Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro on Tuesday ripped President Donald Trump as having failed each a “leadership test” and a “morality test” after Charlie Kirk’s assassination.
“It should not be hard to stand up to some people who are celebrating the killing of Charlie Kirk and say, ‘That’s wrong,’ and it should not be hard to stand up to people who are calling for vengeance and revenge in the wake of the killing of Charlie Kirk and say, ‘That’s not OK either.’ I don’t care if it’s coming from the left or the right,” the Democratic governor advised reporters in Pittsburgh following a speech on political violence.
Shapiro, a contender to be Kamala Harris’ working mate final 12 months and a possible 2028 presidential candidate, criticized Trump for repeatedly blaming violence on the “radical left” with out noting acts of violence dedicated by right-wing actors.
“Doing that,” Shapiro stated in his remarks, “only further divides us and it makes it harder to heal. There are some who will hear that selective condemnation and take it as a permission to commit more violence, so long as it suits their narrative or only targets the other side.”
Shapiro appeared at a gathering of the group Eradicate Hate, which fights antisemitism, days after Kirk’s assassination and 5 months after an assailant set fire to the Pennsylvania governor’s mansion hours after Shapiro and prolonged household celebrated a Passover seder there.
The reply to political violence, Shapiro stated Tuesday, should come from authorities doing extra to make a optimistic distinction in individuals’s lives but additionally from being extra attuned to when “righteous frustration is taken advantage of to foment hate” on-line.
“What starts with cowardly keystrokes,” Shapiro lamented, “often ends with a trigger being pulled in our communities.”
Shapiro recalled each the terror of being woken up by state troopers after the April assault and the help he felt from the group. Most of his household had been asleep in a unique a part of the constructing.
“That doesn’t mean that the attack hasn’t left emotional scars. I can attest to that — especially as a father: a father of four children, knowing that my life choices put them at risk,” Shapiro stated.
Shapiro linked that night time to cases of political violence together with Kirk’s loss of life, the assassination attempt on Trump last year in Pennsylvania, the killing of a health care CEO in Manhattan, and the slayings of Minnesota state Rep. Melissa Hortman and her husband in June.
About political violence, Shapiro stated, “not only does it seek to injure, maim or kill — it seeks to intimidate and terrorize and silence,” including, “This type of violence has no place in our society, regardless of what motivates it or who pulls the trigger, who throws the Molotov cocktail or who wields the weapon.”
That thought was shared by Tom Corbett, a former Republican governor of Pennsylvania who launched Shapiro.
“Preventing hate-fueled violence is not a partisan issue. It is one that requires all of us, around this country and around this world, to come together,” he stated.
After the assault in Harrisburg, Shapiro recalled, the chaplain of an area hearth division gave him a handwritten prayer drawn from a passage of the Book of Numbers. What the man didn’t know, Shapiro stated, is that they have been the similar phrases of a prayer he recites each night time in Hebrew with his hand on the head of his youngsters, the phrases of which he briefly spoke himself.
People might not agree on politics or have related lives, Shapiro stated, however what has been misplaced for too many is their capacity to discover their frequent floor.
In that, Shapiro invoked a lesson from western Pennsylvania native Fred Rogers, higher referred to as the well-known youngsters’s broadcaster Mister Rogers: Look for the helpers.
“I believe that we are stronger than hate,” Shapiro stated. “But I also believe in America that this work doesn’t fall to others. It falls to each and every one of us.”