Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro spilled some interesting tea on former Vice President Kamala Harris’ 2024 presidential campaign’s vetting process. In a new book, he said the campaign asked whether he was a “double agent” working for Israel while he was being vetted as Harris’ potential running mate.
Shapiro was one of several contenders for the position, which ultimately went to Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz.
From The New York Times:
Gov. Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania, a prominent Democrat who was a top contender to serve as former Vice President Kamala Harris’s running mate in 2024, offered his most detailed accounting to date of the vice-presidential search process in his new memoir, which was obtained by The New York Times.
In short: He suggests that it was far uglier than is commonly known.
In Mr. Shapiro’s book, “Where We Keep the Light,” the governor is measured in describing his interactions with Ms. Harris herself. But Mr. Shapiro, who is Jewish, details a contentious vetting process in which Ms. Harris’s team focused intensely on his views on Israel — so much so that at one point, he wrote, he was asked if he had ever been an agent of the Israeli government.
“Had I been a double agent for Israel?” wrote Mr. Shapiro, describing his incredulous response to a last-minute question from the vetting team. He responded that the question was offensive, he wrote, and was told, “Well, we have to ask.”
“Have you ever communicated with an undercover agent of Israel?” the questioner, Dana Remus, a former White House counsel, continued, according to Mr. Shapiro, who recounted, “If they were undercover, I responded, how the hell would I know?”
Mr. Shapiro wrote that he understood that Ms. Remus was “just doing her job.” But the fact that he was asked such questions, he wrote, “said a lot about some of the people around the VP.”
Shapiro, who is Jewish, became one of several Democratic politicians who spoke out against the wave of antisemitism that arose after Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, 2023, killing over one thousand people.
The governor said that Harris asked if he “would be willing to apologize for the statements I had made, particularly over what I saw happening at the University of Pennsylvania,” he wrote, according to The New York Times.
Shapiro refused to apologize, saying that while he supports constitutionally protected free speech, he noted that many pro-Hamas agitators were not peaceful. He said he “wondered whether these questions were being posed to just me — the only Jewish guy in the running — or if everyone who had not held a federal office was being grilled about Israel in the same way.”
And this, ladies and gentlemen, shows exactly how a Harris administration would have responded to the widespread vitriol against Jewish people that permeated college campuses for more than a year. While many of the demonstrations were peaceful, there were plenty of incidents in which members of the pro-Hamas crowd targeted Jewish students with threats and violence.
There was absolutely nothing Shapiro said that he should apologize for. Apparently, Harris did not want anyone in her administration who would speak out against anti-Jewish bigotry, which tells us exactly what we need to know about where Harris and her comrades stand on the issue.
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