Ben Shapiro shared a message of optimism at Turning Point USA’s America Fest 2024. Shapiro said while he’s been in a bad mood the past few years, he is in a “pretty good mood” right now. The “golden age of America,” he said, is just beginning.
“Now this is all happening because President Trump is a force, is a historic force, is the historic force of our age,” Shapiro said. “He was the man standing between the United States and stagnation and surrender and President Trump stood. And he was indicted, and he stood. And he was shot, and he stood. And America stood with him. We stood with him.”
Today’s America is divided between lions and scavengers, Shapiro said. Lions want to build things and are people who are productive. They believe they have the power to choose and to act in the world. They have God-given duties to family, community and country to be the best they can be.
“Lions believe that merit ought to triumph,” he said. “Scavengers have been in charge for a while.”
If you fail, scavengers believe it is probably someone else’s fault. They believe systems built on merit are broken and must be destroyed.
“They were on the rise for nearly four years,” Shapiro said. “And now, the scavengers are on the run. They’re in retreat.”
Shapiro’s hope is rooted in President Trump’s upcoming second term. He believes soon, the American Dream will be possible again.
While the other side is interested in punishing success, Shapiro said President Trump is a businessman and only cares about one thing – winning.
“And he cares about winning for the American people,” Shapiro said. “That means unleashing the power of free markets.”
Free markets are treated as something wrong in America, but Shapiro said they are merit, justice and innovation-based.
Scavengers, he said, believe it is the government’s job to establish “cosmic justice.” They believe the outcome should be the same for everyone, which Shapiro said is unjust, evil and tyranny. Free markets, he said, suggest the opposite and allow for people to rise or fail on their own merit.
“Nothing is owed to you, you’re not just given things in a free market,” he said. “Free markets are the opposite of socialism and stagnation that the Left likes to talk about. Socialists can turn gold into sand, they can turn prosperity into failure. Free markets turn sand almost literally into gold.”
All the elements that go into creating cell phones or Elon Musk’s rockets have existed on Earth since the beginning of time. But what changed was innovation. People were allowed to keep what they made, they were allowed to sell it, they were allowed to exchange it.
“These are the principles of freedom and liberty,” Shapiro said. “You can take the same sand that’s been on planet Earth for all of human existence and you can turn that into the super conductors that power the military equipment that powers the American military. You can do that because of free markets. And Donald Trump is going to make free markets great again.”
Trump’s foreign policy will also make America strong in the world again, Shapiro predicted. Trump utilizes the peace through strength strategy. In an interview, Trump told Shapiro that Vladimir Putin never invaded Ukraine because he told Putin that if he went into Ukraine, Trump would “bomb the (expletive) out of” Russia.
According to the story, Putin responded that Trump wouldn’t do that, but Trump responded, “Well, I might.”
“Then President Trump said quite correctly that if there is a 5 percent chance that that is going to happen, you don’t do the thing,” Shapiro said. “Joe Biden says things like, ‘Don’t,’ and then the rest of the world just does. Meanwhile President Trump says that and the rest of the world goes, ‘Oh, I don’t know, this could get ugly.’”
Shapiro said Trump’s foreign policy isn’t isolationism, but America First. This means America’s interests should be first. Second, America’s interests have to be “carefully collaborated” to what is happening. Third, all measures and means necessary to achieve America’s interests should be on the table when America’s interests are on the table.
“President Trump wants America’s allies to be strong enough to stand on their own,” Shapiro said. “President Trump wants to make sure America’s enemies are in retreat. President Trump wants American to win.”
Finally, Shapiro said that the American Dream has been perverted over the last few decades. The American Dream, he said, isn’t complicated. Elements of the American Dream include getting married, having kids, living in a community that worships the God that you love, building a business, giving to charity and standing up for your country.
“Yet we were told that the American Dream is weird,” Shapiro said. “That all of this was weird.”
Shapiro said he has never seen a bigger political mishap than when Democrats decided to declare Vice President-elect J.D. Vance as “weird.”
“The Vice President-elect is the least weird person I have ever personally met,” Shapiro said. “That is the most bizarre statement. They trotted out the human inflatable, Tim Walz, to flail his arms like he’s in a car lot off the side of a freeway and pretend that it was masculinity when apparently he has no bones in his wrist. And somehow, he wasn’t weird.”
Instead, America finds itself in the middle of a “normie revolution.”
“Because it turns out, a lot of us are normies,” Shapiro said. “A lot of just want a quiet, good life where we build things and we get to engage in the greatest economy in the history of the world. And we get to live secure in our own place of residence where we don’t have to worry about walking out onto the street and getting assaulted by someone. These are all very normal desires and very normal dreams. And that’s the American Dream.”
Shapiro’s good mood is the result of us winning. However, he cautioned winning requires constant work and reflection of whether we’re good at this or if everyone else is just not very good.
“Now, let’s be real, the other guys are super crappy at this,” he said. “I think the question we have to ask ourselves is how do we retain our momentum. The answer is, we do the right things. We do all the things that President Trump has already promised he is going to do.”
In 2016, Shapiro did not vote for either Trump or Hillary Clinton. In 2020, Shapiro backed Trump. In 2024, he supported him, donated, fundraised, campaigned and did a number of things for Trump.
“If we back him and he does the right things, then he is totally correct, America will be great again,” Shapiro said. “A new golden age is just beginning.”
