Josh Shapiro says Trump failed the ‘morality test’ in his response to Kirk assassination

By Edward-Isaac Dovere, CNN

(CNN) — Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro on Tuesday ripped President Donald Trump as having failed both 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 told reporters in Pittsburgh following a speech on political violence.

Shapiro, a contender to be Kamala Harris’ running mate last year and a potential 2028 presidential candidate, criticized Trump for repeatedly blaming violence on the “radical left” without noting acts of violence committed by right-wing actors.

“Doing that,” Shapiro said 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 five months after an assailant set fire to the Pennsylvania governor’s mansion hours after Shapiro and extended family celebrated a Passover seder there.

The answer to political violence, Shapiro said Tuesday, must come from government doing more to make a positive difference in people’s lives but also from being more attuned to when “righteous frustration is taken advantage of to foment hate” online.

“What starts with cowardly keystrokes,” Shapiro lamented, “often ends with a trigger being pulled in our communities.”

Shapiro recalled both the terror of being woken up by state troopers after the April attack and the support he felt from the community. Most of his family had been asleep in a different part of the building.

“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 said.

Shapiro linked that night to instances of political violence including Kirk’s death, 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 said, “not only does it seek to injure, maim or kill — it seeks to intimidate and terrorize and silence,” adding, “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 introduced 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 said.

After the attack in Harrisburg, Shapiro recalled, the chaplain of a local fire department gave him a handwritten prayer drawn from a passage of the Book of Numbers. What the man didn’t know, Shapiro said, is that they were the same words of a prayer he recites every night in Hebrew with his hand on the head of his children, the words of which he briefly spoke himself.

People may not agree on politics or have similar lives, Shapiro said, but what has been lost for too many is their ability to find their common ground.

In that, Shapiro invoked a lesson from western Pennsylvania native Fred Rogers, better known as the famous children’s broadcaster Mister Rogers: Look for the helpers.

“I believe that we are stronger than hate,” Shapiro said. “But I also believe in America that this work doesn’t fall to others. It falls to each and every one of us.”

The-CNN-Wire
™ & © 2025 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.