Former President Donald Trump criticized Josh Shapiro, the governor of Pennsylvania who was reportedly a finalist for the Democratic nomination for vice president, on his social-media platform Truth Social just after midnight on Wednesday morning.
“The highly-overrated Jewish governor of the great Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, Josh Shapiro, made a really bad and poorly delivered speech talking about freedom and fighting for Comrade Kamala Harris for president,” Trump wrote.
The former president added that Harris “hates Israel and will do nothing but make its journey through the complexities of survival as difficult as possible, hoping in the end that it will fail.” Shapiro, he added, “for strictly political reasons, refused to acknowledge that I am the best friend that Israel, and the Jewish people, ever had.”
“I have done more for Israel than any president, and frankly, I have done more for Israel than any person, and it’s not even close,” Trump claimed. “Shapiro has done nothing for Israel, and never will. Comrade Kamala Harris, the radical left Marxist who stole the nomination from Crooked Joe, will do even less. Israel is in big trouble!”
Shapiro, who spoke at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago on Wednesday, told the Philadelphia NBC affiliate WCAU on Thursday that Trump seems to be “obsessed” with him.
“I mean first off, I think it’s clear over the last few weeks, Donald Trump is obsessed with me and obsessed with continuing to spew hate and division in our politics,” Shapiro told WCAU. “He’s someone who has routinely peddled antisemitic tropes like this.”
“Folks from Pennsylvania, folks from around the country who come to me and say, ‘I’m a proud American Jew. I’m proud of my faith and I’m now scared to practice my faith because of what Donald Trump and his allies keep saying,’” Shapiro said.
“I think Donald Trump has a long history of spewing antisemitic tropes, racist tropes,” he told the television station. “He attacks other people for who they are, what they look like, what they believe in. And that is not the way any American should act, let alone someone who wants to be the leader of this country.”
