John Fetterman keeps bashing his own party on Fox News and calling it courage.
A bombshell Wall Street Journal report just made that act a lot harder to pull off.
And the CNN panel that followed produced a moment nobody in the Democrat Party is going to enjoy watching.
What Happened on CNN NewsNight
CNN host Abby Phillip recently asked Republican strategist Tim Parrish a pointed question: “Do you want him?” — meaning Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA), the Democrat who has spent recent months making Fox News his second home while publicly trashing his own party at every turn.
Parrish’s answer was blunt. “Uh, no,” he said. “He is where he’s supposed to be. Millions of Pennsylvanians voted for him.”
Parrish went on to note that Pennsylvania already has a Republican voice in the Senate in Sen. Dave McCormick (R-PA), which made the whole question of whether the GOP needs Fetterman even more irrelevant.
Before Phillip got to Parrish, she asked establishment Republican commentator Scott Jennings whether Fetterman ought to be paying more attention to his constituents. Jennings had some advice that sounded reasonable on the surface but landed as a quiet indictment of everything Fetterman has been doing.
“My advice to anyone who gets elected to the U.S. Congress or the Senate is, the number one thing you should spend your time on? Tending to your constituents, the people,” Jennings said. “The members in either party that have the best constituent services, those are the ones that tend to get reelected and remain popular even in turbulent times. That’s true for a long time. And it’s true right now.”
Jennings also said he had admired what he called Fetterman’s backbone. “I frankly have admired how Fetterman has shown backbone,” he said. “He stands up to this angry mob that runs the Democratic Party.”
But there’s a reason Jennings’ praise of Fetterman should be taken with a grain of salt. Jennings is a former operative for George W. Bush and Mitch McConnell — the same McConnell he has publicly called his mentor. After January 6, Jennings called the participants “domestic terrorists” who “ought to be treated like any other terrorist uprising with the full force and fury of the US government” and said Trump was “practically and morally responsible” for what happened that day. His current posture as a Trump defender on CNN represents a reinvention, not a long-held conviction. His praise of Fetterman’s supposed courage fits that same pattern — it’s the kind of thing that sounds principled until you look at the record behind it.
The Wall Street Journal Report That Started It All
The CNN segment was triggered by a Wall Street Journal report that painted a picture of a senator more interested in television appearances than in the people who sent him to Washington.
According to the report, Fetterman told staff he was too sick to meet with a group of paralyzed veterans who had come to his office. He arrived after they had already left. He then proceeded to do a Fox News interview about Israel and the war in Iran.
In another episode, when an aide told Fetterman that the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia wanted to meet with him to discuss Medicaid cuts, his alleged response was dismissive. “I’m convinced they just want free trips to DC,” he reportedly said.
The Journal cited more than a dozen former staffers and lawmakers in its account of Fetterman’s indifference to basic Senate responsibilities. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) had already called Fetterman’s Fox News appearances a “sad state of affairs.” The Journal report made the picture considerably worse.
Mike Nellis, a former adviser to Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign, was also on the CNN panel and didn’t exactly rush to Fetterman’s defense. “You can have him, frankly,” Nellis told the panel. “I’ll make you a deal. We’ll swap out [Mitch] McConnell and Fetterman.”
Nellis then cut to what he believed was the real reason Republicans have been so publicly warm toward Fetterman. “You guys want him because he embarrasses us,” he told Jennings.
That’s a fair read. Republicans have every incentive to keep Fetterman exactly where he is — inside the Democrat Party, wearing their jersey, and airing their dirty laundry on cable television.
The Fetterman Charade and What It Actually Means
Here is what the media coverage of Fetterman almost never says plainly: he is not a moderate. He is a reliable Democrat vote who supports abortion on demand, gun control, amnesty for illegal aliens, and transgender surgeries for children. His term runs through 2028, and he is up for reelection in what is shaping up to be a competitive Pennsylvania race. Every Fox News hit, every shot at the progressive wing of his party, every gym-shorts appearance next to a Republican colleague is part of a calculated effort to survive that election in a state that has been trending toward President Trump.
The constituent service problem documented by the Journal cuts against that strategy in a serious way. Pennsylvanians who might otherwise be willing to give Fetterman credit for talking like a moderate are now reading about a senator who stood up paralyzed veterans to go on television. That’s not a good look in any state, let alone one where Trump has been building real electoral strength.
And the fact that the best defense Democrats could muster on CNN was “you can have him” tells you something about where Fetterman actually stands with his own party right now.
Jennings’ observation that constituent service is the key to political survival was accurate as far as it goes. But it missed the larger point. Fetterman’s problem isn’t just that he skipped meetings. It’s that the entire moderate act is built on a foundation his voting record doesn’t support. When the votes that actually matter come up — on spending, on abortion, on the issues that define the left-wing agenda — Fetterman has been there for the Democrat Party. The Fox News appearances are theater. The votes are real.
Pennsylvania Republicans already have Sen. Dave McCormick. They don’t need Fetterman. And Democrats who thought his Fox News tour was a clever strategy to hold onto a purple state seat are now watching that strategy get complicated by a senator who apparently couldn’t make time for veterans but could always find a slot for a television interview.
The 2028 reelection math just got harder. And no amount of cable news appearances is going to paper over a Wall Street Journal report citing more than a dozen sources who watched it happen up close.
Source: Mediaite, “Do You Want Him? CNN’s Abby Phillip Asks GOP Strategist if He’d Take Fetterman off Democrats’ Hands”