Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.) sniped at news outlets for having repeatedly “weaponized” the fact that he was treated for depression soon after taking office, in an interview published Saturday.
“This became the [Bill] Belichick girlfriend story of politics,” Fetterman told The New York Times, in reference to the media feeding frenzy currently surrounding the former Patriots coach and his decades-younger girlfriend Jordon Hudson. “It just keeps going and going.”
Fetterman, 55, said the fixation has only arisen as a result of going public after entering Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in early 2023 to receive six weeks of treatment for depression.
A series of articles — kicked off by a lengthy New York magazine piece — have speculated that the Pennsylvania Democrat has declined to keep up with his mental recovery plan and exhibited “erratic” behavior in private meetings while neglecting official Senate duties.
That’s included skipping some committee hearings, caucus meetings on Capitol Hill as well as town halls back in the Keystone State.
“It’s not like we were on a chain planning to bomb Yemen,” he zinged in his interview, gesturing at the embarrassing leak of a private Signal group chat involving Trump administration officials to Atlantic editor in chief Jeffrey Goldberg.
“It’s mostly just happy birthdays. Some days, it’s just emojis.”
Fetterman since returning from treatment has missed more votes than any of his colleagues except ex-Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio), who left after being elected vice president in November, and Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC), according to a Times analysis.
The senator has deflected any comments about his behavior as coming from a “one-source hit piece,” implying his ex-chief of staff Adam Jentleson, a key protagonist in the New York article, was the primary culprit behind leaks of medical information to what he called a “very left publication.”
“My doctor warned years ago: After it’s public that you are getting help for depression, people will weaponize that,” he told The Times. “Simple things are turned. That’s exactly what happened.”
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