Josh Shapiro says ‘of course’ he still likes John Fetterman
Fetterman wrote in detail in his memoir, "Unfettered," that the two men no longer speak. Shapiro pointed to a November meeting when asked if they're on speaking terms.
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Gov. Josh Shapiro told national reporters Thursday that he likes U.S. Sen. John Fetterman (D., Pa.), and still talks to him — citing a meeting several months ago.
It’s long been clear that Pennsylvania’s two top Democrats have a tense relationship, a dynamic Fetterman explained in detail in his memoir, Unfettered, released in November, writing that the two men no longer speak after they butted heads as members of the Pennsylvania Board of Pardons.
But when Shapiro traveled to Washington to promote his own memoir, Where We Keep the Light, the governor sought to dispel that narrative.
Speaking to a roundtable of Washington journalists hosted by the Christian Science Monitor on Thursday, Shapiro said he “of course” likes the commonwealth’s senior senator and still speaks to him.
“We were in a meeting together a few weeks ago with (U.S. Transportation) Secretary (Sean) Duffy, working on an important issue in Pennsylvania. So we all work together, Senator McCormick as well,” Shapiro said. “We’ve got to work together for the people of Pennsylvania.”
That meeting, however, was in November when Shapiro and Fetterman met with Duffy to discuss SEPTA — roughly a week before the release of Fetterman’s book. Mayor Cherelle L. Parker and Sen. Dave McCormick (R., Pa.) also participated in that meeting.
A spokesman for Shapiro did not immediately respond to questions about whether they’ve spoken since.
Though Shapiro and Fetterman’s disagreements date back to the pair’s days on the state pardons board, the senator has increasingly drawn ire from his fellow Democrats in recent months for voting with Republicans and has faced calls for a primary challenge.
Shapiro was mum when asked whether he’d support Fetterman if he sought reelection.
“John will decide if he wants to run for reelection. I appreciate the service,” he said.
Fetterman claims in a chapter of his book titled “The Shapiro Affair” that Shapiro, as attorney general, had been unwilling as a member of the pardons board to recommend the commutation of two men that Fetterman strongly believed should be released.
Fetterman, who was lieutenant governor at the time, even threatened in a private meeting to run against Shapiro for governor if he didn’t support the commutations.
“I told him there were two tracks — that one and the one in which he ran for governor and I ran for the Senate (which was the one I preferred),“ Fetterman wrote in the memoir. ”I had no interest in friction, only in what I felt was justice."
Fetterman also claimed that Shapiro’s caution in these cases was about protecting his future political ambitions.
“I believe what drove him to delay and deny applications was not the facts of a given case as much as a fear that someone whose sentence he’d commuted would go on to commit terrible violence on the outside,” Fetterman wrote.
In his own book, Shapiro reflects on agonizing over those decisions including the concern that a commuted individual would go on to harm others. Throughout his book tour he has dodged questions about potential presidential aspirations.
Things got so bad that then-Gov. Tom Wolf had to get involved by meeting with them privately, and Fetterman later got caught on a 2020 Zoom meeting calling Shapiro a “f— asshole,” not realizing that his microphone was still live.
While Fetterman devoted an entire chapter of his 240-page book to Shapiro, the state’s senior U.S. senator only gets two passing mentions in Shapiro’s book.
In one mention, Shapiro notes that he spoke with Fetterman backstage at a 2022 Erie County Democratic Committee dinner when Shapiro debuted a new speech about what “real freedom” means, just days before Fetterman had a stroke in lead up to that year’s primary election.
Shapiro also mentions Fetterman in a chapter about the governor’s history with former President Barack Obama. Shapiro and Fetterman were both on the ballot in 2022 and cohosting a campaign rally, where Obama and former President Joe Biden came to stump for them.
Fetterman is not mentioned in the rest of the book. Shapiro does not delve into the fellow Democrat’s threat to run against him.