Dem Governor's Attempt to Frame JD Vance's Holocaust Remembrance Day Post as Anti-Semitic Backfires
Hypocrites rarely acknowledge, let alone repent of, their own hypocrisy.
Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania undoubtedly will prove no different.
According to NBC News, Shapiro said in an interview Tuesday that Vice President J.D. Vance deserves criticism for failing to use the specific words “Jews” and “Nazis” in a Holocaust Remembrance Day post on the social media platform X, prompting X users, including a member of President Donald Trump’s communications team, to remind Shapiro that his own words on the occasion hardly differed from the vice president’s.
“Part of never forgetting is making sure that the facts of what happened are recited, are remembered,” the governor 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.”
As it happens, only Shapiro’s hypocritical silliness “speaks volumes.”
“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.
But the vice president failed to mention Nazis by name? Four pictures of Vance and his wife, Usha, at what remains of Nazi Germany’s Dachau concentration camp accompanied the post. If Shapiro and his ilk wish to interpret that as obscuring the Nazis’ responsibility for the Holocaust, more power to them.
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,… pic.twitter.com/2UwFcy4Kmp
— JD Vance (@JDVance) January 27, 2026
Meanwhile, the governor’s own words made the matter worse. White House Principal Deputy Communications Director Alex Pfeiffer brought receipts.
“Wow,” Pfeiffer wrote on X. “Josh Shapiro must be really offended by his statements issued this year and last year, neither of which mentioned ‘Jews.'”
Accompanying screenshots showed Shapiro’s X posts marking two recent Holocaust Remembrance Days.
On Tuesday, for instance, the governor authored a post that mentioned neither Jews nor Nazis (though it did mention “antisemitism”).
Likewise, on Apr. 24, Shapiro marked Yom HaShoah — Holocaust Remembrance Day on the Hebrew calendar — by mentioning Pennsylvania founder William Penn, but not Jews or Nazis.
William Penn did bring religious liberty to Pennsylvania. But did he merit mentioning ahead of Jews and Nazis on Holocaust Remembrance Day?
Wow. Josh Shapiro must be really offended by his statements issued this year and last year, neither of which mentioned “Jews.” https://t.co/8GULJDhvuO pic.twitter.com/bppKcnZpp6
— Alex Pfeiffer (@AlexPfeiffer) January 29, 2026
Sadly, one cannot escape the impression that all of this amounts to pre-2028 sparring.
“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.”
Josh Shapiro is suggesting JD Vance is antisemitic for posting about Holocaust Remembrance Day without specifically mentioning the Jews. The thing is…Shapiro did the exact same thing. Two years in a row.
Vance spox tells @realDailyWire: “After he faced criticism for not… https://t.co/daWpAEhxNk
— Mary Margaret Olohan (@MaryMargOlohan) January 29, 2026
Of course, Shapiro’s status as a “political lightweight” remains untested on the national stage.
Nonetheless, if the governor manages to win the 2028 Democratic presidential nomination, he will have to do better than this.
For one thing, Shapiro will not defeat Vance — assuming the latter wins the GOP nomination — in a contest of words.
Moreover, presidential politics aside, Shapiro’s comments reeked of a hypocrisy sure to alienate voters.
Above all, let us hope that by 2028, whatever malignant forces have made the Holocaust a modern political issue will lose all relevance.
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