Two GOP governors barely defended Trump after Josh Shapiro blamed high gas prices on the president at a Philadelphia event

Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro blamed high gas prices on President Donald Trump onstage with Republican governors in Philadelphia on Thursday — and they didn’t disagree.

“Gas prices are bad,” Shapiro said on a National Governors Association panel at the Westin Philadelphia. “They’re $4.13 a gallon on average here in Pennsylvania. There’s a singular reason why … the president started a war we should have never started with no plan on how to go in and clearly no plan on how to get out.

“No one can deny the fact that these prices are high because of the policies of this administration,” he added.

Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt and West Virginia Gov. Patrick Morrisey, both Republicans sitting alongside Shapiro, did not deny that. They barely defended Trump at the bipartisan event and acknowledged the war is to blame for the pain at the pump.

Stitt, the NGA chair, emphasized that building more energy supply in the United States would decrease reliance on fuel from abroad but said there’s “no doubt” that the international conflict is causing gas prices to go up.

“It’s a global market, and that’s causing things to go up, and we all want this war to be over as quickly as possible,” he said. “But there’s also, we don’t want Iran to have a nuclear weapon either, and so those are things that are that, you know, they’re having to deal with from the federal level right now.”

Stitt blamed partisan swings in the White House for a lack of progress on American energy projects like the Keystone Pipeline, a controversial energy project that recent Democratic presidents opposed but Trump embraced.

Morrisey said he wants more energy projects in West Virginia but was straightforward about gas prices.

“I would say that on the gas price front, obviously I think all of us, as Gov. Stitt said, we’re looking for the Strait of Hormuz to open, for the war to come to an end,” he said. “That’s going to have the most tangible effect on getting gas prices down.”

New Jersey Gov. Mikie Sherrill, the other Democrat on the four-member panel, took a jab at House Speaker Mike Johnson (R., La.).

The governors spoke about their efforts to speed up permitting processes for energy projects in their states, and when Anthony Adragna, a Punchbowl News reporter who moderated the panel, asked if they could expect Congress to help tackle the issue, there was a bipartisan scoff.

Stitt said each party’s focus on the midterms prevents progress and leads to pendulum swings in policy nationally.

“D.C. is not coming up with solutions,” he said. “States are where the solutions are found.”

Sherrill, who represented a North Jersey district in Congress from 2019 to 2025, blamed the lack of progress on Johnson, who took over as speaker in October 2023.

“I truly have never seen more incompetent leadership in the House, and I think I’ve been through some pretty rough years,” she said. “But this speaker, you know, can’t even control his own caucus, much less work out bipartisan deals.

“He can’t even pass a rule. It’s breathtaking, truly. So we can’t expect help from the federal government right now,” she added.

She said a New Jersey company that decided to build manufacturing out of state said it chose to go elsewhere not because of taxes but because it takes so long to get project approvals in the state.

“That’s something as governor, I can control,” she said. “That’s an area where I don’t need to rely on the federal government. I just need to get my state out of the way so we can really build.”

And Shapiro said that despite how difficult it is to get a split legislature to agree on anything, permitting reform is one of the issues that Harrisburg has taken action on.

“My general view is the government can be a force for good in people’s lives,” Shapiro said. “The government has to move at the speed of business.”