Hypocrisy has a way of showing itself, especially in politics. And Pennsylvania Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro’s latest criticism of Vice President J.D. Vance is already being thrown back at him — with receipts.
According to NBC News, Shapiro said in an interview Tuesday that Vance deserved criticism for not using the specific words “Jews” and “Nazis” in a Holocaust Remembrance Day post on X. Shapiro argued that remembering the Holocaust requires plainly stating who was targeted and who carried out the atrocities.
“Part of never forgetting is making sure that the facts of what happened are recited, are remembered,” Shapiro said. “The fact that JD Vance couldn’t bring himself to [acknowledge] that 6 million Jews were killed by Hitler and by the Nazis speaks volumes.”
But the backlash came quickly — and it focused on whether Shapiro’s own statements have been any clearer.
Vance’s post on Tuesday read:
“Today we remember the millions of lives lost during the Holocaust, the millions of stories of individual bravery and heroism, and one of the enduring lessons of one of the darkest chapters in human history: that while humans create beautiful things and are full of compassion, we’re also capable of unspeakable brutality. And we promise never again to go down the darkest path,” Vance wrote Tuesday on X.
Shapiro’s supporters pointed to what the vice president didn’t say. Others pointed to what Vance did include: four photos of Vance and his wife, Usha, at the site of Dachau — a Nazi concentration camp. Critics argued that the setting itself made the context unmistakable, even if the post didn’t explicitly name Nazis.
Shapiro’s criticism might have landed more cleanly if his own messaging had been consistent. Instead, a Trump White House official highlighted what appeared to be the governor’s double standard.
White House Principal Deputy Communications Director Alex Pfeiffer responded on X: “Wow. Josh Shapiro must be really offended by his statements issued this year and last year, neither of which mentioned ‘Jews.’”
Pfeiffer included screenshots of Shapiro’s posts for Holocaust Remembrance Day from two recent years, noting that Shapiro’s Tuesday post did not mention “Jews” or “Nazis” either — though it did reference “antisemitism.”
He also pointed to Shapiro’s Apr. 24 post marking Yom HaShoah, the Holocaust Remembrance Day observed on the Hebrew calendar. That message referenced Pennsylvania founder William Penn and religious liberty, but did not mention Jews or Nazis.
The dispute quickly drifted from remembrance into political sparring — and some saw it as early positioning ahead of the next presidential cycle.
“After he faced criticism for not mentioning Jews in his post on Holocaust Remembrance Day, Josh Shapiro desperately tried to shift blame to the Vice President,” a Vance spokesperson told Mary Margaret Olohan of The Daily Wire. “This is next level hypocritical deflection from Shapiro, a misguided plea for attention from a political lightweight.”
Whether Shapiro is a “political lightweight” is something only a national campaign can truly test. But the episode highlights a basic problem: if a politician attacks someone’s wording while their own record shows the same omission, the criticism starts to look performative — and voters tend to notice.
Beyond campaign politics, the larger hope is that Holocaust remembrance can remain what it should be: a sober recognition of history, untainted by opportunistic point-scoring. If the next few years bring anything positive, it should be a return to moral clarity — and less incentive to turn tragedy into a partisan weapon.
