An isolated John Fetterman clashes with colleagues and staff as he skips Senate duties

In the run-up to the vote to confirm Pete Hegseth as defense secretary, Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., knew her party had a problem — and its name was .

Fetterman, the Democratic senator from Pennsylvania, was open to confirming , according to two people familiar with his thinking. Murray wanted to speak with her colleague one-on-one. So she reached out to set up a time. 

But Fetterman refused, as the two people familiar with the episode told 온라인카지노사이트 News.

“He figured that she wanted to yell at him about it,” one person familiar with the senator’s thinking said. 

That Fetterman wouldn’t even talk to one of the most senior members of his party — someone who is well-respected in the caucus and, like Fetterman, has a reputation for being a straight shooter — was emblematic of the way Fetterman has operated in the Senate. 

This article is based on interviews with 18 former Fetterman staffers, Pennsylvania officials and congressional lawmakers and staffers, many of whom said the senator is increasingly isolated and absent from official business, both in Washington and his home state.

His behavior has received renewed scrutiny  detailing concerns about his mental health from one of his closest former aides, as well as some frustration from Democrats that Fetterman is not on the same page as many other members of the party when it comes to standing up to Trump and his agenda. 

The crux of the article focused on a May 2024 letter from Fetterman’s former chief of staff, Adam Jentleson, addressed to Dr. David Williamson, the senator’s neuropsychiatrist at Walter Reed Medical Center, where Fetterman spent six weeks in 2023 to treat clinical depression. In that letter, which 온라인카지노사이트 News obtained, Jentleson expressed worry that if his boss “stays on his current trajectory he won’t be with us for much longer.”

“We do not know if he is taking his meds and his behavior frequently suggests he is not,” Jentleson wrote. “We often see the kind of warning signs we discussed: conspiratorial thinking; megalomania (for example, he claims to be the most knowledgeable source on Israel and Gaza around but his sources are just what he reads in the news — he declines most briefings and never reads memos); high highs and low lows; long, rambling, repetitive and self-centered monologues; lying in ways that are painfully, awkwardly obvious to everyone in the room, such as swearing up and down that he didn’t say something everyone heard him say a few minutes prior.”

A Fetterman spokesperson emphasized that the senator has no intention of resigning and has been transparent about his health, whether related to his stroke or hospitalization at Walter Reed.

"People in his circle and people who talk to him privately know this is John Fetterman," the spokesperson said. "He is not an extrovert. This is how he functions. He does care about Pennsylvania, he keeps a busy schedule, he’s meeting with people all the time. For the most part, he votes along party lines and has good relationships with his colleagues."

"There are expectations of a stereotypical politician that he has never once expressed that he was going to try to be," this person added. "People knew he was breaking from tradition and they elected him for that reason."

On Tuesday,  that the New York magazine article was built on “one source” with “a couple anonymous sources,” describing it as a “hit piece from a very left publication.” 

Fetterman added Friday to 온라인카지노사이트 News that the article "decided to platform a grudge fashioned by best friends and disgruntled staffers unwilling to put their names on it."

"My actual doctors and my family affirmed that I’m in good health," he said.

In response to Fetterman’s earlier pushback, Jentleson said on Tuesday, “I stand by what I said and hope he gets the help he needs.”

The incident with Murray wasn’t the only recent run-in with a colleague. As he was leaving the cloak room after ultimately voting against Hegseth’s nomination, he bumped into Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H. 

Shaheen, the ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, wanted to discuss a Republican bill designed to punish the International Criminal Court for issuing arrest warrants to Israeli officials. 

Two sources familiar with the exchange said Fetterman was “rude and dismissive” to her. He also suggested to her that he’d be more inclined to help her if she put him on the committee — something she didn’t have the power to do. 

Fetterman ended up being the only Democrat to support the Republican bill, which did not pass. 

Murray and Shaheen’s offices declined to comment.

"Senator Fetterman has lots of conversations with his colleagues, on both sides, and he doesn’t comment on those discussions," a Fetterman spokesperson said. "He highly respects and values Vice Chair Murray and Ranking Member Shaheen and considers them great colleagues and leaders."

‘I haven’t seen him this year in person’

Fetterman never had a warm and fuzzy reputation. As mayor of Braddock — a downtrodden once thriving steel town just outside of Pittsburgh — and then lieutenant governor of Pennsylvania, Fetterman became known for his straight-talking style, fearless social media persona and unconventional image for a Democratic politician.

Fetterman won election to the Senate in 2022. But his race was beset by challenges — chiefly, a debilitating stroke that kept the Democratic nominee off the trail for months.

Still, Fetterman and his team were able to connect with voters. They ran an intensive social media campaign to portray Fetterman as an authentic Pennsylvanian against the celebrity doctor Mehmet Oz, who had only limited ties to the state and is now a health official in the Trump administration. 

