Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro has said Americans must “universally condemn political violence, no matter where it is” after the killing of rightwing youth organizer Charlie Kirk as well as a deadly shootout in Shapiro’s state that left three police officers dead and two others injured.
Hours before Kirk’s funeral, Shapiro said that the nation stands at an “inflection point” and urged Americans to choose shared values over division, pointing to the solidarity shown by Pennsylvanians in the aftermath of the officers’ killings in York county last week.
“I think we’re at an inflection point as a nation, and I think we can go in a number of different ways,” Shapiro told moderator Kristen Welker on NBC News’s Meet the Press. “I hope we go the direction of healing, of bringing people together, of trying to find our commonalities – not just focus on our differences.”
Shapiro told Welker about his own recent experience with political violence: when his gubernatorial mansion was firebombed in April, an act that authorities suspect was carried out by a man unhappy with Shapiro’s support of Israel amid the Israeli war on Gaza.
Shapiro also referenced the murder of Minnesota state house speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark, in June. Authorities charged a man described by friends as right-leaning – and who had previously registered as a Republican in another state – with the Hortmans’ killings.
While Shapiro said he didn’t want to equate the gubernatorial’s mansion’s firebombing with the killing of Kirk and the Hortmans, he said, “Political violence leaves scars.”
Addressing arguments that criticism of political opponents may fuel violence, Shapiro pointed to longstanding US supreme court rulings that distinguish protected political speech from illicit incitement to violence.
He said most political speech – even if offensive, disliked or hateful – is legal and protected.
“There is a big difference,” Shapiro said.
The attack on the governor’s mansion took place in April, hours after Shapiro, his wife, their four children, two dogs and another family had celebrated Passover in one of the rooms that sustained damage in the blaze.
During Sunday’s interview, the governor criticized Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s leadership and called for an end to the war in Gaza, saying “the suffering needs to stop” while adding that Hamas needed to be out of power as well.
Welker also asked Shapiro to comment on criticism about in a new memoir by Kamala Harris on her unsuccessful run for the White House against Donald Trump in 2024. As Welker put it, the book – 107 Days – portrayed him as losing out on the chance to be Harris’s running mate because he was more “focused” on defining his role than helping her defeat Trump as her “number two”.
“The only thing I was focused on was working my tail off to deny Donald Trump a second [presidency],” said Shapiro, who was mum about whether he would run for the White House in 2028, as many anticipate that he may.
“At the end of the day, this was a choice voters had between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump. They made their choice.”
