DAVID MARCUS: Yep, it's Fetterman's brain that triggered the Left's hit piece
In 2022, when John Fetterman had a stroke while he was running for his Senate seat, the Democrats and their media allies were insistent that to even question his fitness to serve was ableist and unacceptable.
My, how times have changed.
This week, New York magazine, as reliable a Democrat organ as there is, ran a scathing hit piece on Fetterman in which current and former staffers all but suggest that not only should he not be Pennsylvania’s senior senator, he belongs in an assisted living facility.
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The piece has no "gotcha" moment that would make any fair person say that Fetterman needs to step aside - you know, the kind former President Biden provided daily. Rather, it is a collection of anecdotes about him snapping at staff, or withdrawing into himself, perhaps not taking his medication. Try as they might, the folks at New York magazine constructed a molehill, not a mountain.
But why, one wonders, two years after waiving away similar behavior is a liberal news outlet suddenly parading the senator’s alleged diminished capacities? What changed?
Well, the article itself gives us a big hint with this line, "The endless fights over Israel, which saw Fetterman draw further into himself, coincided with setbacks in his recovery regimen."
You don’t say.
Allow me to humbly suggest that this is not, in fact, a coincidence. Fetterman’s strong support of Israel, America’s ally, and his other recent moderate positions have placed a giant target on the back of his hoodie sweatshirt.
Condemning Israel’s defensive war against Hamas is just one of the progressive shibboleths that Fetterman refuses to mindlessly repeat, but it may be the most important one. After all, according to progressives, he is supporting genocide.
Likewise, his completely sane and rational position that not every utterance of President Donald Trump needs to be met with setting one’s hair on fire completely contradicts Democrats’ claims that Trump has already begun ushering in autocratic fascism.
It’s honestly kind of amusing that one of the only Democrats who isn’t driven completely insane by Trump is the one they say is mentally unfit.
It is also pretty astounding that this yellow journalism appeared just days after the White House Correspondents Dinner, where the press gently acknowledged their failure to cover Biden’s very real unfitness for the White House.
Now, they would have us believe that they have seen the error of the ways, learned their lesson and are willing and able to expose Fetterman. We are just not supposed to notice that they wanted Biden in office and clearly do not want Fetterman in office.
It's not journalistic bravery to run a bunch of smears from staffers who are angry that their boss refuses to be a card-carrying member of the anti-Trump resistance. It's just a hack job.
Conservatives have been pleased by, but also somewhat wary of, Fetterman’s flirtations with centrism. For example, we saw that after taking heat for sitting down to meet then-Defense Secretary nominee Pete Hegseth, he still voted against him.
So, it's not even actual votes that have turned Fetterman into a persona non grata in lefty circles; it really is only his rhetoric.
And that is what really matters here. Fetterman’s crimes are a violation of the progressive worldview, not of any party platform. It isn’t enough for him to caucus and vote with them, he must also uphold their undying disdain for Israel and all things Trump.
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Former Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, who was once also a Democrat with an independent streak that led her out of the party, hit the nail on the head, posting on X, "I wish I was surprised anyone would publish an obvious vendetta." We all wish we were surprised.
The big winner in all this is pretty clearly the Republicans. The more mud that the far left of the Democratic Party hurls at members with common sense ideas like Israel has a right to defend itself, or men shouldn’t play women’s sports, the more wacky and out of touch the party appears to Americans.
The final takeaway that should not be lost regarding this ridiculous hit piece is that it once again shows how impotent the liberal media has become.
Ten years ago, this story would have shaken Capitol Hill to its core, leading to calls for Fetterman to step down. They might even have gotten his smooth scalp. But not anymore. It's just noise now and nobody knows what, if any of it, is true.
Nice try, New York magazine, but everyone sees right through this, and Sen. John Fetterman isn’t going anywhere.