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'Unfit for Office'? Fetterman's Fitness Questioned Amid Reports of Erratic Behavior
"We can agree or disagree on Fetterman's politics," wrote one journalist, "but I don't see how anyone can look at what's happening on a human level... and not think that the best thing for him would be to resign."
May 08, 2025
Following reporting about the behavior of U.S. Sen. John Fetterman—including concerns voiced by current and former staff have concerns about the mental wellbeing of the Democratic lawmaker from Pennsylvania—a growing number of political observers are openly questioning his ability to serve in public office.
A story in New York Magazine last week featuring the concern by staffwas followed by new Associated Pressreporting Thursday, which recounted a recent meeting between Fetterman and representatives from a teachers union that went awry when Fetterman began shouting and asking why "everybody is mad at me."
"Why does everyone hate me, what did I ever do," Fetterman reportedly said, according to someone who was briefed on what had taken place, the AP reported. A staff member ended the meeting and ushered the visitors out, and then broke down crying in the hallway.
Fetterman bested Mehmet Oz, the current head of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, in a race for the U.S. Senate in 2022, despite suffering a stroke while on the campaign trail. In 2023, after being sworn into the Senate, Fetterman checked himself into the hospital to seek treatment for clinical depression, and drew praise for being open about his diagnosis and seeking care.
His standing among progressive supporters has also soured over the past year and a half in part due to his unwavering support for Israel during the country's deadly military campaign in Gaza.
Fetterman was also the only senate Democrat to fly down to Mar-a-Lago and meet with U.S. President Donald Trump following Trump's victory in 2024.
Jeet Heer, the national affairs correspondent for The Nation, reacted to the AP's reporting with expressions of concern and suggested it may be time for the Democrat to step aside.
"We can agree or disagree on Fetterman's politics (I'm not a fan of his shift)," wrote Heer, "but I don't see how anyone can look at what's happening on a human level, to this man and his family, and not think that the best thing for him would be to resign so he can look after himself better."
According to New York Magazine, 14 months after Fetterman's discharge from the hospital, his former chief of staff Adam Jentleson, sent a long email to the medical director who had overseen Fetterman's care, writing that he thought Fetterman was on a "bad trajectory" and sharing concerns that if nothing changed, Fetterman "won't be with us for much longer."
In the email, Jentleson said he was concerned that Fetterman appeared not to be taking his meds, that he was displaying megalomania and conspiratorial thinking, "lying in ways that are painfully, awkwardly obvious to everyone in the room," and engaging in "repetitive and self centered monologues."
To the medical director, Jentleson also detailed that Fetterman had purchased a gun, engaged in a pattern of self isolation, and that he drove his car recklessly to the point that staff would not ride in the car with him.
"Former and current staffers paint a picture of an erratic senator who has become almost impossible to work for and whose mental-health situation is more serious and complicated than previously reported," the magazine reported.
"Jesus," wrote Aaron Regunberg, a progressive policy advocate wrote on social media in response to the reporting," John Fetterman should not be a U.S. Senator."
Jonathan Cohn, another progressive activist, commented on his personal X account that Fetterman was "creating an unsafe environment for his staff and constituents, and that makes him unfit for office."
On Tuesday, speaking to CNN, Fetterman called the article in New York Magazine a "one-source hit piece, and it involved maybe two or three and anonymous disgruntled staffers saying just absolute false things."
Few Democrats have come to Fetterman's aid in the wake of the reporting. There's been increased private talks about primary challenges to Fetterman, perPolitico, and according to the outlet "some Pennsylvania Democrats have begun to quietly review the rules about what would happen if he stepped down and whispered about potential replacements."
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Critics Not Buying Trump's 'She's Not My Type' Dismissal of Latest Sexual Assault Accuser
"She's not my type is not 'I didn't do it."
Jun 25, 2019
"She's not my type."
That was President Donald Trump's dismissive response to just the latest accusation against him alleging a past sexual assault, this time from Elle advice columnist E. Jean Carroll. In a New York Magazine article published on June 21, Carroll described a terrifying encounter from the president in 1994 wherein the then-real estate magnate attacked Carroll and raped her.
