"Too weak and feeble." Those are the words once used by the Republican Party to describe John Fetterman after he suffered a stroke in 2022.
The NRSC called him "a whiny coward." Dr. Oz's campaign offered to let him use a bathroom break during the debate, as though he were a patient, not a candidate.
Today, Fetterman is the only Democrat voting to fund the Department of Homeland Security, the only one calling out his party's obstruction by name, and he now has a higher approval rating among Republicans than some members of the party.
They said he couldn't handle the job. Turns out, he's the only one on the left who is actually doing his job.
In May 2022, John Fetterman suffered a stroke. This was horrible, and it should have disqualified him from running for office on a humanitarian angle alone.
That is not a statement being made because of opposing ideologies, but rather one of compassion. This man should have been recovering, not running for office and having a massive spotlight shone on him at this time of his life.
Fetterman openly admitted that during this time, he was in a very dark place. While he did not contemplate suicide, he was welcoming death.
During an interview with Time, Fetterman stated:
“I didn’t think I could be fixed. If the doctor said, oh, by the way, you have six months left, I would have been like, OK, whatever. That’s how bleak it was.”
Politics being what it is, Dr. Mehmet Oz, his election opponent, and the Republican Party went into attack mode to turn voters against Fetterman due to his medical condition. For instance, the Oz campaign offered to "pay for medical personnel, permit bathroom breaks," and to allow for an "earpiece" during the debate. This was not Oz having a heart; it was making sure everyone knew that Fetterman was not 100%.
He was called “whiny,” “feeble,” and “weak.” And during the debate, as Fetterman noted in its aftermath, Dr. Oz continuously brought up the stroke. After the debate, even Democrats were aghast at why Fetterman agreed to go up on that stage. One lawmaker, according to an Axios report, stated:
"Why the hell did Fetterman agree to this? This will obviously raise more questions than answers about John's health."
Fetterman was angry in the aftermath, but also inspired to keep moving forward, stating:
"I had a stroke. He's never let me forget that. And I might miss some words during this debate, mush two words together, but it knocked me down and I'm going to keep coming back up.”
As a journalist, this was a tough time to report because you want to be empathetic to the man’s condition, but you also have to be honest with your readers about his fitness for office. And in that moment, at that time, the man was not fit. Few would argue with that point after seeing him during that debate.
Fetterman obviously won the election, and during the early days of his term, the GOP continued to relentlessly attack him, but that would stop after he took a stance when Hamas invaded Israel in October 2023.
Fetterman, after the attack, declared, “I’m not a progressive.” He was considered a “maverick” by the media and Democrats for supporting a major ally who had just been invaded by a terrorist organization.
Fetterman insisted that while he was a Democrat, there is no way he would betray Israel in this situation. NBC News reported:
"I'm not a progressive. I just think I'm a Democrat that is very committed to choice and other things. But with Israel, I'm going to be on the right side of that."
Over the next few months, Fetterman found himself being attacked by members of his party as well as liberals on the street, but he never wavered.
In May 2024, Fetterman again defended his position, telling the Wall Street Journal:
"I might have a different view on things like Israel, and some other ones. I just consider myself a Democrat that calls balls and strikes."
Fetterman further aggravated his party after Trump won the election, heading down to Mar-a-Lago for a sit-down with the then-president-elect. After Trump took office, Fetterman openly congratulated Trump for working out a peace deal between Israel and Hamas.
Fetterman also called out Democrats for their obsession with Trump, with an agenda that appeared to be that if Trump liked it, they opposed it. This all took a toll on Fetterman’s standing among Democrats.
According to a recent Fox News report, Fetterman’s popularity among Democrats has gone from +68 points to -40 points, a massive 108-point swing in the wrong direction. Yet The Hill reported that Fetterman had a 62% approval rating among Pennsylvania Republicans, higher than some members of the GOP.
The man who was once the hero of the party for his “courage” is now being openly threatened with a primary challenge. In November 2025, Axios reported the news that the party wanted to “oust” Fetterman by primarying him in 2028.
While I have never supported Fetterman’s overall ideology, I have come to respect him simply because he is not caving to party pressure. And, yes, there has been considerable pressure.
For instance, the PA Working Families Party launched a website to attack Fetterman: PrimaryFetterman.com. The site claimed:
"We supported John Fetterman in 2022. Since then, he's sold us out. It's time to replace him."
Democrat strategist James Carville, who, in recent years, has been wrong far more than right, blasted Fetterman during one of his podcasts. Carville stated:
"Can I say a public prayer? John Fetterman, whatever you do, keep your position. Don’t change. We don’t want you. Stay right where you are. Because you’ve been wrong about every (expletive) thing that you’ve ever said, and we don’t want you to break your streak."
Fetterman boldly responded to the attack:
"Jim has been struggling for relevance for the last 30 years now… He acknowledged that he's blinded by TDS. I'm a guy that actually represents Pennsylvania."
Rep. Brendan Boyle (D-PA) called him “Donald Trump’s favorite Democrat” after Fetterman broke with party resistance during the recent confirmation hearing for Markwayne Mullin.
Most of the big players in the Democrat Party are on record opposing a government shutdown, but that is when the GOP was in the minority and blocking funding. Now that the shoe is on the other foot, lawmakers such as Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) are using the shutdown for leverage to get an ICE makeover.
