It’s indeed sad that Sen. John Fetterman is the gift that keeps on giving.
Fetterman, of course, suffered a stroke the day before Pennsylvania’s Democratic senatorial primary in 2022; it only became apparent much later on the campaign trail how seriously the stroke affected him. That part, of course, is anything but funny and shouldn’t be treated as a present.
The man was clearly unfit for office and, had a large number of mail-in ballots not been cast before his televised debate with Republican candidate Dr. Mehmet Oz, one would guess he’d be back in Pennsylvania, convalescing — as well he should be.
The problem is that Fetterman wasn’t particularly competent or mannered before he got elected to office. After spending years complaining about the supposedly indecorous behavior of one Donald J. Trump, Fetterman, one of the Democratic Party’s up-and-comers, looks and acts like a “Street Fighter II” character and treats the office he holds with roughly the same gravity.
His prior resumé for the position was being mayor of a small Pennsylvania town, which was not a success, and then the lieutenant governorship of Pennsylvania, which is essentially a toothless gig. Before then, he’d barely held any kind of real job in the private sector and lived off an allowance from his parents until well into his 40s.
Thus, stroke or no stroke, you get the feeling he would have been acting … well, very much like John Fetterman has during his short time in the Senate, although perhaps slightly more coherent. And, from the look of things, his aides have a hard time telling whether the behavior in question is Fetterman being cognitively impaired, Fetterman being Fetterman, or whether there’s even a difference — as we discovered Tuesday.
Earlier in the day, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy directed House committees to open an impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden and whether the alleged “Big Guy” played a role in his son’s shady business dealings.
“House Republicans have uncovered serious and credible allegations into President Biden’s conduct. Taken together, these allegations paint a picture of a culture of corruption,” said McCarthy, a California Republican, in remarks to reporters at the Capitol, according to the New York Post.
“Through our investigations, we have found that President Biden did lie to the American people about his own knowledge of his family’s foreign business dealings,” he continued.
Is Fetterman fit to serve in the United States Senate?
Yes: 0% (0 Votes)
No: 100% (5 Votes)
“Eyewitnesses have testified that the president joined on multiple phone calls and had multiple interactions. Dinners resulted in cars and millions of dollars into his sons and his son’s business partners.”
This provoked a whole spate of Democratic responses, as you might imagine, but none as predictably Fetterman-esque as, well, John Fetterman’s, posted to Twitter by NBC News congressional correspondent Liz Brown-Kaiser.
The Pennsylvania senator — as usual, wearing clothes that wouldn’t even pass for dress-down Friday at Target — was caught by a reporter in a congressional corridor after McCarthy’s announcement.
He was with another individual, identified by The New Republic as one of Fetterman’s aides — who was wearing a suit, it must be noted; given that bosses usually set the sartorial standards for an office environment, you would have expected the aide to be wearing dirty boxers and a ripped Guns ‘n’ Roses T-shirt.
“Can I ask you about this news that Speaker McCarthy has formally launched an impeachment inquiry?” the reporter asked.
“Oh my God, really?” Fetterman exclaimed, play-acting a backward stumble and putting both his hands on the sides of his head.
“Oh my gosh, it’s devastating,” he continued. “Oooh, don’t do it, please don’t do it.”
The thing is, the aide in the suit clearly wasn’t certain about Fetterman’s response. Watch his reaction between :06 and :11 in this video, in which he doesn’t seem to know whether to smile or call emergency services to deal with a potential stroke:
.@SenFettermanPA reacts to Speaker McCarthy moving forward with a House impeachment inquiry into POTUS…
(Just watch) pic.twitter.com/jg3aeyDW7F
— Liz Brown-Kaiser (@lizbrownkaiser) September 12, 2023
At about 0:11, the poor kids seems to realize that Fetterman was in compos mentis (for Fetterman, anyhow, which is a low bar) and no medical intervention was needed. Rhetorical intervention, however, was administered.
After grabbing Fetterman by the arm as the senator was still in the midst of his “Oooh! Don’t do it!” act and redirecting him toward literally anywhere else, the aide turned and told the reporter they needed “to run back to the office.”
Amazingly, leftist commenters seemed to think this was a win for a senator who has struggled with 1) coherence and 2) the impression he doesn’t take the job quite as seriously as Pennsylvanians deserve.
Those marking this one up as a W started with, um, Fetterman himself.
👻 oooOoooooOooo https://t.co/34cxg8TFUU
— Senator John Fetterman (@SenFettermanPA) September 12, 2023
Well, at least whoever runs Fetterman’s social media account isn’t trying to pass him off as something he isn’t. If only that were a good thing for him.
But then, he wasn’t alone in praising his own weird reaction. Remember I referenced the New Republic’s coverage of the encounter before? Here was the liberal publication’s headline: “John Fetterman’s Reaction to Biden Impeachment Is All We Care About: The Pennsylvania senator captured perfectly how stupid this all is.”
And no, The New Republic didn’t mean to say how perfectly stupid it is that this man is one of 100 senators in the upper chamber of the U.S. Congress. Instead, it apparently thinks Fetterman’s weird, high-school-level sarcasm — so bizarre it seems to have caused an aide to question whether his boss was having a stroke, from the looks of things — is the perfect way to react to an investigation into the millions of dollars that flowed into the Biden family’s coffers during and after his time as vice president — quite a bit of it, from all appearances, doled out solely due to the fact the recipient had the surname Biden.
The New Republic’s writers and editors, apparently, are curiously incurious about why the president lied about not discussing Hunter Biden’s overseas business dealings with him for so long, whether he was “the Big Guy” getting a cut of a business deal in China, or whether he was influencing U.S. policy in return for foreign bribes.
Apparently, Fetterman doesn’t care much, either.
Not that this will be an uncommon reaction, of course. It doesn’t take much to impress The New Republic, which dedicated coverage to praising Sen. Failson of Pennsylvania making a very weird funny.
Fetterman’s aide did not, however, seem quite as amused.
