“Kindness is the beginning of cruelty.”
—Frank Herbert
Three years ago, the Democratic Party nominated John Fetterman to the Senate, despite his significant health problems. It wasn’t a secret: Fetterman’s brain trauma was on full display during his horrendous debate against Dr. Mehmet Oz, where he stammered, stuttered, and (repeatedly) lost his train of thought.
Fetterman won anyway, beating Oz by nearly 5% points, helping the Democrats flip the only Senate seat of the 2022 midterms, giving the Donkeys control of the Senate for the first time since 2015.
It was an important election — and a Faustian bargain: in order to wrest control of the Senate away from the Republicans, they had to link their future to a brain-damaged man.
Just six weeks after taking office, Fetterman checked himself into the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center for clinical depression. He was hospitalized for over a month.
No matter: even though Fetterman is routinely AWOL (he’s missed more votes than any other senator), when he’s there, he votes the way his party elders demand.
At least, he used to.
But after breaking with the party on issues such as Israel and (gasp!) voting for a few Trump nominees, the liberal base is in a tizzy. They feel betrayed.
And now they’re planning a coup.
In an astonishingly mean-spirited attack, New York Magazine aimed its daggers at Fetterman’s career. Clearly, it was a rigorously planned hit piece that required the close cooperation of Fetterman’s staff: all kinds of sensitive, private medical information were disclosed:
Those first days in [Walter Reed] were rough. Fetterman was experiencing delusions. He thought that if he took a bed at the hospital, he would be arrested. He told doctors that he believed members of his family were wearing wires to secretly record him. In one chaotic moment, Fetterman grew convinced that a political rally was being held in the hospital’s lobby and that he needed to break out of his room to attend. David Williamson, Fetterman’s doctor, told me that the main causes of the delusions were the lingering effects of the stroke, dehydration, and depression and that the original medication for the depression could also have been a factor. According to paperwork from Walter Reed, doctors then stopped all antidepressants and put him on other drugs. [emphasis added]
Wait a minute: Dr. Williamson shared a patient’s confidential medical info with a political journalist?! Isn’t that a HIPAA violation?
Your Spidey Sense should start tingling. This is unusual.
Also unusual is the fact that you need to scroll OVER 70 PARAGRAPHS DOWN(!) before you reach the part of the story where the author actually speaks to Fetterman and determines that he (seemingly) still has his marbles:
But in my conversation with Fetterman, I didn’t find any indication that the stroke had left him cognitively impaired. Our interview lasted just over an hour, during the first half of which he seemed excited to discuss just about anything I threw at him. He had problems with the way Democrats had estranged themselves from the public, he said, but still had no intention of leaving the party to become a Republican or even an independent: “Same chance I’m going to end up with a beautiful head of hair.”
In journalistic terms, they deliberately buried the lede, because it interfered with their desired narrative. They printed the hit piece above the fold — “Stupid brain-damaged Senator has Gotta Go!” — and hid the retraction on page 57.
Again, this is weird.
The article even weaponized Fetterman’s wife against him, selecting certain texts (and ignoring others) to tell the story they desired. The author cites all kinds of worrying texts and actions from Gisele Fetterman:
But it wasn’t just staffers who were upset. There was also Fetterman’s wife, Gisele, who had become something of a political celebrity in her own right: She is a kindhearted philanthropist (the proprietor of a “free store” in Braddock that gave away goods and clothing), a formerly undocumented immigrant from Brazil, and a vocal progressive. In early November, just weeks after the [Hamas] attack, Gisele arrived at her husband’s Senate office and, according to a staffer present, they got into a heated argument.
“[The Israelis] are bombing refugee camps. How can you support this?” the staffer recalled her saying with tears in her eyes.
“That’s all propaganda,” Fetterman replied.
A few days later, Gisele texted a different staffer: “I am at breaking point and I can’t co-sign this any longer. Id love some help in language to separate myself from this. Can anyone help me?”
One former staffer recalled overhearing Gisele on speakerphone that December saying to Fetterman, “Who did I marry? Where is the man I married?”
Yet again, after highlighting all kinds of “troubling” behavior, the author sandwiched Gisele’s complete and total DENIAL over 40 paragraphs down, sticking it in between a pair of other quotes:
In our conversation, Fetterman downplayed any supposed arguments with Gisele, telling me that she “has her own voice” and that he would never try to change her views, even if they differed from his. “I think that’s very common in political marriage,” he said. In a statement, Gisele suggested [Adam] Jentleson [Fetterman’s ex-chief of staff] was part of a conspiracy to damage her husband’s reputation, saying Jentleson fed her “scary, untrue stories about John’s health.” She added, “I would talk to John’s doctors about what Adam was telling me and they would be confused. Those doctors would tell me that their concerns were not with John, but with Adam. Any alleged ‘concerns’ heard from me came straight from those lies, not from John’s doctors or my own eyes.” In response, Jentleson said, “I stand by everything I said, and I hope Senator Fetterman gets the help he needs.”
Another oddity: most D.C. journalists will break different people’s quotes into different paragraphs. What this author did violates AP format:
Give full quotes a full paragraph. Full quotes get their own paragraph, whether a full sentence or several.
Of course, by sandwiching Gisele’s denial between a pair of quotes (and letting Jentleson have the last word), it weakened its impact. That was a very curious editorial decision, eh?
No matter: liberals feel betrayed and want vengeance. Fetterman’s hometown paper has decided he’s too conservative, and demanded his resignation. And with the ammo provided by this hit piece, the drumbeat for Fetterman to resign will only grow.
It’s the structure of this story that’s most troubling: the author front-loaded the allegations, gossip, and rumors, and hid the most relevant rebuttals — which came directly from Mr. and Mrs. Fetterman! — towards the end. There are many ways to tell this story, and they chose a path where the only sane and rational conclusion is… John Fetterman must resign.
I don’t know the truth about Fetterman’s mental health. None of us do. The hypocrisy of a party that long insisted Joe Biden was “as sharp as a tack” notwithstanding, it’s obvious that liberals are less concerned about the quality of Fetterman’s mind than the reality of his votes.
Look, he’s a guy in a purple state that went for Trump in 2024. It would be politically smart for him to hug a few moderate positions. The author even noted that Fetterman’s stance on Israel hasn’t changed whatsoever:
In the days after the October 7 attack, Israel declared war and retaliated with brute force, killing Hamas forces as well as thousands of civilians. In the U.S., progressives began calling for a cease-fire to at least pause the carnage. Fetterman felt differently. “Now is not the time to talk about a cease-fire,” he posted on October 18. “We must support Israel in efforts to eliminate the Hamas terrorists who slaughtered innocent men, women, and children.”
If his base was surprised by this, perhaps they hadn’t been paying enough attention. While Israel had not been a prominent issue in his various campaigns, Fetterman had been talking about his support for the country for years. “I’m not really a progressive in that sense,” he said while campaigning in 2022. “There is no daylight between myself and these kinds of unwavering commitments to Israel’s security.” Still, it wasn’t until October 7 that it became clear Fetterman was the most outspoken Israel hawk in his party, offering constant and unconditional support for the military action in Gaza.
Which is why John Fetterman is now the most hated Democrat amongst Democratic voters, and is facing a political coup.
This is a dirty, disgusting story, and one of the cruelest political attacks in recent American history. Back in 2022, the Democrats thought they had the best of both worlds when they nominated a sick, injured man to the Senate, because they assumed he’d be under their control — and would always vote however they instructed. That was supposed to be the tradeoff for their “kindness” and “compassion.”
Turns out, John Fetterman has thoughts and opinions of his own.
The coup is now underway.
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