Josh Shapiro ‘met the moment’ after Trump shooting

BUTLER, PA — Within moments after shots were fired at former President Donald Trump during a Pennsylvania rally last Saturday, Gov. Josh Shapiro (D-PA) was briefed about the assassination attempt. He then began making phone calls to the family of Corey Comperatore, the rally attendee who was shot and killed, as well as the Republican members of Congress and Republican Senate candidate David McCormick who were present at the rally.

Shapiro was here within hours, assessing the crime scene and, with the family’s permission, detailing who Comperatore was.

“Corey was a girl dad,” Shapiro said of the man who dove on top of family members to protect them from gunfire. “Corey was a firefighter. Corey went to church every Sunday. Corey loved his community. And most especially, Corey loved his family.”

“Corey died a hero,” the governor added.

Shapiro did what he always does: He showed up. In doing so, he is receiving praise from both Democrats and Republicans for the grace he displayed. McCormick, who was sitting in the front row at the rally, tweeted a photo of him and Shapiro meeting Tuesday at a conference at the other end of the state, saying he was grateful to Shapiro “for his strength and leadership following the tragedy in Butler on Saturday.”

Shapiro said Wednesday that his first few hours after the shooting were spent in regular communication with state police and others at the rally.

“You just always want to make sure in an emergency you're addressing the operational needs,” he said.

Unlike his quick response to the I-95 collapse in Philadelphia last summer, Shapiro was ready to help in Pennsylvania. However, there turned out to be no immediate operational needs.

“That was being addressed by law enforcement on the ground and primarily federal resources," he said.

Once Shapiro learned the president was OK and had left the area to receive medical treatment, he focused on individuals there who may have been harmed.

“I think I really began to focus, together with our team, on how to best communicate and to express the shock and the sorrow and the anger and the fear that I know so many people were feeling in that community across the town of Butler and across the country,” Shapiro said.

He knew it was important for him to be there and have the opportunity to see where the shooting occurred.

“So I spent time that morning at the farm show and then to speak to the issues that I think mattered most to folks and not allow anyone to forget that this was a tragedy that came to a wonderful rural community in Pennsylvania and that we lost a fellow Pennsylvanian — and two others needed our prayers to be able to get through their darkest hours,” Shapiro said.

Shapiro stressed that he wanted to make sure to cut through the politicized national chatter.

“We felt that it was a moment that required some moral clarity from the governor of that state,” Shapiro said, often referring to anything he does as we, rarely using the word “I.”

Shapiro said just less than a day ago, the pasture where the rally was held was filled with thousands of his constituents, gathered in a festive way, wearing patriotic-themed clothing, eating funnel cakes and sandwiches smothered in french fries. Now, the area is littered with hastily dropped folded chairs, plastic water bottles, and even a wheelchair. He reflected on how dark the world turned in less than 24 hours.

“I thought about two things. Obviously what was going on there is not my politics,” Shapiro said. “I disagree with the former president on many things, but the first thing I thought was that there were Pennsylvanians there who were genuinely excited, not only to hear from the former president but that he chose their community to come to.”

“There is a point of pride there, and the people who visited that farm show to hear him speak, they didn't deserve to have to deal with, in the case of three individuals, bullets shattering their bodies. Or, in the case of others, the trauma that came along with this shooting,” he said.

“The second thing I thought about, which I think reflected in my remarks, whatever it was an hour or two later, was that I wanted to be a voice for those three families whose lives were altered forever by that deranged man ... and those families that were directly impacted by trauma this unacceptable violence,” Shapiro added.

Shapiro won the vote of many Trump voters in 2022 because he embraced the importance of showing up in places such as Butler. That’s why, as a Democrat, he received 43% of the vote in Butler in 2022, far outstripping the less than 35% his fellow Democrat President Joe Biden won against Trump in 2020.

Back of the napkin calculations tell you there had to be a few thousand Trump-Shapiro voters in attendance, showcasing that while both men are wildly different in their politics and comportment, they both understand the importance of voters feeling seen.

“I think meeting people where they are matters,” Shapiro said. “Understanding their hopes and their fears, their minds, the things that frustrate them, the things that excite them, and it makes me a better governor being in their community, listening to them, and then being able to take the lessons I learned there back to the capitol to make new laws, advance new policies, and get sh** done.”

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Shapiro said he hopes that what comes from this is “what the good people of Pennsylvania want to see, I believe, and that is treating our fellow Americans with respect and leaders and community members taking down the temperature, speaking and acting with moral clarity and a recognition that we can all be better than what our politics has been like over the last number of years.”

“I disagree with Donald Trump on many things, as you well know,” he said. “But I also have always believed that we should address these differences peacefully through the political process, and I think we need to have a spirited campaign going forward where ideas are shared and disagreed with and advanced, but where we also all treat one another with respect, and that we listen to the voices in these small towns in Pennsylvania and across America that want to see the discourse in our politics elevated.”