On Monday’s episode of “The Ben Shapiro Show,” the Daily Wire editor-in-chief talks about Beto O’Rourke dropping out of the presidential race, and reads the failed presidential candidate’s goodbye letter in his best Beto impression voice. Video and partial transcript below:
Before we bid a fond farewell to Beto, we have to read his thank you note. He’s written a long thank you note — from the road, brah — and we would be remiss if we did not pay this final tribute to Beto. He says,
Our campaign has been about seeing clearly, speaking honestly and acting decisively in the best interest of America.
Was it though? Was it not like you just kind of jet-setting around, being useless, and saying crazy stuff that you then had to backtrack with and not backtrack?
Though it is difficult to accept, it is clear to me now that this campaign does not have the means to move forward successfully. My service to the country will not be as a candidate or as the nominee. Acknowledging this now is in the best interests of those in the campaign; it is in the best interests of this party. As we seek to unify around a nominee, it is in the best interests of the country.
Then, he says that it was all about him fighting. This campaign was about him fighting fear by threatening to take away your gun and destroy your church. He says,
I decided to run for president because I believed I could help bring a divided country together in common cause to confront the greatest set of challenges we’ve ever faced.
It’s always funny to me when people say things like we’re confronting the greatest set of challenges we’ve ever faced. Our unemployment rate is 3.6%. During the Great Depression, our unemployment rate was like 20%. We are not segregating our schools or our water fountains. We’re not having a civil war; we’re not having race riots against black people in Tulsa; we’re not having Vietnam War-era riots. Really? Like the biggest challenge our country has ever faced is a guy you don’t like being president because he says weird things on Twitter like that? That’s the Democrat pitch, he says.
I also knew that the most fundamental of [our challenges] is fear — the fear that Donald Trump wants us to feel about one another; the very real fear that too many in this country live under; and the fear we sometimes feel when it comes to doing the right thing, especially when it runs counter to what is politically convenient or popular. I knew, and I still know, that we can reject and overcome those fears and choose instead to be defined by our ambitions and our ability to achieve them.
Then, he kinda flicks his locks out of his face and continues,
We should be proud of what we fought for and what we will what we were able to achieve.
What you were able to achieve is one of the worst presidential campaigns in modern American history. You started off at near double digits, and you ended before Cory Booker’s campaign ended. Like Tulsi Gabbard, Amy Klobuchar is still running and Beto is out, which is not what you would have actually predicted. Again, that’s because Beto was so concerned with earning the love of the media that he forgot that that was not a thing that was going to happen, and that what made him popular in the first place was that he was campaigning as moderate.
[Beto] made the Pete Buttigieg mistake. Now, Buttigieg has recovered from his original mistakes. So Buttigieg’s original mistake, he came into the race, got all sorts of plaudits — was an interesting candidate. I, on this show, said that Pete Buttigieg was an interesting candidate, and then Buttigieg immediately flipped into the sort of far-left crazy town, [saying things like] all Christians are bad if they think that same sex marriage is morally a problem. He moved over there and immediately his support started to recede. Then he started attacking Warren and his support started to rise again.
Beto jumped into the race, and he was considered sort of a moderate alternative to Ted Cruz in Texas, and suddenly he was like [paraphrasing] “I’m taking all your guns.” I’m saying all the things Democratic voters want me to say, so that is — and it failed. It failed for him. Here’s the key. He says,
And at this moment of truth for our country, we laid bare the cost and consequence of Donald Trump: the rise in hate crimes…
By the way, the rise in hate crimes — [it’s] unclear whether there has actually been a dramatic spike in hate crimes. There are more reporting agencies, or the stats on that, are not clear at all.
…the terror attack in El Paso, the perversion of the Constitution, the diminished standing of the United States around the world. But we also made clear the common responsibility to confront him, to hold him accountable and ensure that he does not serve another term in office. Committing ourselves to this task, not as Democrats or Republicans, but as Americans first before we are anything else.
So, yeah, Beto is done. As I say, he can return back to eating — what was it? New Mexican dirt? After he lost to Ted Cruz, he literally went to New Mexico, picked up dirt, and ate it. So I guess now he’s going to move on to like Utah or something.
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