WATCH: Ben Shapiro explains why he will vote for Trump in 2020 after not voting in 2016

Shapiro, who is listed by The Hill as being a Republican who had vowed to "never back Trump, broke down his three key reasons for his change of heart.

First, said Shapiro, is that he was wrong about Trump on policy, having previously worried that he would not govern conservatively. Second, he said that while he "wasn't really wrong about Trump's character," he believes that "whatever damage he was going to do has already been done," and third, that the Democrats "have lost their f—king minds."

October 19, 2020

"I thought he would not be conservative in his governance—I was just wrong on that," said Shapiro.

Shapiro highlighted Trump's conservative record, including cuts to regulation, reduction in man-hours dedicated to dealing with regulation, his appointment of originalist judges, tax cuts, low unemployment rates, putting pro-lifers in the executive branch, dropping out of the Paris Accord, dropping out of the Iran deal, "crushing ISIS" and killing Qassem Soleimani and Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, and being the "first president in [his] lifetime to not start any new wars."

"He moved the American embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, he brokered the first meaningful peace deals in three decades, he cracked down on china in unprecedented ways, he's resisted using the federal government to control everybody's life during [the pandemic]... Trump restored due process on college campuses... He's not actually threatened the institutions... He has not threatened the press, the legislature, he's not used the executive branch in nearly as powerful ways as Barack Obama did," said Shapiro.

"Trump has governed overall in a far more conservative fashion than [George W. Bush.]"

https://www.youtube.com/embed/FzvMrnY7fFs?feature=oembed

A video from 2016 titled 'Why Conservatives Should Never Vote for Donald Trump'

Shapiro said it was "deeply important" for conservatives to criticize Trump when he "does something bad," though circumstances have changed enough from 2016 to get his vote.

"2020 is not 2016. Everything that is bad about Trump is already apart of the system... Me avoiding voting for him in 2020 doesn't change that."

Third, and "most importantly" to Shapiro, is that the Democrats have "lost their f—king minds.

"Some members of the mainstream media, members of our bureaucracy, some members of academia, these people must not be allowed the mechanisms of power," said Shapiro. "Our most crucial institutions, from corporate America to the universities have been corrupted top to bottom. And giving them more power over your lives? Huuuge mistake."

"Today's Democratic Party is not even the Democratic Party of Barrack Obama, circa 2008. Barrack Obama circa 2008 supported traditional marriage, was not openly in favour of packing the court or getting rid of the filibuster. He used to speak about personal responsibility sometimes. All of this is just gone. The Democratic Party is now the party of radicalism," Shapiro continued.

In 2018 Shapiro said that it would be "hard not to vote for him" if he "continued on a similar trajectory" as what he had displayed in his first two years in office.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/iaru60Kups8?feature=oembed