We’re not supposed to care about Pennsylvania Democratic Senate candidate John Fetterman’s recovery from a stroke because we’re being “ableist,” according to some Democrats.
He’ll be fine, we’re told — although his team won’t release his medical records and originally underplayed the seriousness of his condition dramatically. Don’t ask questions, even when he has to conduct an interview via closed captioning.
Not that the closed captioning is because he lost hearing due to the May stroke. According to Fox News, when Fetterman sat down with NBC News’ Dasha Burns, he needed the closed captioning “because he still has lingering auditory processing issues as a result of the stroke, which means he has a hard time understanding what he’s hearing.”
“Now, once he reads the question, he’s able to understand. You’ll hear he also still has some problems, some challenges with speech,” Burns added.
“I’ll say that just in some of the small talk prior to the interview, before the closed captioning was up and running, it did seem that he had a hard time understanding our conversations.”
This hardly sounds minor or reassuring. But we’re told we’re not supposed to care about this, else we’re “ableists.”
As Fox News’ Tucker Carlson noted, however, this sounded a lot like what we heard back during the 2020 campaign, when now-President Joe Biden’s gaffes were passed off as a “childhood stutter” and that anyone who suggested he was cognitively diminished was bullying the man.
Now, it’s clear to anyone who listens to the president that his speech issues have nothing to do with stuttering. It should have been clear then, too, but nobody wanted to raise the issue. Why would anyone take the gamble in the first place, though?
The same reason the Democrats are doubling down on Fetterman, Carlson said on Wednesday: If someone is “flatlining mentally,” they’re easier for party hacks to “control.”
Is John Fetterman unfit for office?
Carlson noted at the top of the commentary that Fetterman “had a bad stroke, and we feel bad about that. Everyone does, but because of that stroke, Fetterman now needs electronic assistance in order to communicate with other people.
“He can’t talk on his own. It’s not a right-wing conspiracy theory,” he said. “It’s not QAnon. It’s real. In fact, it’s so real, his campaign concedes that it’s real. That it’s true. Fetterman uses a software program to understand the words of those around him and to formulate his responses to those words.”
For Pennsylvania voters deciding between Fetterman and GOP nominee Dr. Mehmet Oz, “it does raise some obvious questions. For example, where exactly does the software end and John Fetterman consciousness begin?”
“We don’t know. We can’t know, but it’s obvious that Pennsylvania could very well be sending a computer program to the U.S. Senate, where inevitably it will be hacked.”
Carlson also played part of the interview where Burns pressed him on whether he’d be “able to do this job on day one” and “on the road to full recovery.” Fetterman — who, again, won’t release his health records — pointed to a letter from his doctor.
“I mean, respectfully, that letter from your physician, that was six months ago. Don’t voters deserve to know your status now?” Burns asked.
“Being on, in front of thousands and thousands of people and having interviews and getting around all across Pennsylvania, that gives everybody and the voters decide, you know, if they think that it’s really the issue,” Fetterman responded.
That’s not exactly the most convincing string of words.
And, Carlson noted, “he’s reading that off a screen.”
“And by the way, we’re taking him at his word that there’s not a staffer backstage typing out the answers because he himself can’t formulate them,” he speculated.
“Now, again, you can feel deeply sympathetic to John Fetterman. That’s sad to watch, but this is a guy who wants to run the federal government in a body of 100, the most powerful legislative body in the world, and he wants to be a member of it.”
But point out the obvious — that Fetterman’s health should be an issue — and you would be labeled a bigot, Carlson said.
“As New York City Councilwoman Rita Joseph put it, questions about Fetterman’s profound brain damage are, ‘incredibly ableist,”‘ Carlson noted.
“Ableist? ‘We desperately need more diversity in elected office, and that includes people with speech impediments.’ Well, we desperately need that. That is absolutely right, but actually we’re not talking about a speech impediment.
“She’s telling us he’s got a stutter just like Joe Biden,” he continued. “Remember when they told you that Joe Biden’s dementia was just a stutter? But of course, a speech impediment would not prevent Fetterman or Biden from understanding other people’s speech. Huh?
“Investigative reporter Hunter Walker, who writes for Rolling Stone and The New Yorker, answered that question with a question of his own: ‘Would they treat a deaf person like this for needing assistance?’” he continued — noting that, “again, it’s not really relevant to the Senate race in Pennsylvania because once again, John Fetterman doesn’t have hearing problems. He’s not deaf. This isn’t deafness. This is brain damage.”
Then again, this shouldn’t be surprising. As Carlson also noted, some commentators called Biden’s detractors “ageist” after his “Where’s Jackie?” gaffe in September. In that incident, he scanned the room to acknowledge a congresswoman who had died a month prior — and who was to be honored at the event with a tribute video.
“This country has a problem with age, so if you don’t like the fact the commander-in-chief, the guy who commands our nuclear arsenal, is deranged because of age — which he is — then you’re the bigot,” Carlson said.
“But underneath all of this is this single most cynical political move in the history of this country, and that is elevating Joe Biden precisely because he is fading away, because he is demented. That’s why they chose him … They picked a guy who had nothing going on upstairs, was flatlining mentally, so they could control him.”
Whether or not that’s the connection is impossible to say, although it’s clear Democrats aren’t going to sacrifice a potential pickup in the evenly divided Senate by allowing too much questioning of whether Fetterman can discharge his duties.
Fetterman leads Oz in the RealClearPolitics polling average by 3.7 points as of Wednesday morning, although that number has been shrinking. The winner would replace outgoing GOP Sen. Pat Toomey.
However, the fear is that Fetterman may merely be a body in an empty chair that the Democrats and White House officials can fill with their ideas.
These are hardly concerns about “ableism,” not when Fetterman has to conduct an interview like this and refuses to release his medical records. Pennsylvanians are electing a senator to represent the unique interests of their state, not a blank slate that essentially says [insert Democrat policies here].
We’ve already seen how badly that works out in practice at the White House. We don’t need a rehash of that situation with a swing seat in the upper chamber of Congress, too. Without total transparency about Fetterman’s medical state, voters shouldn’t extend him the benefit of the doubt.
