Pennsylvania Sen. John Fetterman on Monday said he’s still got President Biden’s back in the 2024 election despite their public disagreement over an arms pause on US-supplied weapons to Israel.
“He is my guy. He is the president, and he is gonna win,” the Democrat said at an unrelated event declaring federal funds for the police department in Wilkinsburg, which was reported by the outlet TribLive.com.
“Criticizing is not the same as talking about walking away or being uncommitted,” Fetterman said, hitting critics to Biden’s left who have pledged to not cast ballots for him in November. “That is dangerous, and you are wearing your own MAGA hat if you do that.”
But the pol said he and Biden would still “agree to disagree” on the withheld weapons shipments to Israel.
Fetterman’s comments came as a New York Times/Siena College/Philadelphia Inquirer poll found former President Donald Trump leading Biden in a head-to-head matchup by 3 percentage points in the Keystone State among both registered and likely general election voters.
The survey showed that the presumptive Republican nominee was beating his Democratic opponent in Pennsylvania and four of the other six critical swing states: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan and Nevada.
The towering Pennsylvania senator acknowledged the race was “going to be close.
“You have a choice between having a president doing all sorts of important things moving our nation forward, and the other one is in a trial hanging out and talking about bribing a porn star in New York,” he said, referring to Trump’s hush-money trial in Manhattan. “It has always been a very stark choice, and it is going to be very close.”
Fetterman, 54, has publicly disagreed with Biden’s actions throughout the seven-months-long war between Israel and Hamas, calling the president’s decision last week to withhold a shipment of bombs and artillery shells for Israel “deeply disappointing.”
The senator has backed unconditional arms shipments to Israel since Hamas’ Oct. 7 massacre of 1,200 Israelis, mostly civilians, and 33 US citizens.
Biden, 81, in an interview with CNN on Wednesday, warned that his administration would withhold precision bombs from the Israeli military if it went ahead with a planned invasion of Rafah, a stronghold of Hamas terrorists in the southern Gaza Strip.
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin confirmed earlier that day that the shipment had been “paused” — despite its inclusion in a $17 billion military aid package for Israel passed by Congress in April.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the next day in a video message that avoided naming Biden directly: “If we have to stand alone, we will stand alone.”
On Friday, more than two dozen House Democrats slammed Biden’s decision, saying it “only emboldens our mutual enemies, including Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, and other Iranian-backed proxies.”
“Stalling these shipments will allow terror groups to continue stealing humanitarian aid, ultimately putting innocent Palestinians at even greater risk,” the 26 Democratic lawmakers wrote in a letter to National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan.
“When we abandon these duties, we leave a vacuum of American leadership for our anti-democratic adversaries to fill,” they added.
In a Monday White House press briefing, Sullivan told reporters that military assistance to the Jewish state was “continuing” while only 2,000 pound bombs had been paused “because we do not believe they should be dropped in densely populated cities.”
The Hamas-controlled Ministry of Health in Gaza has recorded more than 35,000 Palestinian deaths in the fighting, without distinguishing between terrorists and civilians.
A United Nations spokesperson confirmed on Monday that only 24,686 deaths “have been fully identified,” a little more than half of whom are women and children.