Carroll escaped, she recounted, after three minutes.
I try to push him off with my one free hand -- for some reason, I keep holding my purse with the other -- and I finally get a knee up high enough to push him out and off and I turn, open the door, and run out of the dressing room.
Trump, asked about the assault on Monday by The Hill, denied the allegations.
"I'll say it with great respect," said Trump. "Number one, she's not my type. Number two, it never happened. It never happened, okay?"
Carroll's accusations, while serious, did not merit much coverage on the nation's weekend political shows or evenThe New York Times.
As HuffPost reporter Hayley Miller wrote Sunday night, "the allegation went largely undiscussed by major TV networks on Sunday morning, clearing the path for yet another sexual assault allegation against the president to slip into the void."
Miller detailed the failure of television news to handle the accusations as a major news story:
ABC, CBS, CNN, Fox and NBC--the networks that make up the "big five" of Sunday morning talk shows--boasted major political players in their lineups that included Vice President Mike Pence and 2020 Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.).
And yet not a single one of them was asked about Carroll's allegation that, just days earlier, had prompted front-page stories and news alerts from almost all of the major media outlets.
Reaction to the president's comments on Monday from liberals and progressives focused on what Trump's comments said--and didn't say.
"She's not my type is not 'I didn't do it,'" MSNBC analyst Zerlina Maxwell tweeted.
Daily Beast reporter Sam Stein pointed out that Trump could have denied the accusations in a number of ways that would have emphasized the president's rejection of sexual assault and mistreatment of women--but he didn't.
\u201cAmong the answers Trump could have given to the Jean Carroll accusations are, \u201care you kidding? I would never do that.\u201d Or \u201crape is abhorrent. I\u2019m disgusted someone could think I\u2019d do such a thing. Let alone accuse me of it." \n\nInstead he went with, \u201cshe\u2019s not my type"\u201d— Sam Stein (@Sam Stein) 1561426500
Actress and vocal Trump critic Zandy Hartig, meanwhile, took to Twitter to make the connection between Trump's comments and their implications more explicit.
"Defending himself by saying, 'She's not my type,' is admitting that he assaults women who ARE his type," wrote Hartig. "Like his ex-wife, for example."
In an interview with CNN's Anderson Cooper on Monday night, Carroll said that the president's response to her was par for the course.
"He's denied all 15 women who have come forward. He denies," said Carroll. "He turns it around. He threatens and he attacks."
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The Return of Lesser Evilism
With Trump on the other side, Democrats can be lazier than ever this election
Jun 22, 2016
Jonathan Chait of New York magazine wrote a column about Ralph Nader earlier this week using interesting language. Noting that it's now been 16 years since Nader ran for president and garnered enough dissenting votes to help elect George W. Bush, he wrote (emphasis mine):
"That is enough time for Nader to confess his role in enabling one of the most disastrous presidencies in American history, or at least to come up with a better explanation for his decision. Instead, Nader has repeated his same litany of evasions, most recently in an interview with Jeremy Hobson on WBUR, where he dismissed all criticisms of his 2000 campaign as 'fact deprived.'"
Nader refuses to confess! What is this, the Spanish Inquisition? Fetch the comfy chair!
It would be foolish to argue that Nader's run in 2000 didn't enable Bush's presidency. Though there were other factors, Nader's presence on the ballot was surely a big one.
But the career Democrats of the Beltway and their buddies in the press have turned the Nader episode into something very like the creation story of the Third Way political movement. And like many religious myths, it's gotten very tiresome.
The Democratic Party leaders have trained their followers to perceive everything in terms of one single end-game equation: If you don't support us, you're supporting Bush/Rove/Cheney/Palin/Insert Evil Republican Here.
That the monster of the moment, Donald Trump, is a lot more monstrous than usual will likely make this argument an even bigger part of the Democratic Party platform going forward.
It's a sound formula for making ballot-box decisions, but the people who push it never seem content to just use it to win elections. They're continually trying to make an ethical argument out of it, to prove people who defy The Equation are, whether they know it or not, morally wrong and in league with the other side.
Beltway Democrats seem increasingly to believe that all people who fall within a certain broad range of liberal-ish beliefs owe their votes and their loyalty to the Democratic Party.
