Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk praised Daily Wire editor emeritus Ben Shapiro Monday for his “willingness to speak out” on the flaws in the case against Derek Chauvin, the Minneapolis police officer who was found guilty of second degree murder for the death of George Floyd in 2020.
Shapiro joined Kirk on the former’s podcast Monday to speak about his push for President Donald Trump to pardon Chauvin.
“Ben, I want to compliment you for your willingness to speak out on this,” Kirk said. “Because it wasn’t just one injustice. This was the gateway drug towards mass anarchy in the streets and an unnecessary thousands of people dying on top of the baseline crime rate.”
Kirk then ceded the floor so Shapiro could make his case for pardoning Chauvin.
Shapiro began by pointing out that the narrative surrounding the entire case was false from the beginning.
“The narrative that surrounded the Floyd-Chauvin killing was the narrative that America was inherently racist. Now, those allegations were never actually made at trial. There was never any actual allegation made by prosecutors or by anyone that Derek Chauvin quote unquote ‘killed’ George Floyd because George Floyd was black. And yet that was the narrative that burst out all over the country, that systemic American policing is racist,” Shapiro said.
Kirk agreed with that assessment, noting that race-based initiatives such as The 1619 Project and Robin DiAngelo’s fame were widely popularized thanks in large part to this event. “We had police departments defunding the police – in fact, you can look at a material increase in crime, in both Minneapolis and across the country, because of this one incident.”
“Not just the riots. We saw murder rates, we saw arson, we saw carjackings, we saw widespread gang violence because of one incident,” Kirk added.
Kirk also noted that “political pressure in the medical examination process” caused people to ignore significant aspects of Floyd’s autopsy report, including the fact that fentanyl and methamphetamines were found in his system at the time of his death.
“I want everyone to internalize that,” Kirk said. “There was a willingness to reach a conclusion that America was racist.”
Shapiro went on to say that the way the media presented the case led to America having to undergo “a sort of racial cleansing process” which led to $2 billion in property damage, all of which was excused by the public and by mainstream media.
Shapiro also noted that facts about Floyd’s death all indicate evidence for a potential pardon. First, jurors have said they felt public pressure and were scared to come back with anything but a guilty verdict.
Shapiro told Kirk that no federal hate crime charges were ever filed.
The extended video version of the incident also offers new insights. Floyd began shouting about not being able to breathe when he was in the back of the police car and nowhere near Chauvin, potentially indicating that he was already having a medical issue before being taken out of the car.
He mentioned that the Minneapolis Police training procedure taught the method Chauvin used, which was admitted during the trial. “The autopsy and medical report suggest that … at best there’s certainly reasonable doubt that he died because of the suppression techniques specifically that Derek Chauvin was using,” Shapiro argued.
Ultimately, the Daily Wire co-founder concludes that the evidence does not match up with a second degree murder conviction.
Shapiro allows that the footage looks “ugly” at first, which is how most people felt when they saw the video clip. But, he adds, that doesn’t make Chauvin guilty of second degree murder. And it’s hard to argue that the former police officer had a fair trial or an impartial jury.
Policing is a rough and difficult job, Shapiro added, saying, “none of it looks good on tape.”
“You don’t have to believe that Derek Chauvin is ‘innocent’ to believe that he is not guilty,” Shapiro said.
“Just as I think that it is very important that President Trump, for example, pardon pro-lifers, because the image in the public mind that has been created by the legacy media for decades on end is that pro-lifers are violently protesting outside abortion clinics and therefore they have to be arrested. That’s not true, and so I think the pardon is important.”
Shapiro says you don’t have to agree with him on every aspect of the case to at least agree that Chauvin did not receive a fair trial and that the “major railroading” which occurred was not just for Chauvin, but also for the police as a whole and of America in general because “this turned into the launching point for a years-long effort to characterize America as deeply and irredeemably racist.”
Chauvin was sentenced to 22.5 years in prison for Floyd’s death. He had been facing up to 40 years after being convicted of second-degree murder, third-degree murder, and second-degree manslaughter. Under normal circumstances, he would have faced much less time, about 11 or 12 years behind bars.
The Daily Wire has launched a website, pardonderek.com, where people can sign a petition urging Trump to pardon Chauvin of his federal charges.
