One of the keys to Democratic control of the Senate is an undeniable disaster.
That’s the unacknowledged message that comes through from a CBS interview with Sen. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania, where Fetterman can’t sustain eye contact, admits to being confused about whether he actually won November’s election, and altogether sounds as self-pitying as Prince Harry.
And not even CBS’s creative editing could make him look good.
Check out the preview below.
Six weeks after entering Walter Reed National Military Medical Center for inpatient treatment for depression, Sen. @JohnFetterman shares his struggle with depression, his health, and more in an intimate interview with Jane Pauley this “Sunday Morning.” pic.twitter.com/3o2926I48B
— CBS Sunday Morning (@CBSSunday) March 31, 2023
In his first interview since leaving Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, where he was treated for depression, Fetterman’s inability to keep his eyes forward is an indication that he’s constantly reading from a captioning screen, translating interviewer Jane Pauley’s questions and possibly even cuing him on his own answers.
The camera work is clever, but not nearly clever enough to hide what’s really happening.
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And that was just the preview — presumably the interview moments that showed Fetterman at his best.
The actually interview as it aired is much worse. A patched-together puff job by propagandists trying to convince the country that the junior senator from Pennsylvania is on the job, despite his debilitating depression.
It doesn’t work. The 10-minute segment is packed with filler footage and photos from Fetterman’s healthier days, before the stroke in May 2022 that deeply diminished his physical and mental capacity, but did not prevent him from winning the Democratic primary. (The party that has President Joe Biden in the White House is nothing if not consistent.)
It might be trying to provide the illusion that he’s the striding, confident, hoodie-and-shorts-favoring former small-town mayor of Democratic dreams, but the real message to anyone watching honestly is that the man being interviewed by Pauley is simply not fit for work in the Senate — or, seriously, anywhere that relies on a clear head and solid judgment.
The whole interview can be viewed below, and it’s clear how rarely Fetterman’s eyes are actually visible for any extended length of time. But that isn’t even the worst of it.
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What’s worse is that it shows not only what a physical wreck Fetterman is, but the lengths an establishment news network is willing to go to pimp its profession for political purposes.
When she isn’t sounding like a nurse at an assisted living home coaxing a patient through lunch, Pauley’s attempts to push Fetterman into a feel-good story verge on the cruel. Near the end of the interview, Fetterman visibly choked up, recalling that the day he entered Walter Reed was also his son’s 14th birthday.
“I hope that for the rest of his life, his birthday would be joyous, and he won’t have to remember that your father was admitted,” Fetterman said gravely.
“Oh, but wait,” Pauley answered, sounding like a weirdly cheerful Nurse Ratched. “This is where your renewal began. His birthday is a day for both of you to celebrate!”
(Pause for a second, and try to imagine any establishment media personality saying anything similar to Sen. Ted Cruz, or Rand Paul, or Tim Scott — or any Senate Republican not named Mitt Romney.)
A normal viewer couldn’t buy that. Not even Fetterman seemed to buy it.
“That’s a good way to look at it,” he said, again with his eyes not even close to meeting Pauley’s.
Eventually, after suspiciously timed editing cuts, CBS showed him saying, “I’m looking forward to doing that.”
From the context, the implication is that he’s looking forward to viewing his hospitalization the way Pauley described, but given the editing, he could have been talking about literally anything he might be looking forward to doing at some point.
“You seem … hopeful,” Pauley said near the end of the interview, a conclusion no one who’d watched the preceding 10 minutes of video would have reached.
“For the first time, yeah,” Fetterman said, again with suspiciously timed editing cuts making mincemeat of his answer. “It’s a strange feeling for me to have.”
Appallingly, Paul closed the interview by asking the shattered hulk of a mental case in front of her if he has “aspirations … [to] serve beyond the United States Senate?
Fetterman’s response was appealingly modest.
“My aspiration is to take my son to the restaurant that we were supposed to go during the birthday but couldn’t because I had to check myself in for depression,” he said. “And to be the kind of dad, the kind of husband … and the kind of senator that Pennsylvania deserves.”
Well, if nothing else, Fetterman will fulfill that last goal to a T.
Considering the fact that the stroke damaged his mental faculties, it’s tough to blame Fetterman for staying in the race for Senate. (In fact, it would be easy to feel sorry for him if he weren’t a dyed-in-the-wool Democrat who has gone cheerfully along as his party has gotten ever more insanely leftist.)
But his supposedly loving wife surely knew what toll it was taking. The Pennsylvania and national Democratic Party insiders who would rather win a Senate race than worry about their leading candidate’s long-term health can surely shoulder some responsibility.
But it was Pennsylvania Democrats in the end who chose Fetterman to represent them in the Senate, despite his obvious mental deficiencies that were on such devastating display during his debate against Republican candidate Mehmet Oz in October.
In Fetterman, the Democrats who turned out for the midterms are getting exactly the senator they deserve — mentally inept, personally troubled, and utterly hopeless to advance the state’s interests. (He can barely hear an argument, much less make one.)
Unfortunately, those same Democrats have gifted the Biden White House with a 51st Senate vote, a one-vote majority that does nothing but benefit the diseased progressive agenda.
As to potentially higher office, if Pauley is proposing an occasionally incoherent, cognitively challenged, interminable liability to hold power in the Oval Office, she can spare us.
We’ve not only seen that act unfold in real time, we’re watching it now.
Even John Fetterman’s eyes should be able to see that.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.