Why Would Republicans Defend John Fetterman?
Their motive is ulterior.
John Fetterman is barely halfway through his first term in the Senate, but his colleagues have rushed to defend him after a devastating New York magazine profile that presents Fetterman as a troubled man whose mental stability has been questioned by his staff and even his wife.
Fetterman dismissed the New York article as a “a hit piece from a very-left publication.” New York is hardly the Jacobin, and the logic behind a supposed far-left smear campaign against Fetterman doesn’t really track. He’s not up for re-election until 2028, and if he were to step down before the end of his term — something senators rarely do, even if indicted or possibly deceased — Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro would name his replacement. Shapiro is consistently more centrist than whatever position Fetterman holds right now. The governor probably doesn’t have DSA members on his speed dial.
Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer stated not longer after New York magazine piece was released, “I just want to say John Fetterman is an excellent legislator and does a great job around here.” You’d expect Senate Democrats to maintain their own thin blue line, but what’s interesting is the seemingly coordinated show of support from Senate Republicans.
Friday morning, the junior senator from Pennsylvania, David McCormick posted on social media, “It’s time to put politics aside and stop these vicious, personal attacks against Senator Fetterman, his wife, and his health. While we have many differences, we are both committed to working together to achieve results for the people of Pennsylvania and make their lives better. He is authentic, decent, principled, and a fighter. These disgraceful smears against him are not the John that I know and respect.”
Later that day, Chuck Grassley posted, “The media ought to lay off Senator Fetterman.” And Tom Cotton echoed McCormick’s message when he posted, “John Fetterman and I have our differences, but he’s a decent and genuine guy. The radical left is smearing him with dishonest, vicious attacks because he’s pro-Israel and they only want reliable anti-Israel politicians. Disgraceful.”
Three years ago, Cotton dismissed Fetterman as “a socialist who lived off his mom & dad's allowance until he joined AARP.” These are the days of the “permanent campaign,” so it’s not as if Cotton reserves his fire against Democrats for election season.
Fetterman is no Dianne Feinstein, who’d joined the Senate the same year I started college (so forever ago). Republicans can’t credibly claim some personal attachment to him that exceeds partisan politics.
Republicans do nothing out of the evilness of their own hearts, and their sudden show of support for Fetterman is suspicious, to say the least, considering that right-wing pundits and politicians suggested he was unfit to serve right after his stroke and later treatment for depression. They promoted all sorts of absurd conspiracy theories about him, including that a “Fake Fetterman” had replaced the actual one voters elected.
Fetterman isn’t even like former Democratic Senators Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin, who Republicans reasonably assumed were the major obstacles to Joe Biden’s agenda, particularly related to filibuster reform. Fetterman’s unwavering support for Israel doesn’t place him outside of the Democratic Party mainstream.
Ruben Gallego suggests that Republicans are trying to court a disaffected Fetterman. Such a political heel turn isn’t out of the question, considering that both Tulsi Gabbard and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. are now fully MAGA. However, Fetterman switching parties would offer Republicans the most limited short-term gain. Democrats had to walk on egg shells around Sinema and Manchin because they had a a bare-minimum majority of 50 seats plus Vice President Kamala Harris. Republicans currently have 53 seats, and while I’d love to imagine that a 2026 Blue Wave could help Democrats regain control of the Senate, the 2026 map is only slightly less brutal for them than 2024. Besides, Fetterman is currently following the Kyrsten Sinema-approved road map for alienating your entire base in exchange for a pat on the head from the GOP, so Republicans could just wait until 2028 and flip Fetterman’s seat outright. The reality is that, even without the New York magazine story, Fetterman’s approval is tanking among Democratic voters in Pittsburgh, his political backyard.
Schumer might consider Fetterman an “all-star” who is “doing a good job,” but in the real world, Fetterman’s boss would’ve already placed him on a performance improvement plan. According to GovTrack, Fetterman missed 77 of 381 votes from April 2024 to March 2025. It’s unclear what else he was doing.
The Senate Commerce Committee has held 26 hearings and business meetings this year, and Fetterman has skipped 25 of them. He’s attended just one more meeting than I have, and I’m not actually on the committee.
He missed all nine of the hearings and business meetings the Senate Homeland Security Committee held this year and skipped all 11 Senate Agriculture Committee meetings this year. Even volunteer members of non-profit committees are still actually expected to show up. Fetterman actually draws a salary.
Fetterman’s also notoriously MIA in his own state and has absolutely failed to maintain a meaningful relationship with the people he needs to vote for him again. Gallego, a freshman senator from Arizona, was at a town hall in Pennsylvania (with a Trump ally, alas), but Fetterman, the actual senior senator from the state, hasn’t held a town hall since taking office — something that might seem wise after Donald Trump carried the state last year while longtime Democratic Sen. Bob Casey lost his re-election campaign.
Fetterman is now reportedly avoiding Philadelphia, which is in Pennsylvania and is an important area for Democrats who like winning elections. He hasn’t been seen in the city since a campaign event last summer for Kamala Harris. Now he worries that he’ll get protested in the more progressive city.
There was once talk about Fetterman as the ideal Democrat to win back the Rust Belt in the 2028 presidential election. His hoodies would apparently mesmerize the white working class! So, if you think Republicans would seriously help bail out the Democrats’ great white hope, you also probably own a collection of bridges in Brooklyn.
Republicans obviously don’t consider Fetterman a threat to them, a stark turn from just two years ago. They also don’t necessarily consider him an asset. The GOP just successfully unseated Bob Casey, after all, and Fetterman is up for re-election in a presidential year. At this point, it’s hard to imagine Fetterman running a successful campaign. Journalist Ben Terris at New York magazine describes a staff that is seriously worried about their boss’s overall mental and physical health. Fetterman rejects these accounts, but his reported behavior is concerning.
According to the Associated Press, he apparently broke down during a recent meeting with a Pennsylvania teachers union, shouting, “Everybody is mad at me!” and “Why does everyone hate me, what did I ever do?” This echoes his paranoid assertion in a 2023 New York Times interview: “What I have found out over the last couple years is that the right, and now the left, are hoping that I die,” he said. “There are ones that are rooting for another blood clot. They have both now been wishing that I die.”
No, it seems like Republicans are happy to see Democrats stuck with a ticking time bomb. If Fetterman voluntarily steps down (unlikely, given his entire personality) or simply loses his primary, Republicans can blame “the radical left” and paint the entire party as anti-semitic for abandoning pro-Israel Fetterman. It’s all upside for them. John Fetterman is in bad shape, and these are the worst type of friends.
Not a doctor or anything qualified to make a diagnosis, but when your wife and staff are "deeply concerned" about your mental and physical health that is "not being mean", that is running an intervention because they are last ditch desperately worried for you. More concerning to me is the Senator's tacit agreement that he is unable to do his job as witnessed by his stunning number of unexplained absences from votes and hearings.
Great analysis. As for the primary, so what if Fetterman loses? And to a candidate not so pro-Israel as he is? Even if this candidate were as pro-Israel, or even more pro-Israel, as Fetterman is, the repubs will paint the candidate as anti-Israel. Dems should be prepared for that, but they never do prepare for obvious repub smears and lies. And when they come, they whine and accept the repub framing, just like the MSM does.
Yes, Fetterman is in trouble, and kudos to his staff and wife for sounding the alarm. I hope that he gets the help that he needs. The Dems are in trouble, but not because of Fetterman. It's because, except for a few, they don't fight back against the repub lies and smears.