Even with Closed Captioning, Fetterman’s Impairment Is Evident at Debate

Harrisburg, Pa. — After John Fetterman sat down in early October with NBC News for his first in-person interview since suffering a stroke in May, conventional wisdom has held that the Pennsylvania Democratic Senate candidate might struggle to comprehend questions without closed captioning but is basically fine so long as he has use of the technology. 

“As long as I have captioning, I’m able to understand exactly what’s being asked,” Fetterman told NBC’s Dasha Burns in the interview. 

After the recorded interview aired, Burns reported: “During some of those conversations before the closed captioning was rolling, it wasn’t clear that he could understand what we were saying.” 

Burns was viciously attacked by left-leaning journalists and the Fetterman campaign for saying the candidate might have trouble understanding questions without captioning. 

What made Tuesday night’s debate so shocking was that Fetterman raised very serious doubts about his ability to comprehend questions even with captioning.

During the debate, Fetterman was able to identify the topic of questions and was able to deliver scripted lines — sometimes those lines were delivered cleanly; at other times they looked like word salad.

But it was not clear that Fetterman could comprehend every question. Take, for example, his response to a question asking him to account for his past opposition to fracking: 

There was simply no attempt to account for his past statement.

Here’s how Fetterman responded to being asked why he didn’t apologize for pulling a shotgun on an unarmed black man: 

Fetterman struggled to deliver scripted lines about the incident and could say not anything specific about apologizing to the innocent man.

The pattern repeated itself over and over again — Fetterman identified the topic at hand and delivered scripted lines without demonstrating he understood the precise question he was being asked.

The Fetterman campaign said that the candidate’s struggles were due to “delayed captions filled with errors,” but Nexstar, the TV station that hosted the debate, refuted that claim: 

“The closed captioning process functioned as expected during rehearsal and again during tonight’s debate,” a spokesman for Nexstar said.

In the spin room following the debate, the Fetterman campaign did its best to brazen it out. 

“John Fetterman performed great tonight for a man who was in a hospital bed just several months ago,” Fetterman spokesman Joe Calvello told reporters. “John spoke better tonight than he did in the primary. I’m not sure if you were there. He gave a better performance tonight than he gave in the primary.”

“For a guy who’s just been in the hospital months ago, he took it to Dr. Oz pretty f***ing hard tonight,” Calvello said.

The problem of course is that Fetterman suffered his stroke “just several months ago”; Election Day is less than two weeks away; and Fetterman raised very serious concerns about his cognitive abilities during the one and only Pennsylvania Senate debate.

At the end of Calvello’s spin-room session, National Review asked if Fetterman would commit to doing live, televised interviews before Election Day. 

“Yeah, of course he will,” Fetterman’s spokesman replied. “He’s given live interviews before. He’ll do more. Yeah, one hundred percent.”

Fetterman’s first in-person interview with NBC’s Dasha Burns was taped, and last night’s performance made it seem unlikely Fetterman will give substantive live, televised interviews before Election Day.