Top Dem's Aides Blow Whistle on His Disturbing Mental State

[Jilly_in_VA]

Staffers of Senator John Fetterman have sounded the alarm over the Pennsylvania lawmaker’s health and increased isolation as he navigates Washington D.C.

Fetterman‘s health battle has been documented at length since he suffered a stroke while running for the Senate in 2022. The stroke left him with auditory processing issues for which he still uses technology to transcribe what people are saying, to help him communicate in real time.

In early 2023, he spent six weeks at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center where he was treated for depression, just weeks after being sworn into office.

But a feature in New York Magazine has shed new light on the 55-year-old Democrat as former and current aides shared an inside look at what they’ve perceived as red flags with their boss’s mental state and erratic, even manic, behavior.

Some of the staffers, who were described as “his truest believers” are now questioning his fitness to be a senator. The article said they worry not just about him being a risk to the Democratic Party, but also to himself.
(snip)

Fetterman‘s behavior was so concerning that his former chief of staff Adam Jentleson wrote a letter to the medical director of the traumatic brain injury and neuropsychiatry unit at Walter Reed in May 2024.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/john-fetterman-aides-blow-whistle-on-his-disturbing-mental-state/

This article breaks my heart too. I have been worried about him since his stroke and don't think he is at all the same guy who ran for senator. A stroke, as I used to tell my patients' families, is the same as being hit with a baseball bat---it's a traumatic brain injury and can have severe lasting effects, although sometimes none at all.

[buzzycrumbhunger]

1. Too bad the link doesn't let you read the damned article...

Not subscribing to Daily Beast for one thing but unsurprised Fetterman has issues. Frankly, I thought he’d ditched the pretense of being a Dem already...

[stopdiggin]

2. appreciate that this is written from a perspective of sympathy and concern

But the reality is - just as on the other side of the aisle - this is what the voters have delivered to us. And as such - we the voters are stuck with it. (until such time as we have a chance to vote again) It's unfortunate - and it may have been a really poor choice - but that's what the democratic process has delivered us. Deal with it.

[Jilly_in_VA]

3. Reminding you

that he was voted in before he had his stroke. The stroke changed everything.

[rogue emissary]

4. The stroke was in May before the General election

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/10/us/politics/john-fetterman-senate-stroke.html

Mr. Fetterman, 53, the 6-foot-8, tattooed and goateed Democrat from Pennsylvania who suffered a near-fatal stroke last May and went on to win one of the most competitive seats in November’s midterm elections, was never going to blend in seamlessly in the marbled corridors of Congress.

Are you talking about the the primary?

[Deep State Witch]

5. He Should Step Down

If his physical and mental health is that bad, he needs to step down. I know this is the Senate, where you have 90-year-old fossils like Chuck Grassley and Moscow Mitch. But as someone who has dealt with people having devastating damage from strokes, he needs to step down for his own good, and the good of his constituents. Josh Stein can appoint someone like Conor Lamb or former Gov. Wolf to fill out his term.

[Jilly_in_VA]

6. Agreed

But who's gonna tell him? Let alone who's gonna get him to agree...

[DFW]

7. I doubt that telling him will convince him to step down. He probably has no concept of what is happening to him.

Either he has the realization himself, or he has to become such a vegetable that he has to be pronounced incapacitated by a professional physician. I have no doubt that Shapiro is capable of nominating a high IQ successor who will be in line with the party's objectives, and pursue them with both quiet purpose and competence.