Give John Fetterman a lot of credit as an old-time Democrat ... the kind that can truthfully claim that his party has abandoned him rather than the other way around. Fetterman got elected as a more faithful progressive in his party's primary four years ago, beating so-called moderate Conor Lamb for the Democrat nomination in Pennsylvania and then winning his Senate seat against Republican Mehmet Oz.
Since then, however, Fetterman has matured into a more traditional Pennsylvania statesman, interested in cooperation and respect rather than shutdowns, stunts, and demagoguery. At the State of the Union address last night, Fetterman shook Donald Trump's hand, perhaps the only member of his party to do so, and gave Trump a polite audience for his speech.
That alone made Fetterman an anomaly, but he took respect a step further without having to take a step at all. When Trump called for justice for Iryna Zarutska, Fetterman stood. When Trump introduced Erika Kirk as his guest and called for an end to political violence, Fetterman stood. By this morning, Fetterman found himself echoing Trump's own question from the SOTU speech – How do you not stand?
Fetterman wondered that this morning in an interview with Fox News:
Sen. John Fetterman said he stood for Iryna Zarutska and Erika Kirk at Trump’s State of the Union:
— Open Source Intel (@Osint613) February 25, 2026
“Even Erika Kirk. Can't we just be more kind to a WIDOW? How can't we acknowledge that?”
“I clapped for the family that lost the Ukrainian girl...the Venezuelan political… pic.twitter.com/Ot8ySAnVZS
“I clapped for the family that lost the Ukrainian girl...the Venezuelan political prisoner...the veterans.”
“I'll always clap for things I agree with, like striking the Iranian sites.”
“And if I don't agree, I certainly won't yell, scream and disrupt the whole thing.”
Did Fetterman stand for Trump's challenge on protecting Americans first before illegal aliens? The video of that moment isn't clear enough to say for certain, but it certainly doesn't look as though any Democrats answered that call. However, it's also clear that Fetterman didn't appreciate the meltdowns from Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib over immigration enforcement, even if Fetterman may not endorse Trump's policies.
Fetterman has a stronger moral compass than most on his side of the aisle. Or maybe he's just smart enough to sniff out a trap. Earlier today, I argued that the challenge on prioritizing American citizens was clearly a deliberate attempt to corner Democrats into exposing themselves as radicals, and just as clearly worked. My friend Colby Hall at Mediaite – no fan of Trump or the GOP – glumly reaches the same conclusion:
That exchange quickly became the viral clip of the night, but it mattered for a deeper reason. In less than a minute, it crystalized the governing logic of the entire address into a shareable piece of political theater. The confrontation, the moral framing, the visible split in the chamber — it compressed the broader speech into something built for social feeds and cable chyrons. The rest of the evening was scaffolding. That was the load-bearing beam. ...
The stand-and-sit moment was engineered accordingly. Democrats had no clean option. Standing would have validated his framing that immigration policy is inseparable from public safety. Remaining seated supplied the image he wanted. The asymmetry was the point — it turned disagreement into spectacle and made posture stand in for principle.
The emotional groundwork had been carefully laid. Trump recounted a succession of violent crimes committed by undocumented immigrants — a fatal truck crash, a stabbing on a train, a murdered teenager, a National Guard ambush — each story vivid and emotionally wrenching. The density of those examples created the impression of a broad and escalating threat. Yet nationally, violent crime remains well below its 1990s peak, and multiple state-level studies, including long-running data out of Texas, show undocumented immigrants are convicted of violent crimes at lower rates than native-born citizens. The contrast between the statistical landscape and the curated sequence of tragedies is not incidental. The speech relied on narrative concentration to produce urgency.
The media environment amplifies the tactic. Trump speaks into a highly responsive ecosystem that carries his framing across television panels, digital platforms, and social feeds almost instantly. Within minutes, the clip of Democrats seated circulated widely, presented as proof that they would not stand for protecting Americans. The visual required little explanation.
In his way, Colby gives Trump more credit than I did, although not on "postur[ing] standing in for principle." Prioritizing immigration enforcement and security for American citizens over the interests of illegal aliens is, in fact, a principle – one that gets the kind of 80/20 support that makes this strategy work. Americans tried telling Democrats this all through the four years between Trump's terms, and they refused to listen. Heck, Democrats like Henry Cuellar tried telling Joe Biden and the White House, and he drew primary challenges and scandal-mongering for his trouble.
However, that's not the only reason this trap worked so effectively. It worked because Democrats refuse to let go of their failed strategy of the past decade in attempting to delegitimize Trump as the elected president. Not even his popular-vote win in 2024 has alerted Democrats that their radical disqualification strategy is a loser. Not only does that strategy require them to reject the results of an election, it also forces them to refuse to work at all with Trump. Hakeem Jeffries has recently leaned into this nonsense by referring to Trump as the "so-called president." His entire caucus operates on obstruction rather than good-faith negotiation, where nothing always beats something, and their entire mission focuses on punishing voters for choosing Trump.
This trap worked because Trump knew he could count on Democrats to act like spoiled children rather than mature politicians. Fetterman is one of the few who understand the difference, and therefore understood the trap before it snared his fellow Democrats. And he's annoyed enough about it to amplify Trump's point, a development that should worry Chuck Schumer more than it already has.
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