trump on the other, and so he enters office and that’s sort of the basis of his entire administration, and very quickly he shifts into ‘I’m going to be FDR.’ And that means I’m going to swivel to the radical Left, and I’m going to make myself subject to every single thing the radical Left wants of me.”
The Daily Wire editor emeritus went on to say that Biden’s shift to the Left has created a problem for the president and his campaign heading into the 2024 election.
“The reason he’s doing poorly in the polls is not just that his base is unenthused by him — it’s because independents do not like him, moderates do not like him,” Shapiro said, adding, “Joe Biden is not the moderate in this race. Donald Trump is the moderate in this race.”
“That’s right,” Klavan chimed in.
Shapiro added that Trump has taken a more middle-of-the-road approach on cultural issues such as abortion, while Biden has moved to the Left.
“On abortion, for example, [Trump] might argue for a 16-week federal abortion ban, which is way too late for any of us [Daily Wire hosts], but for the sort of median American voter that’s a lot closer than Joe Biden who’s saying ‘abortion up until the point of birth.'”
"Joe Biden is not the moderate in this race. Donald Trump is the moderate." – @benshapiro and the Daily Wire crew discuss the #SOTU and the 2024 election on Backstage. pic.twitter.com/oaw17DMN2k
— Daily Wire (@realDailyWire) March 8, 2024
Biden made abortion one of the top issues of his “State of the Union” address, promising to “restore Roe v. Wade as the law of the land again” if Americans elect pro-abortion lawmakers to Congress. The president said conservatives who support pro-life laws “have no clue about the power of women in America,” pointing to elections in 2022 and 2023 when abortion was on the ballot.
“About 48% of Americans, according to Gallup, support a 16-week abortion ban,” Shapiro said. “Only 24% of Americans want abortion all the way up until birth; the rest want more restrictions than that.”