What the Josh Shapiro Attack Reveals

Josh Shapiro is very lucky to be alive. The Pennsylvania governor and his family escaped an arson attack in the early hours of this morning. Parts of the governor’s mansion were badly charred, including an opulent room with a piano and a chandelier where Shapiro had hosted a Passover Seder just hours earlier. Things could have been much worse. The suspect, Cody Balmer, who turned himself in, would have beaten Shapiro with a hammer if he had found him in his home, he reportedly said in an affidavit.

Balmer admitted to “harboring hatred” of Shapiro, authorities said, but his precise motives are still unclear. He reportedly expressed anti-government views and made allusions to violence on social media. He reposted an image of a Molotov cocktail with the caption “Be the light you want to see in the world.” Balmer’s mother told CBS that he has a history of mental illness. But no matter how you square it, the attack is just the latest example of political violence in the United States. Last month, a Wisconsin teenager was charged with murdering his mother and stepfather as part of a plot to try to assassinate President Donald Trump—this, of course, follows two assassination attempts targeting Trump last year. Other prominent instances of ideological violence include the murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson late last year, and the time when a man broke into Nancy Pelosi’s home in 2022 and attacked her husband, Paul Pelosi, with a hammer, fracturing his skull. (He was badly hurt but survived.)

Shapiro is a Democrat, but in a rare moment of bipartisan agreement, Republicans joined Democrats in condemning the attack. President Trump said in the Oval Office today that the suspect “was probably just a wack job and certainly a thing like that cannot be allowed to happen.” Vice President J. D. Vance called the violence “disgusting,” and Attorney General Pam Bondi posted on X that she was “relieved” that Shapiro and his family are safe.

These kinds of condemnations of political violence are good. They’re also meaningless—especially when taken in the broader context of Trump’s governing style. Perhaps it’s no coincidence that since Trump first ran for office, political violence has been on the rise. When it’s useful to Trump, he praises violence and makes leveraging the threat of it endemic to his style of politics. When Montana’s then–congressional candidate (and now-governor) Greg Gianforte assaulted a reporter in 2017, Trump later said, “Any guy that can do a body slam, he is my type!” After Kyle Rittenhouse shot and killed a protester in Kenosha, Wisconsin, in the summer of 2020, he had a friendly meeting with Trump at Mar-a-Lago the next year. And during a presidential debate against Joe Biden that fall, when Trump was asked if he would rebuke the Proud Boys, a far-right organization with a history of inciting violence, he told the group to “stand back and stand by,” as though he were giving it orders. (This is also how the Proud Boys interpreted it.)

Read: A brief history of Trump’s violent remarks

Trump made his willingness to engage in political violence especially clear during the Capitol insurrection on January 6, 2021. Instead of immediately attempting to call off his rabid supporters, Trump sat on his hands as his supporters stormed the Capitol—even as members of his own party urged him to help. Despite having lost the election, Trump appeared okay with violence if it helped him maintain the presidency.

Since retaking office, Trump has appeared to continue this tradition. When Pete Hegseth, the president’s pick for secretary of defense, faced a sexual-assault accusation ahead of his confirmation vote, violence may have been the ingredient that ensured that Trump got his way. Republican Senator Thom Tillis seemed concerned that some of the allegations against Hegseth could be credible and was on track to tank his nomination. According to Vanity Fair, the FBI warned Tillis of “credible death threats” against him, which could have played a role in his decision to back down. Tillis has not said whether the death threats influenced his Hegseth vote, but his office released recordings of the threats he has received.

Other Republicans in Congress are afraid of opposing Trump because of similar potential concerns for their safety. Many have gone on the record in recent years and said as much. Mitt Romney told my colleague McKay Coppins that a fellow congressman confessed to him that he had wanted to vote for Trump’s second impeachment in 2021 but ultimately chose not to out of fear for his family’s safety. That same year, Republican Representative Peter Meijer told my colleague Tim Alberta that he witnessed a fellow member of Congress have a near breakdown over fear that Trump supporters would come for his family if he voted to certify the 2020 election results.

All of this is to say that when Trump condemns acts of political violence, it’s impossible to take him seriously. In this specific case, the attack on Shapiro served no clear benefit to Trump, which is why he was able to so quickly speak out against it. Compare that with how he’s talked about the Pelosi hammer attack, which he has used as fodder to mock the Pelosis. Trump’s relationship to political violence is the same as his relationship to anything and anyone else in his orbit: If something benefits him, it’s welcome. If not, he may dismiss it.