Fetterman Defenders Try to Claw Back Credibility after Disastrous Debate Performance

After NBC’s Dasha Burns noted that John Fetterman struggled to hold a casual conversation before she interviewed him earlier this month, much of the press united to condemn their colleague in defense of the Democratic nominee for one of Pennsylvania’s U.S. Senate seats.

New York Magazine‘s Kara Swisher, who had also spoken to Fetterman recently, called her reporting “nonsense” and submitted that perhaps Burns “is just bad at small talk.” Her colleague Rebecca Traister — the author of a fawning profile of Fetterman — asserted that his “comprehension is not at all impaired.” Molly Jong-Fast, a contributing writer at the Atlantic said Burns was full of “bs.”

On The View, Sunny Hostin deemed it “inappropriate” of Burns to mention her private interactions with Fetterman and criticized her for making the observation without holding a medical degree. Whoopi Goldberg jumped in to echo Swisher’s suggestion that Burns’s dull personality was to blame: “Maybe she’s bad at small talk! Maybe it was her!”

The Young Turks’ Ana Kasparian said Fetterman was treated “poorly, to say the least” by the reporter, accusing her of being “ableist” in a YouTube video that described Burns as “badgering” the Senate candidate. The chyron accompanying Kasparian’s segment falsely charged Burns with having “bash[ed]” Fetterman for “stuttering,” and the host went on to compare Fetterman to Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

An expert cited in a Buzzfeed article went so far as to suggest that “the way Burns handled that interview will only worsen attitudes and violence towards disabled people.”

Fetterman’s Tuesday night’s debate with his Republican opponent, Mehmet Oz, however, provided the evidence for what Burns had said and much more:

Fetterman’s debate performance was marred not just by auditory processing issues, but trouble articulating specific ideas and policies.

During an exchange on abortion, he chanted about Roe v. Wade — the now defunct Supreme Court decision — without demonstrating that he knew what it was, and seemed unable to grasp that Oz opposed federal abortion legislation of any kind. During an exchange on energy policy, he was confused by his own past statements calling  for the end of Pennsylvania’s fracking industry and falsely claimed that he had always supported fracking.

He repeatedly shouted at his opponent, including during Oz’s closing statement, accusing him of wanting to cut Medicare and Social Security. When Oz noted that he has never indicated as much, Fetterman replied “I can’t just say one thing other than that Dr. Oz would not support, and he would support cutting Medicare.” Asked again to evidence that allegation, Fetterman simply asserted that “it’s absolutely a fact.”

As Jim Geraghty has noted, some in the media have begun reaching for — or in some cases, smashing — the panic button.  MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough said that Fetterman’s “ability to communicate is seriously impaired. Pennsylvania voters will be talking about this obvious fact even if many in the media will not.” Time’s Charlotte Alter, who was tweeting Fetterman campaign talking points to lower expectations hours before the debate, said that while she “expected him to be very bad tonight. . . he was much, much worse than I expected.” The Washington Post’s Aaron Blake called it a “rough night” and noticed that Fetterman “often started a thought and shifted course without finishing it.”

Others, though, are doubling down on Fetterman’s candidacy, insisting that the lieutenant governor is qualified for the upper chamber and that anyone who thinks otherwise is lacking in empathy.

At the Atlantic, senior editor John Hendrickson called it a “Rorschach test of comfort with disability,” accusing Fetterman’s critics of “stigmatiz[ing] verbal disfluency.”

Swisher backpedaled from her initial claim that Burns had misrepresented Fetterman’s condition — sans an apology to the journalist — after the debate, instead promoting Hendrickson’s article and an excerpt from it in which he wrote that “we are a culture of soundbites, mic drops, and clap backs. To speak in any way that deviates from the norm is to summon ridicule and judgment.”

By Wednesday morning, she was responding to Republican Senate candidate J.D. Vance’s criticism of her coverage of Fetterman by calling him “a feckless suck up not a real man” and inviting him on her podcast. “I get that it’s hard for you to screw up the courage to stick up for yourself. But you are welcome anytime, I won’t emasculate you like others have and you should be able to keep up,” said Swisher.

Traister retweeted a thread marveling at Fetterman’s bravery and arguing that it took “a huge amount of courage” for Fetterman “to get up and fight for not just Senate seat, but this democracy, in public, when you’re still healing.” She also appeared on MSNBC after the debate, where she told Alex Wagner that Oz had been “slippery” on abortion despite the fact that he unequivocally declared on the debate stage: “I am not gonna support federal — federal rules that block the ability of states to do what they wish to do. The abortion decision should be left up to states.”

Hostin echoed Traister’s admiration of Fetterman, saying that “it takes real bravery to allow people to see your weakness, right? And we know that Fetterman’s cognitive abilities have not been compromised.”

Even Scarborough, who acknowledged Fetterman’s problems last night, regressed to the mean of his network and returned to acting as a surrogate for the Pennsylvania Democrat on his show this morning, twisting Oz’s words to imply that the Republican was suggesting that “the Parks and Recreation people” in local government make decisions on abortion law.

“We don’t know how that’s gonna play in Scranton, probably not well,” added Scarborough, who also said that Oz “didn’t look Pennsylvanian.”

“I mean, I’ve been to Pennsylvania a lot — this guy doesn’t look like he’s from Pennsylvania. He doesn’t talk like he’s from Pennsylvania. And when he starts talking about people in the Water Management District making decisions about life or death, life-or-death decisions on rape, incest, life of the mother, that’s somebody that doesn’t think like most Pennsylvanians I’ve talked to either,” he continued.

“There may be a lot of Pennsylvania people who are having difficult times right now. They’ll look at Fetterman and say ‘you know what? That guy’s been sell — Oz’s been selling magic beans, lying to people, called in front of Congress for the past 20 years because he’s such a shyster, he talked too fast last night, and he was too slick. He votes in Turkey.’ . . . And they may look at Fetterman and go ‘you know, the guy’s struggling, he got knocked down. I’ve been knocked down in my life too. I’m going to fight my way back just like him too.”

The race has been narrowing for months now, with Fetterman currently boasting a 1.3 point lead in the RealClearPolitics polling average after leading by seven-and-a-half points on July 26. Fetterman declined to offer to release his medical records during Tuesday night’s debate, instead arguing that he trusts his doctors’ opinion that he will be able to serve.