In June 2022, then-Pennsylvania Senate candidate John Fetterman (D.) pointed to a doctor’s note that indicated he could “campaign and serve in the U.S. Senate without a problem” after suffering a stroke in May. After returning to the campaign trail in August, Fetterman told voters he was “feeling great, better than I have in years.” And in October, his campaign released a second doctor’s note giving Fetterman a clean bill of health.
Fast forward to his first six weeks in office, and Fetterman is painting a starkly different account of the medical advice he received on the campaign trail. After Fetterman was hospitalized for lightheadedness earlier this month, the New York Times reported that the freshman senator believes “he may have set himself back permanently by not taking the recommended amount of rest during the campaign” after his stroke.
[Honestly, this is water under the bridge. Anyone with eyes could see that Fetterman was physically incapable of the job. No one needed a doctor’s assessment to figure that out, especially after the one and only general election debate. Pennsylvania voters chose him anyway, in large part because Republicans nominated a carpet-bagging snake-oil salesman — who ended up improving markedly during the campaign, but clearly not able to overcome the emptiness of his celebrity campaign. Everyone gets some blame in this instance. — Ed]
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