Donald Trump is conspiring to steal $230 million from taxpayers as a “settlement” from the Department of Justice, which he fully controls, for having dared attempt to prosecute him for his many and obvious crimes, including stealing classified documents and an attempted coup — a metaphorical wrecking ball to our democracy. Yet, Democratic Sen. John Fetterman thinks there’s nothing to see here. He remains the greatest disappointment from Pennsylvania since Altoona-style pizza. (Watch the grossness below.)
During a CNN interview last week, while smearing actual Democrats who are tying to save health care access for millions, Fetterman casually dismissed Trump’s latest appalling grift as “small ball.”
“I think we have much bigger problems than worrying about those things,” Fetterman said, taking a blithe approach to Trump’s “broken window” autocracy. (Watch below.)
It’s become a common refrain to wonder what the hell happened to John Fetterman. He frequently acts as if he woke up next to a dead sex worker in a Corleone-family-run brothel. (Watch below.)
Fetterman openly blames Democrats for the ongoing government shutdown, because he apparently defines “statesmanship” as total surrender to Trump. He even supports Republicans nuking the filibuster and passing their terrible funding bill without Democratic votes. Fetterman also says he believes that Senate Majority Leader John Thune is “sincere” when he promised to possibly, maybe hold a vote to extend the critical Affordable Care Act subsidies once the shutdown is over. Look, it’s possible Thune might actually hold a vote, but House Speaker Mike Johnson, a shameless liar, would never let it pass. You have to read the full demonic contract.
When Fetterman was running for Senate in 2022, Fox News host Sean Hannity repeatedly attacked him, and Fetterman correctly rejected an invitation to appear on his propaganda platform: “This is not surely a fair and serious venue … He’s all in for [Republican nominee] Dr. Oz.” Now, Fetterman eagerly appears on Hannity’s show and criticizes Democrats for calling an obvious fascist president a fascist.
“When Vice President Harris referred to President Trump as a ‘fascist’ … I knew absolutely we lost the plot at that point,” Fetterman during his guest slot last Wednesday. “If you call the president or someone like a fascist, you are effectively calling the people who are going to vote for him … then they must be fascist too … or they support fascism and those things. And that is just not true.”
It is in fact possible to call a politician a fascist without suggesting that everyone who supports them is automatically just as fascist. However, fascism doesn’t become cuddly just because 75 million Americans empowered it.
Hannity recently told Mike Johnson that Fetterman is the only Democrat with any honor, and Johnson naturally agreed. This is not the sort of praise a Democrat should want as Trump and the GOP actively torch the Constitution, but Fetterman doesn’t really care about the Democratic Party or his own constituents. What matters is that his Fox News-viewing parents can see Republicans applauding his appeasement efforts. (According to New York Magazine, whenever Fetterman appeared on Fox News as a guest, his father would almost always call to say how proud he was of him.)
Saturday, Trump’s former professional liar and current Fox News host Kayleigh McEnany asked Fetterman if Democrats have asked him how he flipped a Senate seat. This was a perverse line of questioning considering that Fetterman won because Democrats rallied behind him, even after his stroke, while Republicans claimed he was brain damaged or replaced by a “fake Fetterman.” During the campaign, McEnany herself bashed Fetterman as yet another soft-on-crime liberal.
Many Democrats have argued that progressives foolishly fell for Fetterman’s faux working-class persona. Other Democrats still defend Fetterman as holding positions that are in line with the average voter, especially in a swing state that Trump just won. I think both positions are way off the mark.
First, Fetterman openly campaigned as a reliable Democrat — the exact opposite of former Democrats Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema. He even sent fundraising emails to donors when Manchin announced he wouldn’t support the For the People Act.
Fetterman wrote in 2021, “If Senators Manchin or Sinema are your ideal Senators, then I am *not* your candidate.” He flat-out said, “If you what you think our democracy needs in this pivotal moment is a candidate who’s going to get compliments from Mitch McConnell and his sedition-curious GOP, then I am quite simply not your guy.”
He concluded his pitch, “If you want a Democrat that you can depend on, that you know is always going to stand up and fight for you, and is actually going to vote like a Democrat, then I am humbly asking for your support.”
No, Fetterman voters weren’t hoodwinked by his hoodie but his actual written words.
Of course, a lot has changed in four years. Joe Biden is no longer president. Democrats no longer control Congress. Democrat Bob Casey, who’d served in the Senate since 2007, lost his re-election campaign, thanks in part to his support for Biden. Fetterman might consider keeping his job more important than remaining a “Democrat that you can depend on … who is actually going to vote like a Democrat.”
However, if that’s his reasoning, it’s faulty. Trump didn’t win in a 2008 or even 2012-style rout. Although he narrowly flipped Pennsylvania, Trump’s current approval in the sate is tanking. A recent survey shows that 53 percent of likely voters in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, view Trump unfavorably, compared to 42 percent who see him favorably. Trump won the bellwether county by a single point last year.
Cozying up to Trump as Fetterman has done simply isn’t effective. Fetterman’s own personal approval is abysmal. According to a Quinnipiac University poll, 46 percent of Pennsylvania voters approved of Fetterman’s job performance while 38 percent disapprove. It’s even worse if you dig into the results: 54 percent of Pennsylvania Democrats disapprove of Fetterman, while his approval among his own party is a dismal 33 percent. Sure, 62 percent of Republicans might say they like Fetterman, but that doesn’t mean they’d vote for him in a general election over an actual Republican.
Like Sinema, Fetterman has needlessly torched his political career. He could’ve modeled himself after Susan Collins, who maintains her faux moderate credentials in a state that consistently votes for Democratic presidential candidates, but Collins never publicly trashes her own party or goes out of her way to praise the opposition. You don’t see Collins on Joy Reid’s podcast railing against Marjorie Taylor Greene or Nancy Mace.
Fetterman also had a clear model of Democratic success in Pennsylvania. Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro out-performed Fetterman in 2022 — winning election by almost three times Fetterman’s margin over TV’s Doctor Oz.
Shapiro remains an outspoken critic of Trump and he currently enjoys 60 percent job approval in a purple state. Republicans worry that if far-right Doug Mastriano stages a rematch against the popular governor, it would be a down-ballot disaster for Republicans. Meanwhile, Republicans are likely champing at the bit to unseat a perhaps fatally wounded Fetterman if Democrats don’t unfetter themselves of this dead weight at the next available primary. I’m sure Fox News will find a correspondent position for him as a consolation prize.
Disappointment is not the word for it-I feel like Fetterman completely and deliberately misrepresented who he was to Pennsylvania voters, much the same way Kyrsten Sinema misrepresented who *she* was to Arizona voters. Unfortunately there is not much that can be done about it until his term is up, at which point he'll probably declare "the Democratic party left me" and run as an independent. Either way, he's Eric Adams.
"He even supports Republicans nuking the filibuster and passing their terrible funding bill without Democratic votes"
Actually I "support" that as well. Because then Republicans will definitively own this shitty budget. The reason they haven't done it is obviously because they want to continue to be able to blame Democrats for the shutdown. So I challenge them. Put your money where your mouth is. Nuke the filibuster and own this shit show.
JFC Fetterman is such a POS. I guess we'll never know how much of this was always part of this personality and how much of it was because of his stroke. It's not uncommon for people to take a hard paranoid turn to the right after trauma or a brain injury. And we know it never goes in the other direction