In the wake of the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk a national dialog has taken place relative to how extreme rhetoric has contributed to the escalating trend of political violence.
Pennsylvania’s two leading elected Democrats, U.S. Senator John Fetterman and Governor Josh Shapiro, have both contributed to that dialog each condemning violence and calling for more civility in the political arena. They have denounced the Kirk assassination rightly saying there is no place for such violence in the American political arena.
Governor Josh Shapiro should hold the moral high ground on the issue. He himself was targeted for harm during a fire bombing that heavily damaged the Pennsylvania’s Governor’s Residence last Spring. Thankfully, neither the governor nor members of his family, who were at the residence at the time, were harmed.
Speaking at the Eradicate Hate Global Summit 2025 in Pittsburgh, Governor Shapiro joined with former Governor Tom Corbett in a bi-partisan condemnation of political violence. Shapiro, Corbett and other past Pennsylvania governors had appeared together following the attack on the Governor’s Residence to denounce the violence which appears to have been motivated by the antisemitic views of the alleged perpetrator.
But then Shapiro veered off course.
Shapiro, who is considered to be a likely candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2028 could not resist launching a political attack on President Donald Trump. He claimed without merit that the president and other top administration officials are “raising the chances of future political violence.”
He accused the president of “cherry picking” incidents of political violence to cast the Left in an unfavorable light. However, there is no need to cherry pick. From the Black Lives Matter riots of 2020 to the shooting of Congressman Steve Scalise, to the threats against conservative U.S. Supreme Court Justices, to the two assassination attempts on President Trump’s life to the successful assassination of Charlie Kirk, the use of political violence – while not completely one-sided – is indeed a tactic most employed by the radical Left.
Thus did Governor Shapiro negate the impact of his anti-hate message by turning his speech into a political attack designed to further his own ambitions.
U.S. Senator John Fetterman has become a lonely voice of occasional reason within the Democrat Party. While he still ascribes to radical Left views many issues, he has been arguing that his party needs to do something other than just be against Donald Trump. It is a plea that has gone largely unheeded.
In a gesture of bi-partisan unity Fetterman and his Republican counterpart U.S. Senator Dave McCormick appeared together in a Common Ground segment hosted by Brett Bair on Fox News. While acknowledging that they disagree on many issues Pennsylvania’s two U.S. Senators expressed a personal friendship and talked about ways they have found to work together.
Fetterman drilled down on hate speech that compares President Trump to notorious figures in history such as Adolph Hitler and the Left’s propensity to label Trump as Fascist, a Nazi or to claim he is an autocrat. He pointed out that type of rhetoric is extreme, untrue, and stokes the climate for political violence saying “You don’t compare anyone to Hitler. When you do you will incite somebody to ‘take them out’.”
He is correct in his assertion that the Democrat Party must move beyond simply opposing Trump and offer the American people well reasoned policy prescriptions designed to address the problems facing our nation.
Just as Shapiro is incapable of not turning every appearance into a forum for his own political ambitions, the Democrat Party at large appears unable to do anything other than oppose Trump.
In neither case is it a prescription for success.
(Lowman S. Henry is Chairman & CEO of the Lincoln Institute and host of the weekly Lincoln Radio Journal and American Radio Journal. His e-mail address is lhenry@lincolninstitute.org.)
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