That's why, as a socially liberal person who probably likes trees and wouldn't want to see Roe v. Wade overturned, Nader's decision to take votes from the party-blessed candidate Gore is viewed not as dissent, but as a kind of treason.
The problem with this line of thinking is that there's no end to it. If you think I owe you my vote because I recycle and enjoyed To Kill a Mockingbird, you're not going to work very hard to keep it. That's particularly true if the only standard you think you need to worry about is not being worse than Donald Trump, which is almost the same as no standard at all.
This is why the thinking within the Democratic Party has gotten so flabby over the years. It increasingly seems to rejoice in its voters' lack of real choices, and relies on a political formula that requires little input from anyone outside the Beltway.
It's heavily financed by corporate money, and the overwhelming majority of its voters would never cast a vote for the nut-bar God-and-guns version of Republicanism that's been their sole opposition for decades.
So the party gets most of its funding without having to beg for it door to door, and it gets many of its votes by default. Except for campaign-trail photo ops, mainstream Democrats barely need to leave Washington to stay in business.
Still, the Democratic Leadership Council wing of the Democrats have come to believe they've earned their status, by being the only plausible bulwark against the Republican menace.
This sounds believable because party officials and pundits like Chait keep describing critics of the party as far-leftists and extremists, whose platform couldn't win a national election.
Dissenting voices like this year's version of Nader, Bernie Sanders, are inevitably pitched as quixotic egotists who don't have the guts to do what it takes to win. They're described as just out for 15 minutes of fame, and maybe a few plaudits from teenagers and hippies who'll gush over their far-out idealism.
But that characterization isn't accurate. The primary difference between the Nader/Sanders platform and the Gore/Clinton platform isn't rooted in ideology at all, but money.
The former camp refuses to be funded by the Goldmans and Pfizers of the world, while the latter camp embraces those donors. That's really all this comes down to. There's nothing particularly radical about not taking money from companies you think you might need to regulate someday. And there's nothing particularly centrist or "realistic" about taking that same money.
When I think about the way the Democrats and their friends in the press keep telling me I owe them my vote, situations like the following come to mind. We're in another financial crisis. The CEOs of the ten biggest banks in America, fresh from having wrecked the economy with the latest harebrained bubble scheme, come to the Oval Office begging for a bailout.
In that moment, to whom is my future Democratic president going to listen: those bankers or me?
It's not going to be me, that's for sure. Am I an egotist for being annoyed by that? And how exactly should I take being told on top of that that I still owe this party my vote, and that I should keep my mouth shut about my irritation if I don't want to be called a Republican-enabler?
The collapse of the Republican Party and its takeover by the nativist Trump wing poses all sorts of problems, not the least of which being the high likelihood that the Democrats will now get even lazier when it comes to responding to their voters' interests. The crazier the Republicans get, the more reflexive will be the arguments that we can't afford any criticism of Democrats anymore, lest we invite in the Fourth Reich.
I didn't vote for Nader in 2000, and I don't have a problem with anyone arguing this coming Election Day that we shouldn't all do whatever we can to keep Donald Trump out of office.
What's problematic is the way Beltway media types are forever turning postmortems on the candidacies of people like Nader or Sanders into parables about the perils of voting your conscience when what we're really talking about is the party's unwillingness to untether itself from easy money. This is how Chait sums up Nader (again, emphasis mine):
"Nader goes on to defend his idiosyncratic belief that people are under no obligation to consider real-world impacts in their voting behavior. Vote for a third-party candidate, write in a candidate, follow your own conscience: 'I think voters in a democracy should vote for anybody they want, including write in or even themselves. I don't believe in any kind of reprimand of voters who stray from the two-party tyranny.'
"Why should people vote for candidates at all? Since, by definition, the person we most closely agree with is ourselves, why not just write your own name in every time?"
Ugh. Hey, Jonathan: Voters don't want candidates who agree with them about everything. They just want one who isn't going to completely take them for granted. If that's become too much to ask, maybe there's something wrong with the Democratic Party, not people like Ralph Nader or Bernie Sanders.
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