But those familiar with Fetterman say he has often neglected the duties of his job since being elected, rarely making appearances for noncampaign events in his home state, regularly missing committee hearings, bill mark-ups and votes.

In the past year — from April 2024 to this March — Fetterman missed 77 of 381 votes, . That put him in the 90th to the 99th percentile among all senators in terms of total votes missed during each three-month stretch of the calendar in that time.

Of senators who served the entirety of the 118th Congress, only Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C., and then-Sen. JD Vance, R-Ohio,  — and both were either running for president or on Trump’s ticket as his running mate. Of course, many of those missed votes included the six-week stretch when Fetterman was hospitalized.

Fetterman also rarely attends hearings or business meetings for the three committees on which he’s a member. In just this year alone, Fetterman skipped 25 of the 26 hearings or business meetings the Senate Commerce Committee held, with the first hearing he attended being on Thursday, after the New York magazine article was published. 

He missed all nine of the hearings and business meetings the Senate Homeland Security Committee has held this year, and skipped all 11 times the Senate Agriculture Committee has met in 2025.

Among the meetings he missed were confirmation hearings for key Trump nominees like Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought and Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins. 

Fetterman has also voted by proxy — meaning the ranking member of the committee announced his vote because he was absent — for every vote all three committees have taken this year on pieces of legislation, nominations or organizing resolutions.

In a comment for this article, Fetterman did not address missing so many committee hearings but said of votes last year: "Everything in 2024 was about the election."

"I spent months traveling Pennsylvania to help keep Democrats in the White House," he said, adding that so far this year he has "made roughly 90% of the votes" while the ones he has missed "were overwhelmingly procedural, my vote was never determinative and limited to travel days."

On his lack of in-state events, a spokesperson said this year's Senate schedule "has given few opportunities for extensive travel in the state since January." He's also sought time to spend with his family.

"In the coming spring and summer months when the Senate is in recess, there will be more opportunities for in-state events," this person said.

That hasn't been enough for some in the state. In March, Cumberland County Democratic Chair Matt Roan called for Fetterman to resign  that blasted the senator for having “refused to hold town hall meetings in Pennsylvania to hear from his constituents.”

“Enough is enough,” Roan wrote, adding, “He seems disinterested in serving in this important position.”

Additionally, a House Democratic lawmaker from Pennsylvania who spoke with 온라인카지노사이트 News on Thursday said they have had no interactions with Fetterman in recent months.

“I haven’t seen him this year in person,” the lawmaker said. “My staff reaches out on bills and such.” 

They added that Democrat Bob Casey, who lost re-election to the Senate in 2024, was “a much, much more active partner.” 

According to the Philadelphia Inquirer,  in the state this year, at the Pennsylvania Farm Show in January.

Fetterman hasn’t been known to glad-hand or build relationships with many of his fellow members. Even among the Keystone State’s congressional delegation, where members frequently need to coordinate on issues like infrastructure projects and natural disasters, Fetterman has been absent.

“The entire delegation has talked on Signal about how he’s just so weird, never ever returned phone calls from any of us (nor did his former chief),” said a participant in the Pennsylvania delegation’s Signal group. “Pretty sure he couldn’t identify most of us out of a line-up.”

The opinion wasn’t unanimous, though.

“My team and I have a good working relationship with the Senator and his team,” Rep. Chris Deluzio, D-Pa., who represents a district near Fetterman’s home, said in a statement. “That’s important across the PA delegation and can help us get stuff done for our region.”

Still, some who spoke with 온라인카지노사이트 News worried whether Fetterman is having cognitive struggles that may be exacerbating his isolation. 

The House Democratic lawmaker from Pennsylvania expressed concern over the New York magazine article, saying that if there’s an issue, it “needs to be addressed and can be addressed.”

“He successfully did that once before and he should,” this person said, pointing to 2023, when Fetterman  for mental health treatment. “It’s not like he was ever the warmest, most fluid speaker in the world. So you’re starting with someone who’s got an atypical personality.”

But Jentleson said he saw a decline in the strength of Fetterman’s relationships after that episode. In his May 2024 letter, he said the senator “is on his phone constantly and spends more time scrolling and coming up with tweets than any other activity.”

“He is isolated and has damaged his personal relationships,” he added. “In the fall, he had started to build relationships with other senators, but that has fallen off a cliff. He comes up with reasons why they are all out to get him or secretly hate him, and will launch into endless tirades about why they are all terrible and he is the only sane person.”

Sen. Peter Welch, D-Vt., however, said he had dinner with Fetterman and Sen. Katie Britt, R-Ala., two weeks ago. He said  and described him as “a special talent in our party” who “has a way of speaking to everyday folks that really connects.” 

“Now, he went through an incredible health event, and it takes ongoing care,” Welch told 온라인카지노사이트 News. “I have no knowledge of it, but you don’t have to know much to know that that’s an ongoing challenge, and I want to be there to support him as much as I possibly can.”