Fetterman, however, has once again stood firm to draw a line in the sand that a shutdown is never a good thing, regardless of who is in office.
The PA Democrat is the only Democrat who has consistently voted in favor of funding DHS, specifically making note that this grandstanding does nothing to ICE because it was funded in the big, beautiful bill (the reconciliation bill passed by Republicans in 2025).
To that point, after yet another failed vote, Fetterman posted a video to X, stating:
“Shutting DHS down has zero impact and zero changes for ICE. ICE already has $75B in funding from the BBB that I did not vote for. But it will hit FEMA, Coast Guard, TSA and our Cybersecurity Agency. As a Democrat, I can’t vote to shut down critical parts of our government.”
This week, after Schumer led yet another block against the GOP-proposed funding, Fetterman appeared to put the fault of the shutdown squarely in the lap of Democrats. According to a News Nation report, he stated:
“Why are we doing this? We just don’t get it. I mean, these are not rich people. They make around $50,000 a year. That should be our wheelhouse. These are the kinds of people that we should be fighting for.”
Fetterman drew a lot of raised eyebrows when he explained his relationship with Mullin, as the two men appear to have formed a friendship. To that point, Fetterman offset Sen. Rand Paul’s (R-KY) “no” vote during committee to advance Mullin’s nomination to the Senate floor.
On the shutdown and working with Mullin moving forward, The Daily Caller reported Fetterman as saying:
"For me, the Democrats are afraid of their base to just tell them, 'Hey, we're gonna do the right thing. We're gonna reopen this.' I will work for the new Secretary Markwayne Mullin. That's why I voted for him. We agree on many, many things about our Homeland Security."
Fetterman also pointed to recent terror attacks in the country as the reason that we need to get DHS reopened, stating:
"Look what happened in Michigan. You had an individual with a connection with Hezbollah. He came driving into the synagogue in Michigan, looking to kill 150 toddlers there. So with all the kinds of security, not just TSA, all of DHS is shut down at that. So that's also our cybersecurity agency."
There have been plenty of calls by people on the right to have Fetterman leave the Democrat Party and become a Republican, but that is not needed. Fetterman is far more useful to the GOP as a Democrat than he would be as a Republican. It is also important to note that when Fetterman was asked about leaving the Democrat Party, he responded, "No, I'm not going to switch."
Fetterman is clearly left of center, but he is middle on enough issues that he helps us expose the hypocrisy of the left while not having to fight him as a Republican who crosses the line on other key issues. This is a huge point that far too many people miss today. He is our ally as a Democrat, but mark my words, he would be called a RINO and attacked if he had an “R” next to his name.
Fetterman’s voice as a dissenter in the Democrat Party is far more powerful than being in the echo chamber. For instance, Fetterman has rejected the calls to defund ICE, and while he would like to see reform, he knows abolishing this agency is a radical move. That carries water with him being a Democrat.
As an example, he was very outspoken after the deaths of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, calling for the end of the Minnesota operation as well as calling for Noem to be fired. At the time, The Hill reported Fetterman as stating:
“DO NOT make the mistake President Biden made for not firing a grossly incompetent DHS Secretary."
Fetterman also agreed that “all of the criminals now that are here in our nation right now” illegally need to be deported. Again, this is a crushing blow to the Democrat Party coming from within.
He has called out his party for moving further left from center, having told CNN:
“They have forgotten one of the reasons why we lost in 2024. Some people think now we have to double down on those things or we must become more progressive or more extreme. That's absolutely not true.”
In a recent report, I noted that this blockage by Democrats was never about ICE. For Schumer, this is about power, optics, and punishing the American people in a way that he can redirect to the Republican Party.
Schumer needs those long lines at TSA checkpoints in airports. He needs Americans who are traveling to be angry because there is currently a Republican sitting in the Oval Office. Democrats feed off anger to both regain and retain power. That is their game plan.
If we go back to 2022 and fast forward to today, how ironic is it that the man Republicans fought ferociously to keep out of office is voting more with the GOP than people like Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) and Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY)?
What made Fetterman change? I get that question a lot, but I don’t really believe that to be the case.
Entertain this thought for a second… rather than really sit down and listen to the man, both sides jumped on a narrative to protect or destroy him during the 2022 cycle.
We knew Fetterman was a prison reform advocate due to his parole recommendations during his time as the Lt. Governor of Pennsylvania, but did anyone ever ask him about his immigration stance or his position on Israel, Iran, or fighting terrorism in general? We, and I include myself in this, attacked him for one policy, just one. Granted, his record on this matter is horrific, but it goes to make my point that he would be considered a traitor as a Republican. It also proves the point that the media often dictates how much or how little we know about a candidate before we head to the polls. That is not the media's fault; that is our fault for not doing our due diligence as we carry out the most important responsibility we have as American citizens.
Democrats will say that Fetterman betrayed their party. Republicans will say he had a change of heart because he could see how the public was turning against radical policies.
Fetterman is a Democrat, period. His party told him to shut up and sit down, and he defied leadership. He not only continued to stand, but he has also grabbed a megaphone to call them all out. If the Democrat Party is ever going to come out of this far-left haze it has wandered into, the best place for John Fetterman is right where he is now… a Democrat.
He is an asset for the GOP, and we need to keep it that way.
