In 2022, the Media Research Center tried to exploit the stroke suffered by John Fetterman during his campaign for a Pennsylvania Senate seat, insisting that was a Reason to support his Republican opponent, celebrity doc Mehmet Oz. It didn’t work, and the Democrat Fetterman was elected. During the 2024 presidential election, the MRC was still salty about Fetterman:
- An Oct. 23 comedy-cop post by Alex Christy complained that Stephen Colbert “invited Pennsylvania Sen. John Fetterman to the program to beg reluctant voters to pick Kamala Harris in two weeks,” going on to complain that “Fetterman took the opportunity to remind people what he considered to be a blot on Trump’s first term” with his handling of the COVID pandemic.
- A Nov. 3 post by Mark Finkelstein groused that Fetterman was “going on national TV and spouting multiple vulgarities” in pointing out that Donald Trump’s allegations of election irregularities in Pennsylvania were “the same old shit” and adding that “It doesn’t make you a man to pick on trans or gay kids. It just makes you an asshole.” Finkelstein whined in response: “There are two groups actually being ‘picked on.’ The first are the taxpayers Kamala would force to foot the bills for the surgeries. The second are the girls and women athletes being unfairly forced to compete against biological men.”
But when Fetterman started abruptly moving rightward this year, the MRC suddenly approved of him. A May 3 post by P.J. Gladnick defended Fetterman’s move to the right and was angry that some questioned whether it was caused by his “health issues” — the same thing the MRC tried to exploit in 2022:
Remember all the praise that the media heaped on John McCain and other Republicans who veered away from some of the conservative policies of their party? They were hailed as “mavericks.” Notice how no such label is ever applied by the media for Democrats who stray from the liberal line.
In fact, in the case of Senator John Fetterman, New York magazine spread the suggestion that such divergences were due to health, specifically mental health issues.
On Friday, we saw this treatment applied to John Fetterman by former Washington Post reporter Ben Terris in “All By Himself.” The subtitle gets more specific as to why the angst over Fetterman going maverick on some important issues, “John Fetterman insists he is in good health. But staffers past and present say they no longer recognize the man they once knew.”
[…]Besides Fetterman’s strong support for Israel, he did something unforgivable in the eyes of liberals. He (GASP!) went to Mar-a-Lago to meet with then President-elect Donald Trump:
Gladnick didn’t mention that his employer had repeatedly cited Fetterman’s health issues as a reason not to elect him just a couple years earlier.