‘He’s so isolated’

After his stroke, Fetterman received praise from across the political spectrum for openly sharing his struggles and destigmatizing them.

“People hear all their lives about ‘I can’t get out of bed,’ and you really can’t understand what that really means,” he told 온라인카지노사이트’s “” in December 2023. “You can’t get out of bed until it happens to you. And it did.”

But the vibe around Fetterman has shifted as an increasing staff exodus trailed him since the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack in Israel. Fetterman has vociferously defended Israel’s conduct in Gaza in the months since, becoming one of its stalwart defenders in Congress and alienating much of the left-wing support base that championed him in his 2022 primary. 

At the same time, while being a consistent Democratic vote, he has moved rightward in some of his rhetoric and approach. He was the only Democrat to visit Trump at Mar-a-Lago during the transition and voted in favor of a number of his Cabinet choices, including Attorney General Pam Bondi.

When Democrats released a resolution in January to condemn Trump’s pardons of supporters who participated in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, Fetterman, who later signed onto the resolution, described it as a “performance art” vote.

“I don’t know if it was a communication breakdown or because I wasn’t aware of it, or they were sandbagging me, but I love it,” Fetterman said sarcastically of the resolution. “I do. We need more performance art votes, because that’s really been very helpful before the election.”

In an interview with 온라인카지노사이트 News shortly after Trump’s win in November, Fetterman said Democrats needed to stop “” over everything Trump does.

His favorability numbers tell the story.  released this week, with a margin of error of +/- 3.2 percentage points, Fetterman’s favorability stands at 34% with voters who backed former Vice President Kamala Harris last fall. With Trump voters, it’s 39%. Voters who hold unfavorable views are flipped, with 39% of Harris voters and 34% of Trump voters viewing Fetterman unfavorably.

As for his openness to confirming Hegseth, who faced , Fetterman’s view was framed around a disdain for “cancel culture,” according to one person familiar with his thinking. Among a few rationales he floated, the senator repeatedly questioned why Democrats were willing to accept former President Bill Clinton — who has faced allegations of sexual misconduct — and Jay-Z,  at the time, this person said. (Jay-Z  for allegedly falsifying her claims after she dropped a lawsuit against him.)

“He went on some rants about that,” this person said.

Asked about his consideration of Hegseth, Fetterman emphasized that his vote on the nominee "was NO."

"Considering a vote is a feature of a senator, not a bug," he told 온라인카지노사이트 News.

A spokesperson added that Fetterman "expects his staff to disagree with him on things."

"That’s normal," this person said. "But airing grievances publicly hurts the staff and puts their work in jeopardy."

Some have defended Fetterman in recent days — including on the political right. 

Salena Zito, a conservative journalist based in Pennsylvania who interviewed Fetterman and Sen. Dave McCormick, R-Pa., ,  that after spending time with him then and reading the New York magazine story, “My only conclusion to come to is that someone is looking for redemption for having worked for him because he wasn’t left enough and they are trying to destroy him.”

Three Republican senators — , along with  of Iowa and  of Arkansas — tweeted support for Fetterman Friday.

“It’s time to put politics aside and stop these vicious, personal attacks against Senator Fetterman, his wife, and his health,” McCormick wrote. “While we have many differences, we are both committed to working together to achieve results for the people of Pennsylvania and make their lives better.”

Cotton said Fetterman was a "decent and genuine guy" and claimed the "radical left is smearing him with dishonest, vicious attacks because he’s pro-Israel and they only want reliable anti-Israel politicians."

Publicly, members of Congress who have weighed in have stood by Fetterman, and no one has called for him to resign. Privately, both detractors and allies don’t think he will step down anytime soon. One House Democrat from Pennsylvania said they know Fetterman well and have spent time in his office, never seeing anything odd. This person believes he is fit to serve.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., was among those who voiced support for Fetterman.

“He’s doing a good job, and he’s a good legislator,” Schumer said.

Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro,  with Fetterman, offered only brief remarks Thursday on the senator. 

“I’ll just say this: I think the best judge of Sen. Fetterman’s health is Sen. Fetterman and his family, and ,” Shapiro said, per the Philadelphia Inquirer.

A former Fetterman staffer said the question of whether Fetterman should continue to serve should come down to whether he is doing his job.

“Are you meeting with constituents?” this person said. “How are those meetings going? What’s your schedule like? Are you missing lots of votes? Are you in committee hearings? Are you for these Trump nominees? Are you doing things in the state? Are you visible? Are you accessible? You run down the list, and the answer to those things is like, ‘no.’”

“I think it’s connected to his mental health,” the former staffer continued. “He’s so isolated and very clearly so miserable being in Washington, D.C. The job feels like an imposition to him, and he’s not doing it. Pennsylvania doesn’t have two senators right now.”

Kate Santaliz contributed.

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