Shapiro Never Lets the Facts Get in the Way of a Press Conference

Shapiro’s done it again. This time with measles, with people’s lives and their deaths. And our health and welfare.

Shameless.

Purposefully and calculatingly, Shapiro held a press conference in Lancaster County — his political Holy Grail — to try to score political points, making pronouncements on two tragic deaths against the backdrop of legacy media stories about measles.

The Governor organized his own press conference to make the allegation that two Pennsylvanians had died from measles — making the point that they were unvaccinated. And making the political argument that Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. was reckless with people’s lives for being “anti-vax.” (Perhaps, causing the deaths…)

Trust him: two people died from measles, and they weren’t vaccinated.

What?!

He does it shamelessly, because in the end, it’s all about him.

He gets away with this in part because of his hubris and in larger part because most of the legacy media across the Commonwealth allow him to do it. The national media is beginning to show signs that they won’t be so cozy with him.

We now know — based on the statements of the Lancaster County coroner and Commissioner Josh Parsons — that one of the deaths was a newborn baby. The newborn died months before measles vaccines are prescribed — and the Coroner stated that the baby’s cause of death was not measles. As we’ve now discussed as a nation in recent years, there’s a huge difference between having one illness — among several — and having an illness that kills someone. A patient in an ICU with pneumonia who later contracts Covid did not die from Covid.

Shapiro refuses to discuss these revelations — he won’t engage in “conspiracy theory” distractions.

At best, Shapiro misled us to try to score political points at home and across the nation. At worst, he used a baby’s tragic death to try to advance his own shallow political career.

As he’s done with sexual harassment allegations in his cabinet, school choice, Pennsylvania’s natural gas, his candidacy to be Kamala Harris’s running mate, his autobiography book tour — during a blizzard here in Pennsylvania  — men in women’s sports, and data centers, Shapiro has the “talent” to deflect and use forceful arrogance embodied in the mantra: “often wrong, always certain.”

Though he never actually argued in a court room, attorney Shapiro has that Hollywood lawyer meets aluminum-siding salesman’s quality to manipulate or ignore facts, or imply facts that don’t exist.

And as we’ve learned with school choice, natural gas and data centers, he’s a chameleon who changes his positions with the dexterity of an Olympic gymnast.

It’s his arrogance — in the role he’s constantly playing in his never-ending audition to be President — that allows him to tell us half-truths with his contrived Obama-cadence, and emboldens him to fight back when challenged. (And yet, as we learned on data centers, he’s willing to pivot 180 degrees in the other direction, when he determines that his initial position is no longer tenable.)

Because in the end, it’s about Josh — not any one issue, not any other person.

He’s using two tragic deaths in Lancaster County to try to motivate his Pennsylvania supporters, and to grab national spotlight. Here in Pennsylvania, he has to be vigilant so that his supporters don’t take his re-election for granted. So, he manipulates contrived fights on culture war issues. Or he picks random X fights with President Trump, or JD Vance, or RFK, Jr.

The quintessential political animal, he sees an issue or feels an issue is ripe and he runs to the microphone. He has to be first, or the most passionate to show he’s leading — regardless of reality.

Since national 2028 polls have him in low single digits, or nameless amongst the category of “other” — as the candidate without a brand or constituency, he’s constantly looking for the angle to draw national attention, national relevance.

He tried it with data centers — first standing shoulder to shoulder with Amazon execs, proclaiming Pennsylvania would be the national leader. Then, just months later, feeling the shifting political winds rushing against his finger, he tried again by being opposed to data centers and rushing for air time on CNN and MSNow.

But he’s hit a new low.

Putting aside that he abandoned any effort to deal with these measles cases with sincerity — even compassion as a leader and a dad, putting aside that he’s yet to ever challenge his party’s tone, venom (or rush to socialism), his desperation to attract national attention has exposed both an arrogance and sloppiness.

He’s not only a candidate without a brand, he’s showing national Democrats that — to borrow a Shapiro-ism — he doesn’t have his “stuff” together.

Guy Ciarrocchi writes for Broad + Liberty and RealClear Pennsylvania. A Senior Fellow with the Commonwealth Foundation, follow Guy at @PhilaFreedomGuy.