Name: Gov. Josh Shapiro On The Arson Attack At The Pennsylvania Governor's Residence
Uploaded: 2025-07-25T17:06:26.000Z
Duration: 5 min 30 s
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My guest tonight is the current governor and former attorney general of the state of Pennsylvania.

Please welcome to the Late Show Governor Josh Shapiro.

Thanks for being here. We've never even met before.

I've wanted to talk to you for a little while.

I feel like I know you. I watch you every night.

Speaking of creepy, and we'll get past this, but I really am curious.

So many of us were alarmed by what happened to you and your family.

It was in April of this year, there was an arson attack at the governor's mansion where you live.

In retrospect, without having to relive the entire thing, can you tell us what happened?

Yeah. I mean, look, it was first night of Passover, and my wife, Lori, and I hosted a community Seder.

We've been hosting Seders for a lot of years, but it's kind of amazing to do it as governor, at the governor's residence, in the greatest country on the face of the earth where you can celebrate your faith openly and freely and free of persecution.

And, you know, we had finished our Seder, it ran late, kids were all hanging out, and I remember it was around midnight,

I'm looking at these little kids, I'm like, y'all need to go to sleep, right? It's time.

We went upstairs, and, you know, we had kind of just drifted off to sleep around 1 in the morning when Pennsylvania State Trooper came running upstairs, banging on the door, Governor, first thing, we've got to get out of the house now.

And honestly, see, my thought immediately turned to, like, okay, it's an accident, there must be something in the kitchen or whatever.

We just got to make sure we got all the kids and the dogs out of the house.

And we did. We found out, you know, a few hours later it was not an accident.

Someone had scaled the wall, broke into the house with a metal hammer, threw a bunch of Molotov cocktails around to destroy part of the home, and with that hammer, he was trying to make his way through the house to find me and beat me to death.

And I got to say, for as dark as that moment was,

Lori and I found a whole lot of light in the days after from the people of Pennsylvania.

I know you are, too. Faith is important to you.

But I've never had people praying for me like that.

People from all different faiths, all different backgrounds.

And, Steve, I know this sounds crazy, but I actually could feel their prayer.

I actually felt strengthened by their prayers, and that helped me and Lori and our four children heal.

And I'll just share one quick story with you.

The kids and I really wanted to do something for these firefighters who literally ran into the governor's residence to save our lives as we were running out.

These firefighters are heroes, not just the ones who were there in Harrisburg that day, but firefighters all across this great country.

And the kids said, hey, we should, like, make a meal for them.

And I thought, not a good way to reward these firefighters by poisoning them to death.

So instead, we got together Robert Irvine, who's a wonderful celebrity chef who looks out for first responders, firefighters every day.

We cooked them a meal a couple days later at the local firehouse in Harrisburg.

We made a point to meet every one of them, thank every one of them.

And then an 83-year-old firefighter, a chaplain from the North Penn Township

Volunteer Fire Department, he comes over to me and he says, you know, we don't share the same faith, but every single member of our fire department wrote you this letter, signed it.

And I wrote my personal favorite prayer on the back for you.

That prayer he wrote, Stephen, on the back in his handwriting, this 82-year-old fire chaplain, is a prayer that I know is the priestly blessing, a prayer that I make over my children each night from the Old Testament.

He used that prayer because it was important to him, a person of Christian faith, giving it to a person of Jewish faith to help us heal.

And what I learned from that experience is prayer is not only powerful, but it can be universal.

And it can lift people up regardless of how they worship.

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Gov. Josh Shapiro On The Arson Attack At The Pennsylvania Governor's Residence

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