Ben Shapiro: “When the president said deport all the illegal immigrants, I never thought that he meant that literally”
“I don't think anyone thought that he meant that literally because it was never going to happen”
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From the November 18, 2025, edition of The Daily Wire's The Ben Shapiro Show
BEN SHAPIRO (HOST): I mean, one of the things here — it's just incredible. Democrats are gonna continue to label the American people racist and sexist and all the rest even though President Trump won huge numbers of women, huge numbers of minorities.
Now, that doesn't mean those people are gonna stay in the Republican camp forever. And this is the problem for Republicans. When you look at the future, when you look at 2028, the question is not who can maintain Trump's coalition. Every politician must have their own coalition. That's just the way politics works. No one is going to inherit all of Trump's voters. They'll inherit a large portion of Trump's voters if they're Republican, but not all of them. And you need more votes than President Trump won in this last election to win the next election because the voter base grows in every single election by a few million votes.
And so the question is who can expand the coalition and how? That is the main thing that Republicans should be focused on when it comes to 2028 candidacies. Who can win? Who is capable of winning? Perhaps it's JD Vance. Maybe it's someone else. We don't know yet. Right? It's very, very early.
One bad indicator for Republicans, Harry Enton is pointing out that President Trump's poll numbers among Latinos have taken a serious nosedive. That is largely because of the coverage around immigration.
Again, when the president said deport all the illegal immigrants, I never thought that he meant that literally. I don't think anyone thought that he meant that literally because it was never going to happen. We weren't going to take 15 to 20 million illegal immigrants and simply deport them wholesale. What President Trump did that's popular when you break down his actual immigration policy, which is still one of his more popular policies, when you break down, what he's actually doing it's popular, but that's not the headline.