Vance says Democrats made Josh Shapiro ‘run from his Jewish heritage’
Trump’s VP pick tells rally he ‘feels bad’ for Harris’s almost-running mate after Democrats ‘became so focused on his ethnicity’; Pennsylvania governor accuses Vance of dishonesty
JD Vance, the Republican Ohio senator who is former United States president Donald Trump’s running mate, said Tuesday that he “feels bad” that Josh Shapiro, the Jewish Pennsylvania governor who was in contention to be Kamala Harris’s running mate, had to “run” from being Jewish to try to get the job.
Harris, the US vice president and Democratic presidential nominee, on Tuesday named Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her running mate. Shapiro was in the top two or three in contention and became subject to a campaign from the progressive left to keep him off the ticket because of his views on Israel.
“I genuinely feel bad that for days, maybe weeks, the guy actually had to run from his Jewish heritage because of what the Democrats are saying about him,” Vance said at a Philadelphia rally. “I think that’s scandalous and disgraceful. Whatever you believe, whatever disagreements on policy you have about somebody, the fact that that race, the vice presidential race, on the Democratic side, became so focused on his ethnicity, I think, is absolutely disgraceful, and it’s insulting to Americans, whatever background you’re from.”
In an interview with Fox News later Tuesday, Vance said that “the fact that you’re letting antisemites within the Democratic Party drive so much of the conversation, and so much of the decisionmaking for Kamala Harris, is a really worrying sign.”
Harris’s campaign has denied that Shapiro’s Jewish identity had anything to do with the choice. Shapiro’s office did not respond to a request for comment.
Vance did not elaborate on his comments, and it was not clear what he meant. Shapiro has made his Jewish identity and faith central to his career and did not play it down while in contention. He also cited an ancient rabbi in his statement after being passed over for the role.
Last week the Philadelphia Inquirer uncovered an op-ed Shapiro wrote in his college paper in 1993, when he was 20, arguing that “Palestinians will not coexist peacefully” and are “too battle-minded” to make peace with Israel.
Shapiro said in response that his views changed over the past three decades. He has long supported the establishment of a Palestinian state alongside Israel.
Since Trump picked Vance last month, Shapiro has accused the Ohio senator of being inauthentic.
“He doesn’t know who he is,” Shapiro said later Tuesday at a rally in Philadelphia where Walz and Harris were to appear together for the first time as a ticket. “And he’s not being honest with himself, so he can’t be honest with the American people.”
Vance’s comments on Shapiro came amid what analysts have described as Republicans’ struggle to find new lines of attack after being blindsided by Harris’s accession to the top of the Democratic ticket following US President Joe Biden’s July 21 withdrawal from the race.
Trump himself has repeatedly cast Harris, whose husband and stepchildren are Jewish, as an antisemite, and said Jews who vote for the Democratic party “should have their head examined” due to what Trump described as Harris’s hostility to Israel.
After Harris picked Walz to be her running mate, US media quoted a top Trump adviser as saying that “Hamas Harris bent the knee to antisemitic, anti-Israel radicals on the left by leapfrogging Shapiro. She chose someone as dangerously liberal as she is.”
By contrast, Walz has been credited as being the first Democrat to attack the Trump-Vance ticket for being “weird.” Analysts described the line as a welcome, lighthearted departure from Biden’s warnings that Trump is a threat to democracy.
