Democratic Sen. John Fetterman ripped a New York magazine report which quoted current and former staffers questioning his mental health as a “one-source hit piece” by a “very left publication.”
“A one-source hit piece, some anonymous sources. So there’s nothing new,” Fetterman (D-Pa.) told reporters Tuesday about the exposé, which rocked the beltway late last week with its description of aides calling the senator “erratic” — as well as the rocky relationship with his wife, Gisele.
When asked about the idea that those who spoke to the magazine were worried about his health, Fetterman shot back: “They are actually not concerned, it’s a hit piece.”
The New York mag report’s protagonist was former Fetterman chief of staff Adam Jentleson, who resigned from his position last year and sent an alarmed email to the senator’s doctor.
“I think John is on a bad trajectory and I’m really worried about him,” Jentleson reportedly wrote, adding that he feared if things don’t change, Fetterman “won’t be with us for much longer.”
Another anecdote repeated that Fetterman was “nearly struck by a car” and had been discovered “wandering” around the Capitol.
Other sources quoted by New York mag raised questions about whether Fetterman was actually taking all of his medications — inquiries Fetterman dodged Tuesday.
“In December 2023, Adam Jentleson took action that jeopardized the privacy/sanctity of my confidential medical records. I subsequently directed my doctors to sever any access Adam could have to my medical information,” Fetterman told the outlet.
In May 2022, Fetterman — then Pennsylvania’s lieutenant governor — suffered a stroke two days before winning the Democratic Senate primary.
That November, despite struggling to complete sentences unaided, Fetterman defeated the Republican nominee, Dr. Mehmet Oz, now the administrator for the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.
During his first year in the Senate, Fetterman checked himself into the hospital, where he was treated for depression. Later that year came a major turning point for Fetterman when Hamas unleashed its deadly surprise attack against Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
Many of the disgruntled staffers had criticized Fetterman’s unabashed support for Israel, which has triggered outrage from his progressive base.
Shortly after the Oct. 7 attack, more than a dozen former Fetterman campaign officials wrote an anonymous letter decrying his stalwart support for the Jewish state as a “gutting betrayal.”
Ironically, at the time, Jentleson defended his then-boss, writing on X, “The thing about being a staffer is that no one elected you to represent them.”
The strains made their way into the New York magazine story, in which one staffer recounted Gisele confronting her husband over his stance on Israel, telling him, “They are bombing refugee camps; how can you support this?”
Fetterman shrugged off those concerns, explaining that his wife “has her own voice” and that he believes it’s “very common in political marriage.”
Gisele ripped Jentleson to the outlet, claiming he sent her “scary, untrue stories about John’s health.”
“I would talk to John’s doctors about what Adam was telling me and they would be confused,” she said. “Those doctors would tell me that their concerns were not with John, but with Adam. Any alleged ‘concerns’ heard from me came straight from those lies, not from John’s doctors or my own eyes.”
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