John Fetterman says the left and right want him to DIE: Democratic Senator claims being less ‘progressive’ and backing Israel has led to more critics ‘rooting’ for him to ‘get another blood clot’
- What I've discovered over the last few years is that the right, and now the left, are hoping I die,” the Pennsylvania Democrat said.
- He said of progressivism: “It's just a place where I'm not,” he said. “I don't feel like I've left the label; it's just more that it has left me'
Pennsylvania's former left-wing champion now insists that progressivism has “failed him” and that people in his own party want him to “get another blood clot and die.”
Senator John Fetterman has publicly broken with the grassroots activists who brought him to power since the war in Gaza broke out. Now some of these progressives have labeled him “#GenocideJohn” for his airtight support for Israel.
“What I've discovered over the last few years is that the right, and now the left, are hoping I die,” the Pennsylvania Democrat told the newspaper. New York Times. “There are those who are looking for a new blood clot.”
Fetterman said he hates progressives and their “purity tests.”
“It's just a place where I'm not,” he said. “I don't feel like I've left the label; it's just more that it has left me.'
Senator John Fetterman has publicly broken with the grassroots activists who brought him to power since the war in Gaza broke out. Now some of these progressives have labeled him “#GenocideJohn” for his airtight support for Israel
Anti-ceasefire protesters have flooded his office on Capitol Hill, and yet their former torchbearer has refused to give in and join calls for Israel to end its bombing campaign.
A deep partisan divide has erupted among Democrats as the death toll in Gaza continues to rise and even President Biden has accused Israel of an “indiscriminate bombing campaign.”
Fetterman, meanwhile, taped photos of Israeli hostages to the wall outside his office and covered himself in an Israeli flag in photos.
“I find it confusing that the far left progressives in America don't really seem to want to support the only progressive nation in the region that really embraces the same kind of values that I would expect we would want as a society,” Fetterman said. .
He says he is the only senator with both an LGBTQ flag and a POW flag outside his office.
“Can't it be quite appropriate to stand for both?”
Palestinians queue for a free meal in Rafah, Gaza Strip, Thursday, December 21
A photo taken from southern Israel near the border with the Gaza Strip on December 21
Fetterman's break with progressivism became clear when he posted on X earlier this week: “I'm not a progressive, I'm just a straight-up Democrat.” Reactions poured in with TV clips from the campaign trail in which Fetterman claimed to be progressive.
But Fetterman's staunch support for Israel goes back years.
In April 2022, the then-lieutenant governor and Senate candidate told Jewish Insider: “Every time I am in a situation where I have to be called upon to take up the cause of strengthening and increasing Israel's security or deepening our relationship between the United States and Israel, Israel, I'm going to lean in.”
As for far-left Democrats criticizing Israel, he continued, “I would also respectfully say that I'm not really progressive in that sense.”
In recent days, Fetterman, whose wife arrived as an undocumented immigrant at age 7, has also criticized his party's left wing on immigration.
“I don't think it's unreasonable to have a secure border,” he said. “I would never endanger Dreamers or support any form of brutality or mass expulsion of hundreds of thousands of people. But it is a reasonable conversation to talk about the border.”
The Senate is in the midst of negotiating a package that would tighten border restrictions in exchange for aid to Israel and Ukraine — as huge hordes of migrants cross the US-Mexico border.