My thoughts also. Only Trump had a “chance” to beat Hillary because of his pop culture TV show, which made his name known to everyone—the masses. Most people have no idea who a Ted Cruz is—esp. younger people and the ignorant (sadly—most people nowadays). Ignorance is vice and it will destroy our nation if we don’t take back the minds of children and put in a truly “educational” system, instead of the evil mass group-think brainwashing system we have today.
We needed an Alpha male after the decades of emasculate males. People were starved for a real masculine (mature) male personality. Males have been so feminized since the 60s, it has warped generations, so they are so stupid they believe that males and females are interchangeable. They aren’t and our gut recognizes it, when we see the power and control ooze out of Trump—a mature male.
Shapiro is quite young and wisdom only comes with age, so you should give him a break. He is quite wise for his age compared to most. His grasp of Natural Law (common sense) is pretty good, though his dogma gets in the way at times. I’ve seen him praise some Trump moves though, and he was very fair in his commentary at times. No one is perfect.
My reasoning was more to his ability to counter the press and take them out of the equation many many times. All of the others would have wilted under pressure from the press. He had name recognition long before his reality TV show, however, that did reinforce his name recognition. I personally never watched The Apprentice. While I liked what Trump was saying at first, I had dismissed him because I didn't really think he was serious. But when I started seeing him do battle with the press I started to have a very different take on him.
You are right, no one is perfect, but until Ben becomes real I will continue to ignore him. What you see is him aping his mentors, of whom most are NeverTrumpers neo-cons. When he can start grasping the bigger picture will he begin to earn back my respect for him. That has no happened yet, and might never happen in my lifetime. We shall see. I read what he says, but I reject the majority of it.