With President Donald Trump more than a year into his second term, one of the loudest voices of the MAGA movement is now admitting that conditions for Americans may continue to worsen well beyond where they were during former President Joe Biden's administration.
In a recent interview with the New Yorker, Shapiro — who is a co-founder of far-right news outlet Daily Wire — told the outlet's David Remnick that while he agreed with many of Trump's policies, he was cautious about the state of America with Trump in the White House. When Remnick asked Shapiro if he felt Trump was "honest," Shapiro gave a cagey answer, saying: "In some ways yes and in some ways no," and pointed to one example of Trump getting foreign investment in a cryptocurrency company owned by his family.
"I raised red flags on my show, consistently, about how I thought this was wrong. If the name were Biden instead of Trump, people would be screaming bloody murder," Shapiro said. "And this was not beneficial to President Trump’s agenda, either. So, sure, that concerns me."
Shapiro also conceded that Trump would almost certainly pardon himself and members of his family before leaving office to ensure they would escape accountability for any criminal wrongdoing. He excused the hypothetical to Remnick, arguing that Biden pardoned his son, Hunter, prior to his term ending in 2025, and likened Trump to a "coroner" declaring America dead, rather than the "murderer."
"Now, that doesn’t mean that there’s not some of both, meaning that I think things can get worse under President Trump than they were heretofore, and I’m not going to deny that he’s done things that I think are bad and wrong," he said. "I was very critical of his rhetoric, for example, between the election of 2020 and January 6th."
Remnick pushed back, and pointed to Never Trump conservatives who had drawn a line in the sand regarding Trump following the January 6th attack. Shapiro noted that while he wouldn't Trump "marrying into [his] family," he still insisted that Trump had done a better job in his first term than Biden did between 2021 and 2025.
"The question to me is always one of iteration," he said. "Voting is one decision, but just because you vote for someone doesn’t mean that you support everything that they do."