Remember all the praise that the media heaped on John McCain and other Republicans who veered away from some of the conservative policies of their party? They were hailed as "mavericks." Notice how no such label is ever applied by the media for Democrats who stray from the liberal line.
In fact, in the case of Senator John Fetterman, New York magazine spread the suggestion that such divergences were due to health, specifically mental health issues.
On Friday, we saw this treatment applied to John Fetterman by former Washington Post reporter Ben Terris in "All By Himself." The subtitle gets more specific as to why the angst over Fetterman going maverick on some important issues, "John Fetterman insists he is in good health. But staffers past and present say they no longer recognize the man they once knew."
When John Fetterman was released from Walter Reed hospital in March 2023, Adam Jentleson, then his chief of staff, was proud of his boss for seeking help for what the senator’s office and his doctor had said was a case of clinical depression. His six weeks of inpatient care had been the latest medical setback for the Pennsylvania Democrat, who had had a stroke mere months before being elected to the U.S. Senate in 2022, nearly derailing his campaign against Republican Mehmet Oz.
But a year after his release from the hospital, Fetterman’s behavior had so alarmed Jentleson that he resigned his position. In May 2024, he wrote an urgent letter to David Williamson, the medical director of the traumatic-brain-injury and neuropsychiatry unit at Walter Reed, who had overseen Fetterman’s care at the hospital. “I think John is on a bad trajectory and I’m really worried about him,” the email began. If things didn’t change, Jentleson continued, he was concerned Fetterman “won’t be with us for much longer.”
Some behavioral changes are listed but what really bothers Jentleson (and New York magazine) were the political changes.
Fetterman was, according to Jentleson, avoiding the regular checkups advised by his doctors. He was preoccupied with the social-media platform X, which he’d previously admitted had been a major “accelerant” of his depression.
...A few weeks later, Hamas staged a large-scale terrorist attack against Israel, killing more than a thousand people and kidnapping 250 others.
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.”
...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. Early on in the conflict, 16 of his former campaign staffers wrote a letter — anonymously — saying they found his full-throated support for Israel to be a “gutting betrayal.” Jentleson had taken to defending Fetterman on X from such criticisms, posting, “The thing about being a staffer is that no one elected you to represent them.”
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 attack, Gisele arrived at her husband’s Senate office and, according to a staffer present, they got into a heated argument.
Besides Fetterman's strong support for Israel, he did something unforgivable in the eyes of liberals. He (GASP!) went to Mar-a-Lago to meet with then President-elect Donald Trump:
After Donald Trump won the election, Fetterman did something no other Democratic senator dared to do: He went to Mar-a-Lago. “I didn’t bend any knee; they reached out and invited me,” Fetterman told me. “And if you’re a senator from a critical state and the president would like to have a conversation, that’s part of our responsibility.” Gisele, however, wasn’t so keen on traveling with him.
...Ultimately, Gisele did go, and by all accounts the meeting went smoothly. According to Fetterman, the conversation lasted about 75 minutes and the president was charming, “fully engaged,” and different from the persona you may see on television. “His faculties haven’t slipped at all,” Fetterman told me. “It’s not that I admire it — I acknowledge it, and if you don’t, you do it at your own peril politically.”
Terris said in his talk with Fetterman, he saw no medical cause for alarm:
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.”
So if Terris did not find Fetterman cognitively impaired, why suggest that his maverick political positions are the result of that?