Sen. John Fetterman, D-Pa., is distancing himself from the name calling rhetoric associated with America’s enemies during World War II.
“If you want a Democrat that’s going to call people Nazis or fascists or all these kinds of thing, well, I’m not going to be that guy,” the Pennsylvania senator told Fox News host Maria Bartiromo in a Sunday interview.
Fetterman also expressed that becoming a Republican was still off the table.
“No, I’m not going to switch, but I’m just going to be an independent voice in the Democratic Party,” Fetterman told Bartiromo.
The Sunday comments come after Fetterman also urged on X a lowering of the political temperature.
“Unchecked extreme rhetoric, like labels as Hitler or fascist, will foment more extreme outcomes. Political violence is always wrong—no exceptions. We must all turn the temperature down,” Fetterman wrote.
His statement on the social media platform also referenced an Axios report on a new study, which found that 2025 marked, “the first time in more than 30 years that left-wing attacks outnumber those from the far right,” in the United States.
Over the past several years, rhetoric about President Donald Trump by his Democrat opponents would sometimes veer into allegations that he was a danger to democracy.
For example, in a speech given in July 2016, then-presidential candidate Hillary Clinton said, “This man [Trump] is the nominee of the party of Lincoln. We are watching it become the party of Trump, and that’s not just a huge loss for our democracy, it is a threat to it.”
“We saved democracy in 2020, and now we must save it again in 2024,” then-President Joe Biden said at the Democratic National Convention last year.
Biden’s former presidential campaign also did not shy away from comparing Trump’s speech to the infamous leaders of two of the Axis Powers.
“He’s [Trump] going to echo the rhetoric of Hitler and Mussolini, and we’re going to make sure that people understand just how serious that is every single time,” the communications director for the Biden campaign argued in December 2023.
During the 2024 presidential campaign then-Vice President Kamala Harris explicitly told Anderson Cooper during a CNN town hall she thought Trump was a fascist.
The WWII referencing rhetoric has also been employed by members of Congress. Rep. Jasmine Crockett, D-Texas, has described Trump as a “Temu Hitler” that “thinks that he is going to become the dictator of the United States.” Temu is an online shopping marketplace for discounted goods.
“Donald Trump is America’s Hitler,” Rep. Eric Swalwell, D-Calif., said at a political protest in June.
Recently, California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s press office extended the name calling to a member of Trump’s inner circle, posting on X “STEPHEN MILLER IS A FASCIST!” referring to the White House deputy chief of staff.
The move to brand Miller with the term comes after the phrase “Hey, fascist! Catch!” was found on a bullet casing tied to the alleged shooter of conservative activist Charlie Kirk.
Fetterman’s comments on Sunday are not the first time he has sought to combat violence tied to political causes. He previously criticized the Los Angeles riots in June that broke out over the enforcement of immigration law by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
“My party loses the moral high ground when we refuse to condemn setting cars on fire, destroying buildings, and assaulting law enforcement,” Fetterman noted on X at the time.
The Pennsylvania Democrat also reiterated in his Sunday interview with Bartiromo his support for the state of Israel.
“And this truth right now, it’s firmly on Israel through this. And it’s also always wrong to shut our government down,” Fetterman said, “And that’s where my voice is and if that puts me as an outlier, that’s where I am.”
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