What to Make of Ben Shapiro’s Sudden Desire to Pardon Derek Chauvin

There’s something strange brewing on the horizon.

In an unexpected turn of events, Daily Wire Editor Emeritus Ben Shapiro urged President Donald Trump to pardon former police officer Derek Chauvin, who was convicted of killing George Floyd in 2021, at the end of his podcast video episode on March 4, 2025.

Shapiro contended that Chauvin’s conviction was unjust and described it as a “defining achievement of the woke movement in American politics” that weakened the U.S.’s system of impartial justice. He claimed that external pressures, including media influence and statements from elected officials, compromised the fairness of Chauvin’s trial, leading to a politically-motivated verdict.

“Derek Chauvin, for large segments of even the tape that was shown [at his trial], had his knee on George Floyd’s shoulder or back, not on his neck,” Shapiro added. “The autopsy of George Floyd showed that he had no damage to his trachea, that probably George Floyd died of excited delirium. There were no accusations, even at trial, that Derek Chauvin had committed a hate crime against George Floyd or that he targeted George Floyd because of his race.”

In addition to Shapiro making his case for Donald Trump to pardon Chauvin, The Daily Wire launched the website, pardonderek.com where people can sign a petition pushing Trump to pardon Chauvin of all his federal charges.

For those with short-term memory, Shapiro’s recent defense of Chauvin lies in stark contrast to a video he released on May 28, 2020 right after Floyd’s death. In the video, Shapiro criticized Chauvin for kneeling on Floyd’s neck for “four consecutive minutes.” He added that the incident was “truly disturbing and profoundly wrong,” pushing for Chauvin to be prosecuted “to the fullest extent of the law” and “be incarcerated.” In a separate column he published on June 3, 2020, Shapiro highlighted that Floyd’s alleged death at the hands of Chauvin should motivate Americans to “rally” against such “obvious evil.”

What could be prompting Shapiro’s 180 on pardoning Chauvin? This author believes Shapiro’s change of opinion is a microcosm of the slight pivot organized Jewry has made to the right since the Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023 attacks against Israel. There is no “vibe shift” or a genuine move to the nationalist right by Jewish interest groups. Instead, organized Jewry has temporarily shifted its resources from fomenting anti-White hate in the United States to going all out in defense of Israel and even gearing up for a potential war against Israel’s archenemy in Iran.

For such endeavors, Jews must win the support of Whites — the only constituency capable of fighting those wars. Republican-controlled state governments have already rolled back diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs to get Whites to buy into an increasingly discredited political system.  And what better way to sweeten the deal for Whites by throwing them another bone in a Derek Chauvin pardon?

Organized Jewry distancing themselves from their Black golems is not unprecedented. The excesses of the Civil Rights Revolution prompted the likes of Irving Kristol to become fixtures of the neoconservative movement that infiltrated both major parties. Neoconservatives were mugged by the reality of the New Left spawning Black nationalist groups critical of Israel and the broader Jewish community. For certain Jewish factions, this was an unacceptable scenario and motivated them to have all their bases covered by making inroads with the ascendant conservative movement at the time.

Indeed, Jews in the United States are still a reliable voting bloc for the Democratic Party. According to a poll carried out by the Jewish Electorate Institute, Jews pulled the lever for failed presidential candidate Kamala Harris by a decisive 71 percent to 16 percent margin in the 2024 presidential election cycle. Though it should be noted that institutional Jewish money and NGOs have made a concerted effort to woo the right post-October 7. That’s part of the juggling act Jews must perform in a country where they’re not only a visible minority but also surrounded by large swathes of gentiles who could turn on them at any second.

At the end of the day, Whites constitute a majority — albeit a dwindling majority — of the country’s voting population. Jews must still account for that when executing their stratagems to undermine their host nations.

As for Chauvin’s fate, he should be pardoned on the merits that he was unjustly persecuted by the corporate media and anti-White judicial system. But that does not mean the likes of Ben Shapiro should be automatically trusted for supporting a commonsense act of justice.

White Europeans are better served by looking beyond the small olive branches that Jews in the conservative movement extend to them and start taking concrete steps to re-assert sovereignty over the land of their forebears. Getting corralled back into the plantation of Jewish-dominated, Israel-centered, neoconservative politics is not an option.